Understanding your market
as a business owner
How to understand your market and clientele as a business owner
Collecting data and insights about your customers, competitors and market will help inform your business plan. It’s also useful for identifying your brand’s unique selling points and optimising your marketing and sales strategy. This guide will walk you through different tools and techniques you can use to decode your market and clientele.
Start with comprehensive market research
The two main methods of market research are:
Primary research
Primary research will help you get first-hand information and data about your market and customers. It usually involves one-to-one or focus group interviews, questionnaires, observations and surveys with a sample of your target clientele or audience. It’s a good way to get feedback and learn more about your customers’ preferences and behaviours.
Tip: Preparation is key to make the most out of your interviews. Start asking open-ended questions to get to know the participants better and continue with questions that focus on the different stages of their journey – from the awareness and consideration to the purchase and loyalty stages.
Secondary research
Secondary research involves analysing data and records you have from public or commercial sources (e.g. government statistics and data or industry reports by organisations like Gartner of Forrester). These will help you analyse findings from existing research and identify any gaps.
Use social listening
Consumer metrics and insights are key to get to know your customer base. Using Google Analytics and monitoring social media platforms, like Instagram and Facebook, will give you an idea of your customers’ habits and behaviours. Social listening is not only valuable to understand what people say about your brand but also to identify any gaps in the market and uncover industry trends. Listening to your audiences’ feedback, questions and concerns will help you improve your social media presence and brand perception.
Tip: Use tools like Hootsuite and Brandwatch to analyse your social media profiles and find any conversations about topics that are relevant to your brand and industry.
Build your ideal buyer persona
Creating buyer personas – which are fictional representations of your ideal customers – should also be part of your research as they’ll allow you to dive deeper to your customers’ needs, goals and challenges. To create audience identities, you need to include information like:
- Demographics: Age, gender, income, location, educational level, job titles.
- Behavioural information: Interests, hobbies, values, lifestyle choices.
- Shopping preferences: Buying behaviour, brand interactions, channel and communication preferences.
- Goals: Define your persona’s objectives.
- Pain points: Identify your persona’s challenges, frustrations, obstacles and inconsistencies during their buying journey.
You might not know every one of these details, but trying to get into the headspace of your customers is an important step for ensuring you offer a service or product the value.
Tip: Sites like Canva and HubSpot offer free templates and could walk you through creating buyer personas. You can also add names and photos to make them more relatable.
Create empathy maps
Once your personas are ready, you can build a customer empathy map using interactive tools like Miro; Your map should include the different stages of the buyers journey and reflect what the users think and feel. The aim? To gain deeper insights into your customers’ needs and pain points in a visual format. This could be a great first step to offer personalised products and services to your customers.
Analyse competitors
A competitive analysis is key if you’re looking to explore competitors in your industry and what they offer. You’ll then be able to identify any gaps in their offering and take advantage of opportunities, promoting your brand’s unique selling points.
Tip: Don’t know where to start? Identify your competitors, check and analyse their products, prices, and promotional strategies. Doing a SWOT analysis, where you list the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, could be a good way to start reviewing competitors and evaluating their marketing strategies.
Stay flexible
Keeping up-to date with the latest industry trends and adapting to the changing needs of your customers should always remain a priority. Get feedback from your customers (e.g. using tools like SurveyMonkey) and ask them what they’d like you to change about the product or services you’re providing. This will help you improve your existing products, develop new ones and stand out from competitors.
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