10 Ways To Get to Know More About Your Customers

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The first step in building a profitable business is making sure that you offer a service that your customers and prospects really want.

That means that getting to know your customers is one of the most important steps in building your business success.

The problem for many businesses and entrepreneurs is that they either miss out this step entirely, rush it or treat it as a one-off exercise.

If you want to persuade someone to take interest in what you are offering, you must tune in to the conversation already in their mind.

They are tuned in to the radio station WIFM - what's in it for me?

You need to make market research an ongoing part of your business activity so that you can continue improving your offer and the way you present it to the market.

Often you will pick up little nuggets that can make a big difference to the way you package or promote your product or service.

Here are ten ways you can find out more about your customers and what they are looking for.

1. Check Out Their Web Searches: These days many people go straight to a search engine like Google when they want to check something out. You can easily get access to this knowledge by finding the 'keywords' people use to search.

2. Listen In to Their Social Conversations: So many conversations happen online now that it's easy to eavesdrop or join in. You can do this through Blogs, Forums and Social Networks.

3. Follow the News: Keeping track of relevant newspapers, trade publications, online news sites and magazines helps you keep up to date with current priorities.

4. Check Out the Competition: One of the best sources of information about your market is your competitors. You can easily 'spy' on them online and find out what they are doing, what is working and what can be improved. While you may know some of your competitors, a quick Google search using your top keywords will let you discover more.

5. Notice What They Are Reading: One of the simplest ways to find out what people are interested in is to visit the magazine section of a large bookstore. When there are magazines being published on a subject, this suggests there is a market. The magazines themselves also highlight the current topics that are hot in that field. Magazine covers are great examples of effective copywriting.

6. Discover What They Think of What They Are Reading: A little-known way of finding out what people think about specific topics is to read the book reviews on Amazon.com. It's a great resource for identifying trends and finding out about topics. You can use it to find the top-selling categories and to find the best sub-categories.

7. Discover What Websites They Like: There are many social bookmarking sites where people save and highlight their favorite websites. All you need to do is try searching for your keywords at those sites and find out the most popular results. This is a good indication of what is important to them.

8. Find Out What They Want to Know: Many people go straight to online question and answer sites when they want questions answered, this is a good way of finding out what people want information on.

9. Check Out How They Use Your Website: Your own website is a mine of useful information about what people are looking for. Freely available software packages like Google Analytics tell you a lot about your site visitors.

10. Ask Them: One of the best ways to find out what people want is simply to ask them. If you have existing customers, send them a quick email asking for feedback or use a survey to collect responses and data. You can use this approach to get feedback on existing products and services or to find out what big issues people are currently thinking about.

These 10 approaches give you a powerful range of tools to get to know your customers and what they want.

The key to effective market research is to make it part of your regular routine without having it take over your day.

There is no doubt that time spent carefully getting to know your market is one of the best investments you can make in your business.

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