When asked a question, a child can often be blunt and “tell it like it is.” Customers can be the same, when given the opportunity to share. What many business owners don’t realize is that there is a wealth of information available from this bluntness that can help you in creating strategic, targeted marketing strategies. All you have to do is ask.
Whether you realize it or not, your customer’s feedback is the most valuable form of market research. It can offer far more than traditional market research, which typically measures demographics, income, gender, etc. This information is important, but typically only provides you information on where you should place your marketing. Your customer feedback will include gaining insight from your customers on how they came to be your customer and their overall experience with your brand. This is called the Customer’s Buyers Journey.
Uncovering your Customer’s Buyers Journey will tell you what your customer felt when they became aware they needed a service or product such as yours. It uncovers what their process of elimination was to narrow down their search. And finally, it will tell you what you did right to entice that customer to select your product or service. This information will help you better position your story, advertisements, and your offers, to engage more fully with your customers.
An outside marketing company with expertise in research can help you understand more about your Customer’s Buyers Journey, which will:
- Eliminate guesswork associated with your marketing. Not sure where your customers are seeking what your company offers? Unclear of what they want or need to hear from you to make them take action? Uncovering the emotional need you fill for your customers will help you be more accurate in your marketing efforts.
- Improved ability to connect and engage with customers. Once you uncover where your customer’s are seeking your types of services and products, and what they want to know before they buy you will begin to close the sales gap by resonating with your customers quicker and more effectively.
- Useful insight for ownership, management, customer service and operations. Your customers have a truly outside perspective of how well your processes, communication, and deliverables are. Gaining their insight into these areas of your business can help to improve, not only your relationship with your customers, but also the quality of work for your employees.
- Ability to nurture meaningful, long-lasting relationships with customers. The more you know about your customers the better your relationship and communications can be. Market research can help to uncover your brand equity with your customers, in other words, how well they really like you and how devoted they truly are to your brand. This information can be used to develop marketing strategies to help you achieve your long-term business goals.
- Proper positioning of your brand as well as your product or service. When you understand why your customers buy, and more importantly, why they do and don’t buy from you, you can better position your content, advertisements, and offers to be more meaningful to your customers so they take action with you.
So how do you get started? Hiring an outside marketing company is the recommended step to take to uncover your Customer’s Buyers Journey. It is often easier for customers to share feedback with a third party and it is recommended to have marketing professional research and analyze the data to develop a target marketing strategy from the information attained. Market research can change how your business communicates and markets, saving you time and money to grow your business.
