If there’s one thing you need to know, as a business owner, it’s the state of the market you’re selling to. If you don’t know what the people buying your products want, you can’t decisions about how to sell to them, and eventually your good luck will run out.
Today we’re taking a look at how you can get to know your market, so you can maximise your appeal to your customers and make sure you’re offering them exactly what they want in time for Christmas.
Research
The first place to start is with market research. In the early days, when you’re preparing to launch you don’t have access to any customers of your own to survey, even if you have to expertise to do so effectively. Even when you have a broad customer base to work with, truly useful market intelligence comes not just from people who’ve already chosen to shop with you but also from those who haven’t!
Finding a market research company to work with gets you that all encompassing insight that lets you take really good decisions, whether you’re trying to think of a trading name for your business, or rebranding after a long life.
Testing
One underrated aspect of ‘listening’ to your customers is testing your marketing. Before launching a campaign, you can run what’s known as A/B testing to determine the best approach. Small scale launches of our marketing with different forms of branding, design or presentation can go out to select audiences. The response each option gets will tell you which is best suited for broader launch.
Observation
Another thing you can do to help optimise your layout – whether it’s of bricks and mortar shops or a digital storefront is to watch how real customers interact with it. There are plenty of tools available to help you track a customer’s journey through your website, from how they access it to the route they follow from landing page to purchase (or any other termination of their experiences).
You can similarly observe customers in your stores, watching how they behave upon early, where are the ‘hot zones’ you’ll want to put your most attractive offers, and how they spread through the store.
Interpreting your findings will help you set a layout which helps customers find what they’re looking for while also giving them plenty of opportunities to discover other products they have realised they need into the bargain!