In an earlier blog, 5 Smart Questions, we talked about identifying your target market. Today we’re following up with ways to help you gather information you are missing.
- Conduct a survey. There are free tools out there like Survey Monkey to help you get started. Make sure you read about their best practices to help you reach your audience and improve your completion rates.
- Ask your customers. Talking to customers, inviting comments and sending follow-up emails to ask about their experience can help you identify how they found out about you and why they visited your location or website.
- Research your competitors. If you know some information about your target market such as gender and income or education level and age, you can probably find reliable studies conducted by others about how these people find and process information, and make purchase decisions. Spend some time on Google looking at best practices for your industry.
If you’re thinking:
I don’t have anyone to survey yet.
This sounds good but I’m running a business, I don’t have time!
What is this, school? I hate research.
My customers aren’t going to share the kind of information I need.
If you are short on time, need hands-on solutions, or potential customers to survey, than you may need to consider hiring a third party. For you it may sound exhausting, but for us it’s fun! Maybe not as fun as going for a movie and ice cream, but you know what we mean. Q Strategies has developed a unique market research process to gather information, complete targeted research and deliver a smart and actionable marketing plan for both new and small businesses. Call us today to find out how our plan can help grow your business.