Target audience research:10 free ways to get to know your customer
10 free ways to get under the skin of your customer | A guest blog by Natalie Sharp, owner of the award-winning Sharp Thinking Marketing Ltd
I think we all understand the value of market research, but it can feel out of reach for so many small business owners. However, the reality is with so many free digital tools at our disposal, we can undertake a lot of research for free. Let’s start by looking at why market research is important:
· It helps to understand how your customers are feeling both about your business and the market they operate within
· You can measure customer satisfaction
· You can then use this to develop messaging that resonates and connects with your audience
· It will enable you to decide who to target and what is the ultimate sweet spot for your business
· It can identify the channels you should use to target your customers
· It can help set your pricing strategy
I’ve identified 10 ways you can do this.
1. Staff survey
It may sound like an odd one to start with, but undertake a quick survey with your staff or key colleagues you work with. This will pool all your knowledge and will help you then ask the right questions for any further research.
2. Analyse customer reviews
Examine your customer reviews. You could be sitting on hundreds of testimonials that will provide a wealth of insight. Group them by customer theme.
3. Social media polls
Social media polls are an easy way to obtain an answer to a trending and current topic. Yes, the sample and response may be limited, but it’s definitely one to add to the mix. Polls are common on both Linked In, Twitter and Instagram so give them a go. You’ve got nothing to lose.
4. Social media listening
Tune into relevant social media groups and listen to conversations on topics of interest. Follow relevant hashtags to do this. Sit back and learn what they talk about and their opinions about key topics – it can be very interesting!
5. Social media insights
Have you reviewed your own social media insights recently? From looking at these you can ascertain what content/posts have been most popular with followers. You can also see what posts have enabled you to acquire new followers and which posts have facilitated debate.
6. Website data
I love browsing Google Analytics. You can learn so much. Clients often say to me, you won't learn anything, but I guarantee there will be a handful of nuggets you’ll be sitting on. You can learn:-
· The number of unique visitors to your website month to month, year on year
· Sources of traffic to learn what proportion of traffic has come from direct, organic, paid-for, referral sites, and social platforms
· How long visitors are spending on your website
· What pages do they visit and which ones are the most popular
· Learn your website bounce rate and how many are leaving the site after only visiting one page
· The proportion of visitors that return to your site
· To learn what country and device they’re accessing your site
· To learn how effective your social media platforms have been in generating traffic
· To identify the level of conversions for the key call to actions from the number of enquiries, to the number of subscribers and identify the overall website conversion rate
7. Competitor research
Putting time into conducting a competitor audit can add real value. You’ll be able to assess your own business against others and find areas you can excel as well as be more competitive. This normally takes me a full day to complete this. To get started, make a list of five key competitor businesses. Assess each of these against the following criteria (feel free to adapt based on the industry you operate in): branding, proposition & messaging, products and services, pricing, target audience, website, marketing material, social media presence. Now review all your notes and make a note of the top 10 key learnings.
8. Desk research
Browse Google for free industry reports. Often Government reports and business publications publish free online content so it is always worth looking.
9. Customer interviews
Conduct some telephone or Zoom interviews, or even better get an independent 3rd party to do this. You may want to use the key results of the survey to test key learnings and theories and probe deeper. Equally, the survey may throw up new questions that you want answering. To get people to participate, you may want to restrict it to 15 minutes so it doesn't feel like much time for your customer to give up or feel too intrusive.
10. Customer survey
Finally, using all the insights you’ve gleaned from the other sources, create your own survey. You can do this online using a tool like Survey Monkey. You could send it out to your existing customers, but if you’re looking to move into a new market, then you can also reach out to your network and promote it on social media encouraging others to share it. Ensure you incentivise response. Before you go into the survey design, first jot down what you want to know, where are your knowledge gaps, or perhaps you want to stress-test what you already know.
Cherry-pick
Feel free to cherry-pick which research sources are most relevant to your businesses. Even just undertaking one or two of these exercises should generate a lot of insight you can use across the business. Good luck!
Natalie can be contacted via LinkedIn and do check out the Sharp Thinking website.