Do you want to improve your marketing, make more sales and lower your marketing costs at the same time? Well, if you are like the vast majority of small business owners I meet, you can help yourself to achieve all three; by basing your future marketing decisions on better quality information.
Better marketing decisions come from better quality information
We know our business well; so it’s all too easy for us to assume we also know what our prospective clients or customers want. However, if our assumptions are incorrect, then our marketing will be addressing a non-existent need. This is an extremely common error among small businesses.
I was prompted to write this, after a conversation recently with a business owner, who constantly stated assumptions as “facts.” He would say things like;
“Lots of our target customers want…”
Then, when I asked him what percentage he was referring to, when he said “lots“, he replied that he didn’t know.
When I asked him how he knew for sure, what his prospective customers wanted, he admitted that he didn’t know.
He was simply assuming.
After speaking with me, he decided to do some very basic research and discovered his assumptions were incorrect. What he had done, was to assume that his marketplace thought the same way he did. He was about to develop a new service, which no one was looking for. He was providing an answer, to a question that no one was asking.
Someone once told me; “In business, unless you know what the numbers are, you are running blind.” She was right! It’s impossible to make good decisions, when you are using bad data.
Whenever you find yourself making a marketing decisions based on an assumption, always ask yourself what you are actually basing that assumption on. Is it based on facts / accurate data? If it isn’t, then do a little research.
I wrote a post about getting better quality marketing feedback, which you might find useful!
Even a simple survey, which asks the right questions, can help you target your marketing far more effectively.
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