If you want your marketing to succeed, it’s essential that you understand exactly what your customers and prospective customers want. This feedback allows you to develop your services and market them; with an accurate understanding of what your marketplace actually needs, rather than what you think or hope it needs.
Listening to the marketplace
Sadly, the majority of small businesses get their feedback almost exclusively from existing customers. And even then, only when there’s a problem or when a customer is delighted with the service they have received. These extreme ends of the scale are useful, but limited. They tell you what you are doing well and less well – but they don’t really help you discover what your prospective customers want or need!
Remember: When you develop a product or service that’s the answer to a common problem, which is not being solved effectively by anyone else, then market it well – You can achieve hockey stick sales figures VERY quickly!
I regularly ask my clients for feedback on everything I do. However, I also ask for feedback from my blog readers, many of whom are prospective clients. I regularly encourage them to comment on my posts and I often ask for their opinions. I did this most recently on Saturday, in a dedicated post. I need to know what my readers think I am doing well and what they believe I am doing less well. I need to know what topics my readers are most interested in, etc. This gives me a clearer picture about what my prospective clients are interested in. So far, via email, blog comments and Twitter, I have had over 100 people get in touch.
Marketplace feedback
If you genuinely want to be as relevant and valuable to your marketplace as possible, start talking to them and request feedback regularly. Here are some of the things I suggest you look for:
- Look for problems that you can fix.
- Look for gaps in the market that you can service.
- Look for areas where there are misunderstandings regarding your industry, as these are opportunities to educate and inform.
- Look for areas where your competitors are strong, so you can make your services stronger / more valuable.
- Look for ways to differentiate your services from what’s already ‘out there.’
- Look for feedback regarding how well known your ‘brand’ is among your prospective clients or customers.
Those are just some really useful pieces of information, that can help you massively improve the success of your marketing. However, in order to get that data, you need to ask.
What do you think?
So, what additional feedback would you add to that list? Please take a moment to share your thoughts with your fellow readers and myself.
The small business owners I work with enjoy far more sales, attract better clients and grow amazing businesses.
If you want the same, here’s exactly how it happens.