In another articles I wrote I mentioned two different good methods of research for your marketing. In that article I chose to focus entirely on researching the marketplace through what other businesses have done and are doing. Now I’m going to focus on the second method, which is researching directly through your customers.
With a focus like this your goal is going to be to figure out just what your customers want. This is entirely about them and their needs, along with figuring out the best way to appeal to them.
This is about direct surveys and other methods for talking to them. Combine newsletter printing with a direct request to find out more about your customers.
There are some primary and important differences to take note of between this and researching what other companies are doing. Odds are good when you see an ad from another company they’ve already done their research and analyzed it to get the best results. By researching your customers directly you’re going to get a lot of raw data that you’ll then need to analyze yourself.
This takes a lot more work to do, but on the other hand, you’ll naturally get better and more specific results. Even if you know another company had success with a previous marketing push, do you know that the same marketing technique would work again? That it would work specifically with your customers?
Only by researching your customers can you gain answers like this.
There are a few ways you can go about getting information from your customers. Going off of the suggestion of newsletter printing, send out a newsletter asking them about what kinds of advertisements they prefer. Ask them directly if they’ve liked your previous marketing pushes, or if they’ve seen something they particularly like. Have a section of your newsletter dealing with an ad watch, where people just mention stuff they enjoyed from any company.
At the same time try to find out what your customers enjoy doing in their free time. What their hobbies are, along with other things they like, maybe certain images or certain themes.
Some of this can be gained by seeing what they do in their free time. See what the other places are that they go in to shop at.
What you’ll end up with is a lot of various pieces of information, and it will then becomes up to you to figure out not only what your marketing message should be based on this, but how you should present it. Will this be a short message that can fit on postcards or a longer one that needs brochures?
The downside is the additional work you have ahead of you, but the upside is that you get very precise and focused marketing, and that you can use this information again in the future. It might take longer to get, but you’re setting up a firm foundation for your marketing.
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