The success of one company depends on a variety of different factors. However, we can, for the most part, say one company turns revenue when the right product finds the right customer. Obviously, excellent knowledge of the people you appeal to makes a critical part of this equation.
But, how does one company even start cracking this puzzle? The present-day global market is so intricate, diverse, and fast-paced that getting to know the people on the other side of the cash register becomes increasingly difficult with each passing day.
Still, you shouldn’t allow these challenges to set you back. Let’s see if we can offer some help along the way.
Take into account customer sentiments
Customer sentiments may sound like a very broad way to measure consumers’ sentiments and purchase habits, but they do present a very solid foundation for further research so you shouldn’t write off this strategy altogether. The easiest way to do that is to simply ask your clients how they feel and do your best to remove the friction for them to do so. Just be sure to do this only from time to time and don’t appear overly intrusive or you may affect the results. As long as you meet this one condition any form of survey ranging from website pop-ups to aftersales phone calls will serve the original intended purpose.
Leverage third-party data
The small and medium businesses that are just starting out can’t ever hope to get a good market insight left to their own limited resources. That shouldn’t be that big of a problem since over the last couple of years we have witnessed the rise of the entire industry built around gathering, processing, and passing on these chunks of data to companies who are unable to produce them independently. The insights you get through these channels are best used to determine overall market trends, develop new products, and devise marketing strategies. Some more specific issues will require that you use more focused surveys.
Conduct independent surveys
This form of market research will require that you have two important prerequisites – a mailing list with a solid number of entries and motivated participants. If you feel your customer pool isn’t deep enough to get satisfying results, you can try to obtain the data from vendors or your partners. The second problem can be easily solved with small discounts or customized promo products. The only thing left for you to do then is to find a reliable online survey maker and start asking the consumers questions that will drive some of the more nuanced decisions. Using referrals plus discounts can drastically speed up the process.
Engage in situational analysis
This form of asking the customer feedback is very close to conducting surveys but it usually requires face-to-face interviews or some other form of a questionnaire where the consumers can be hit with open-ended questions and are able to freely express their opinions. In this case, the main challenge comes in the form of the fact that people need to be even better motivated and you are also trying to collect the unfavorable opinions. Try then to attract the people who may have negative experiences with your company with additional perks like product giveaways. Insights you will get more than justify the effort.
Pay attention to behavioral data
You know the old proverb saying that ‘actions speak louder than words.’ Well, the way your customers are interacting with your website, products, apps, and content can say volumes about how they feel about your brand without them answering a single question. What’s even better is that gathering these insights doesn’t require any complex or overly expensive infrastructure. As a matter of fact, most of the key KPIs can be efficiently observed through platforms like Google Analytics, Google Trends, and Ahref. All these mentions are incredibly user-friendly so you won’t even have to ask for third-party help.
Use AI to produce predictive models
And for the very end, we would like to quickly cover yet another mention that may not be as streamlined and affordable as previous examples but still represents an option you should definitely explore. We are, of course, talking about using AI and machine learning technologies to build predictive market models around the data you have gathered through previously mentioned strategies. Even though this method requires more time, money, and effort, you will get the ability to perform a thorough predictive analysis, notice eventual issues before they escalate, and run simulations based on the data you have gathered.
We hope these few mentions will help you devise a thorough feedback gathering strategy that will allow your company to always stay in tune with the opinions, habits, and tendencies of your existing and future clients. The present-day business environment is incredibly crowded and competitive so you should feel free to use any asset at hand to help your small or medium company join the major league. Going above and beyond to get to know the people you want to sell your products and services to does seem like a perfect place to start.
