Gleaning consumer feedback and competitive information to track results and grow your small business.
Small business owners and managers often think that the only things they need to keep track of are financial results. But there are many other parts of your business you need to monitor on an ongoing basis.
Since my background is in consumer research, I will not focus on production or cost of goods and overhead that would vary enormously depending on what type of industry you are in.
If you are a realtor or a carpenter, if you own a beauty salon or a convenience store, if you run a restaurant or an upholstery shop, you all have different realities for how you make money, your need for employees and inventory, but you all need customers.
Small companies rarely have the resources to conduct formal marketing research or to hire firms that offer analytic support.
You essentially have to be your own research guru and build into your company a culture of whatever you want to call it.
Some common descriptors include:
- Marketing research
- Metrics
- Analytics or, simply put, a...
- Customer focus
How do you become your own consumer research expert? By giving the issue a job number – it is part of your ownership/management duties. But don’t groan, this is important and it’s fun.
How do you start? First, you can start talking to your customers. This shouldn’t be a problem.
You do this every day.
I’m not talking about grilling people or taking them through a survey. I’m talking about a pleasant conversation that evidences just how interested you are in them and how you may serve them.
Or, even better, you can simply keep your eyes and ears open and discretely observe and listen in as your customers chat or peruse your offerings.
I don’t mean you should actively spy on them or eavesdrop, just watch and listen. During these casual discussions, observations and listening opportunities.
You can try to glean various bits of information, including:
- Customer feedback on whatever they buy (or don’t buy)
- You can ask (or try to figure out) how your customers learned about you
- Try to figure out what might have brought customers your way
- Try to figure out who they are – visitors or locals, younger or older, Latinos or Asians, Gay or Straight, Hipsters or Hip Hopsters
- Try to identify “influencers” – those customers who bring others with them. They may be the key to your ultimate success. Keep them happy.
- Any and all information you gather may help you tailor your business, help you pick between one promotional tool vs. another, help you decide what inventory to keep or discard. This will be helpful.
Next page- Documenting observations & Considering your competitive landscape
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Documenting observations
One key element in all of this is to write down your observations.
Date them because there may be seasonality issues (the holidays, summer vacation season, cold weather vs. warm, etc. If you could, setting up a spreadsheet for all of this would be ideal, but if that isn’t your cup of tea and don’t have a youngster around to help you with tech stuff, keeping a notebook would be a good place to start.
A lot of entrepreneurs try to keep all of this in their heads.
Don’t do it. Write it down. Share it with your spouses, partners and staff. Re-think it. Archive it.
The real danger is being too selective in what you remember. Very positively focused entrepreneurs will filter out all negativity. People in a rough patch might only see the negative.
Try to stay neutral and see what is really out there, not what you want or fear to see.
The more obvious stuff includes keeping track of which of your sales and promotions efforts are effective and which are not. If you try a specific promotion, a local mailer or you buy into a coupon mailer or whatever you can afford, keep close tabs on what your return is.
It’s all about ROI.
You will always be in the process of refining your business, refining your sales and promotions efforts, and you will also refine and become more sophisticated in your own research efforts.
Eventually you’ll have to consider your competitive landscape including:
- Who is your competition
- Are they people who do the same thing you do
- Are they doing it the same way
- What promotions are they running
- How do their products or services compare with yours?
- Sometimes people might have alternatives to your category – what are they?
You do all of this not to undermine others, but to refine your own. Learn from others, but don’t copy.
Keep your own touch, your own style, your own personality. The last thing you want to do is to start a grudge match. Business isn’t a zero sum game.
When another restaurant moves onto your turf, don’t fight them -- imagine building a restaurant row. Keep up, don’t fight.
It is very important to impart this culture to your employees. Part of this is training, but a LOT of this is listening to your employees.
They are often more directly in the trenches than you are.
Listen to them.
As your company grows, this process will grow with you. Eventually, you may be able to hire some professionals to help you with your marketing analytics. And if you have older data to share with them, that will allow them to do an even better job for you.
Have fun with this. It’s interesting. This is your business. Study it. Protect it.
Related articles:
Grow Your Business: A Market Research Primer
Clients Will Go Beyond Your Website To Research Your Business
Where Are You on the Data Analytics Maturity Model?