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Market research myths for SMEs:
(1) Think of market research in terms of what large corporations do; a mixed quant and qual approach, ending up with a large report that requires in-house researchers to absorb and develop strategy. They are big budget and require time to act on the results – two things SMEs don’t generally have.
(2) Think it is easy to whip up a survey and invite people on social media and then change their business according to those results.
The best ways for SMEs to do market research to grow their business:
(1) Do something small to get started and have time to absorb the results and act on them.
(2) Utilise your existing tribe. Existing contacts already have a wealth of information that can help you grow and are waiting for you to ask them.
(3) Put research into your business calendar like you include a marketing and sales strategy. Make sure you complete a whole feedback cycle, communicating back the results so participants know that you’ve listened.
3 Questions that SMEs can ask to get started:
(1) A question that allows you to benchmark your business, such as the Net Promoter. How likely are you to recommend us to friends or colleagues on a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 is very unlikely and 10 is very likely. The 9s and 10s are promoters, 7 & 8 neutrals or passives, 6 and below are detractors.
(2) A question you can put into word cloud software, such as Wordle or CloudMaker. Word cloud software will make words with a higher frequency bigger and a lower frequency smaller. It is a great way to see if the words you use to describe your business are the same as the ones your tribe uses. If there is a disconnect, then you need to take action to change that. When you think about My Business Help, what are the first 3 words that come to mind. Lara Solomon blogged about word clouds recently: http://www.socialrabbit.net/2011/08/it-looks-cloudy-online/
(3) An open response question to get ideas. Ending a survey with just ‘Other comments’ doesn’t help participants give you ideas, but if you end with a question that is more specific you will get more useful information. If there was one thing we could do differently to improve your experience, what is it?
Distributing your survey on social media:
It can be a great way to get participants, but they could be the wrong ones.
If you’re going to make business decisions based on the results you need to know that your target market have done the survey, so either ask questions in the survey so you can find out who have done it and if they are your target market, or distribute the survey in another way.
You can also listen to a PODCAST of this interview.
Article by: Tribe Research: www.triberesearch.com.au
We hold Survey Design Masterclasses and have a Survey Design Review service so you can submit your survey and have it inexpensively reviewed by research professionals.
Our software www.tribaltoolkit.com has two tools: CloudMaker (word cloud generator) and ActionMap (shows you what you should be prioritising for marketing and business improvement).
Tribe Research: Explore | Uncover | Drive Change
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