Want to make wiser and more strategic decisions for your business? Look no further than some good ol’ market research. In my many years as a marketing consultant for businesses of all sizes, it never ceases to amaze me how often business owners make uninformed decisions for their business. By basing your decisions on research, you’re bound to succeed.
Recently, my agency CreativeWorks Marketing worked with a medium size business, a provider of products and services to the process control, chemical treatment wastewater, industrial and manufacturing industries. We conducted qualitative research with seven of their clients, and then analyzed this information to provide them with valuable insights to help better position them in the marketplace.
Want to know the results? Here’s how we helped them better understand their value and position in the marketplace:
Understanding customers’ needs and wants
When you think of needs and wants, what comes to mind? Many business owners may immediately think of goods and services, and while these are certainly key components, a customer’s needs and wants extend beyond just the products and services your business offers them.
For our client, we learned unique insights regarding their customers’ needs and wants. Some of these insights included the desire to communicate with a senior representative from the company; the desire for informative webinars and training programs; and the need for a more streamlined sales process.
When conducting market research, I prefer to uncover the nitty gritty details that will truly make a difference to your business. That’s why our preferred approach of conducting market research is using a qualitative method in the form of conversations with your customers. Not only will you receive valuable information from them, but they’ll be able to provide their opinions in a confidential manner since we choose to provide the results in an anonymous format. This way there’s no sugarcoating how they feel about their experiences with your business!
Defining their difference and value proposition
Do you know what makes your business stand out from your competitors? This is a question I often ask my clients when I first meet them, and it’s always interesting to compare their answers to the answers provided by their customers. More times than not, there’s a striking difference between what a business owner thinks their value is compared to the perceived value from their customers.
From our research, it was clear that our client was valued amongst all of their customers for their technical knowledge, problem-solving abilities and high quality products. But what we found was that these values were not being effectively communicated to their customers and through their external communications. Having a disconnect between what your branding actually says and what you want it to say can lead to further issues for your business.
Improving their communication and internal issues
When communicating with your customers, there’s a fine line between communicating with them too much and communicating with them too little. As part of our market research services, we ask your customers directly how often they’d like to hear from you and what they’d like to hear about. In this particular instance, our client’s customers wanted to hear from them on a quarterly basis, and about new products, technical tips and tricks, and other support resources. Knowing this information helped our client create a marketing plan that was tailored to the desires of their clients.
We were also able to expose some concerns their customers had about organizational flow and the roles and responsibilities of key employees. After becoming aware of this information, our client was able to address these internal issues that were inevitably affecting their customer experience.
Are you interested in learning more about your business from the perspective of your customers? Contact CreativeWorks Marketing today to discuss how we can help you make better business decisions with our market research!