“I don’t need market research and I can’t afford it. I’m just a little guy!”
If that was your thought when you read this, I just might have a surprise or two for you.
The fact is:
- Anyone can do market research,
- It doesn’t have to cost anything, and
- There is no successful marketing without market research.
“Market Research” doesn’t have to mean teams of people, fancy software, “focus groups”, or people phoning strangers to ask them questions. Sure, all those things great if you have the budget for them.
But ANYTHING is market research, if it helps you understand who would buy your product or service, how best to contact them, and what to say to them.
For example, if you review past sales, you could find out what products or services sell the best, and where the purchasers are located. You can better target for more effective marketing.
What’s worked in the past will likely work in the future. If most of your sales are coming from contractors, connecting with contractors is likely to pay off.
A client of ours with that scenario, got a list of local general contractors and sent out a couple hundred hand-addressed and stamped post cards every month. Some of these contractors put the postcards on their bulletin boards. The next time a flooring contractor messed up badly enough, my client got a call – and a new customer, often for many jobs year after year. Cheap. Effective.
Another company noted that their best customers were usually looking for a particular service. Realizing they didn’t have a page on their website, they built an excellent page about the service, got good search rankings and starting selling more of that service. Cost = zero.
Another useful tip: Salesmen talk to prospects all the time. If they are any good, they recognize good prospects often use the same words or phrases – talking about their problems or what they are looking for. One company where the owner was also the salesman, applied that experience and produced cheap fliers that repeated those same words and phrases – leading to an immediate jump in qualified leads and sales.
Ask every prospect how they found you. One company doing this, if it was Google, they asked what they had searched for and where they searched from. The answers led to immediate changes in their website. Result: More highly qualified leads. Cost: Zero.
There are lots more ways to better understand your market. Google Ads are one of the best, but it does involve spending some money and you have to have someone who knows their way around Google Ads to set it up and run it. But it gives fast reliable answers – much more reliable and less expensive than focus groups or other survey techniques.
So don’t be scared off because “Market Research” sounds like something you need a Ph.D to a fat checkbook for. A good dose of common sense will help you answer a lot of questions.
