Jauary is a strange time of year. On one hand there is a slight sense of sadness, post the festive season, but that is mixed with a sense of new beginnings and purpose. This time of year we often talk about fresh starts and new beginnings, striving to make changes and improve things. As small business owners, this sentiment can transfer to our marketing. Whilst it is only the first week back, I have already started to have conversations around how we evolve to prepare for growth this year.
Why Understanding Your Customer is Crucial
Understanding our customers needs, wants and ambitions is fundamental to us being able to pivot our business and respond to change. Using market research to better understand your customer can help. There may be many reasons we wish to make a change, perhaps we are seeing changes to our industry or shifts in customer buyer behaviours. One way to truly understand our customers is by completing some market research.
By completing market research we will understand those changes in customer behaviour and can start to adjust our marketing strategies, messaging, channels and approach accordingly. For example, many of my clients have a professional audience and historically we might have worked across two or three social media networks. With the decline in use of platforms such as Facebook, we are choosing to pause on focusing on our energies on this platform and just focus on LinkedIn.
Quantitative vs Qualitative Research Approaches
Whilst not all business changes require market research, if we see significant drops in business or an increase in demand for some products, it can be useful to work out what is going on. Whilst refering to sources such as social media/ brand listening tools or Mintel for desk research can be useful, therre are two types of market research we might consider if we wish to gain direct feedback from our current or potential audiences:
- Quantitatiive research: is where we might go out to a larger audience with a survey, poll or analytical tool to guage an overall view or opinion on something. Generally, we are looking for a number of responses to be able to provide numerical insight.
- Qualitative research: is where we would take a smaller sample size and focus more on gathering thoughts and opinions on a particular topic. We might use interviews, focus groups, observational studies or open ended questionnaires to gather this insight. Depending upon your brand size, you might use a sample of 10-50 people.
Depending upon what you wish to understand from your audience, will depend upon the best approach to take.
How to Conduct Market Research
Before you start your market research project, it is key to idenfity what insight you wish to gain, clearly defining your goals or desired outcome. Consider, what do you wish to learn? Once you are clear on this, we break down the next easy steps below:
- Target audience: Be clear on whose opinion you wish to seek. Is it from your current client base or from a new potential audience or segment?
- Method; Once you know what you wish to achieve from whom, then look at the best way to achieve this. We outline the two different key methods above but they could include: desk research, surveys, online polls, social media listening tools or direct interviews.
- Timeframe: Start your project and be prepared to respond to insight learnt in the process. If you are completing a series of interviewws they may throw up some interesting learnings from which to build on.
- Analyse your findings: Once your project is complete, download the results into a useable format so that you can interpret the findings, convert to actionable insights and apply to your next marketing campaign.
- Tools and resources: There are many tools out there to help the small business owner with our market research projects. They might include: Mintel (for desk research), Survey Monkey, Smart Survey, SEM Rush (a platform to help manage your online visibility), Brand 24, Talk Walker and Keyhole (social listening tools).
Applying Your Learnings
Once you have greater clarity on the answers to the customer questions you have, it is then important to turn this insight into action. Actions might include: adjusting product offerings, changing the messaging, refining marketing campaigns or enhancing customer service.
In Conclusion
As we saw in our recent blog “2025 Small Business Trends”, there will continue to be some big changes on the horizon this year, largely driven by sustainability and changing consumer buyer behaviours. All of which will be underpinned by advancing technology and AI.
As marketeers and small business owners understanding our customer’s needs and wants remains critical to building and growing our businesses, but it does not have to be overwhelming. If we can help set up your next market research project to better understand your customer, please get in touch to find out more.
