Business owners today need to be on their toes 24-7 for potential opportunities to learn more about their customers. Thankfully, you don’t need a degree in statistical analysis or an MBA to get to the bottom of what makes your customers tick.
The following are a few avenues that you could investigate to help understand your customer better and offer products and services that don’t just satisfy, but delight him or her.
And isn’t that why you got into running your own business in the first place?
Website Analytics
Not taking advantage of website analytics is like leaving a whole pile of potential research insights on the table.
Google Analytics is free to install and offers a free certification. In exchange for the investment of your time, you can understand what your customers are really interested in on your site. It will give you ideas for where to focus your design efforts and what is generating enough traffic and interest that you can leave it alone.
Help Desk Software
There are lots of programs out there that can be used to help you connect with your customers better. Consider a live chat software.
By using a chat software that locks in to your customer as soon as he or she accesses your site, you’re opening the lines of communication and learning more about the pain points of the customer. If they are having trouble finding something on your site, this is valuable information for a potential redesign.
If they’re looking for a product you don’t have, that may necessitate a fresh inventory item. All of this can be automated and the data collected for future insights. It’s another great way to learn what makes your customers tick. And understanding what makes your customers tick is the only way you can hope to excel against the competition.
Social Media
Social media offers excellent ways to connect with and understand customers. From Twitter and Facebook polls to an Instagram account where you’re actively engaging with customer posts and comments, it’s a personal way to connect and learn more about your customers.
Of course there are so many options for social media accounts these days, you’ll have to pick and choose which ones you’re active on. The best, simplest advice is to go where your customers are and make the most of those channels.
Quora & Reddit
Site like Quora is potential goldmine for customer research. You can find forums for everyone from golfers to machinists, and everything in between. This means that just by using your wits and typing a few things into the search bar, you can uncover your customer’s pain points and potential areas where you can edge out the competition.
With crowd-sourced information sites, the answers are all there for you, if you know where to look. You can even post questions yourself. Both sites (and many others like them) are built on a community of honesty with people from around the world who generally want to help each other out.
If you’re honestly seeking answers and not trying to sell something through these channels, you can learn an awful lot about your customer’s experiences.
Blogs
It can seem like a hassle to have to put up a blog post once every month or worse, once every week, but building an audience organically through quality blog posts can be an excellent way to reach out to your customers and get the ball rolling to learn more about them.
These days there are plenty of professional writers out there too who can help get your message out there in a way that is compelling and memorable.
Email Campaigns
Email campaigns and newsletters are a great way to keep the lines of communication open between you and your customers.
And don’t forget, every time a customer opens an email, every time he or she clicks on one of the embedded links, you’re collecting valuable data about the customer decision making process at whatever part of the funnel you’re targeting. Just like analytics, this can prove invaluable.