Posts Tagged research
4 Free Sources for Researching Potential Clients
Posted by Patrick Woods in Market Research on
One of the biggest challenges for B2b sales and marketing professionals is finding qualified buyers for their products and services. Small businesses don’t often have the resources of larger corporations that have entire departments and software systems dedicated to lead generation and market research.
The good news is that as companies place increasing emphasis on their online presence, small business owners can take advantage of this wealth of information.
Here are 4 places for finding insight into that company you know can use your product or service.
Target company’s website – the company website will give you an idea of the tone of the company. It is young and hip or classic and reserved? Find the bio pages of executives and board members. Which ones are decision makers and influencers you’ll need to target? Where are they from? What’s their background?
LinkedIn – once you get a feel for the key players in the target organization, continue your market research on LinkedIn. Search by person and by company name. Are any of your connections connected to key people at the company? Also, research each individual and gather more information on their previous work experience. They may even list a personal website or blog, giving you more insight into what makes them tick.
White papers, reports, and presentation- many companies will develop original research and reports about their products and their industry. Search their website and on SlideShare to find out what their offering and how they’re doing it.
Annual reports – if your target company is public, have a look at their financial situation to understand how the budget. This will provide you with insight into broad spending and budgeting strategy that will reveal what the company thinks is strategically important.
Comprehensive Guide to Tracking Your Inbound Social Media Marketing Efforts
Posted by Patrick Woods in Social Media Marketing on
How effective are your small business’ social media marketing tactics? Many small business owners post links on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, but have no conception of what’s supporting their marketing objectives and what is waste, or even how to determine which analytics are important.
There are many factors involved in tracking social media marketing success, like engagement and reputation, but one one metric that’s simple to track is inbound referrals to your website. A large percentage of social media marketing activity involves promoting your website to your target audience, so you absolutely must know what traffic is coming from where.
Here’s a quick tutorial on how to setup your small business social media tracking and analytics system.
Required tools
- Google Analytics account: if you don’t have one, sign up for an Analytics account. It takes a bit of effort (you may need to involve your webmaster), but the payoff will be apparent for the life of your website.
- Google URL Builder: in conjunction with Analytics, the URL Builder allows you to gain quick insight into the performance of your social media links
- Spreadsheet program: such as Excel or Google Docs spreadsheet
Social Media Tracking Method (the short version)
- Determine the target page on your website for your social media campaign
- Plan which social networks you will target
- Enter your URL into the URL Builder, entering the necessary parameters
- Record the parameters in your spreadsheet for reference
- Link your content on the social networks
- Track in Google Analytics
- Adjust your tactics
Social Media Tracking Method (the full version)
Step 1: Let’s say your small business sells hand-made t-shirts in-store as well as online. Your marketing strategy revolves around a “hot deals” page on your website that offer “buy now” opportunities for your 6 top-selling designs. All inbound activity will be directed to this landing page.
Step 2: Your small business has a decent following on Twitter and and active fan group of Facebook, so they will be the primary target of your social media marketing activities. You also post images of your products on Flickr, so you’ll track inbound links from there as well.
Step 3: a guide to the URL Builder
- We’ll start with Twitter
Screenshot of the URL Builder (click for larger)
- Enter the base address (e.g. www.shirtstore.com/hotdeals.php) into the “Website URL” box
- “Campaign Source” = the site where you’ll post this particular link, so for the Twitter links, enter “twitter”
- “Campaign Medium” = the kind of link you’ll be using, like a banner add, text link, email campaign, etc.
- “Campaign Content” = used to differentiate different kinds of content pointing to the same landing page
- The Twitter component of this online marketing campaign will have two sources:
- Post links, i.e. links you’ll post in your feed
- Bio link, i.e. the link in your profile information
- You’ll give them both unique names for tracking purposes
- Since we can only build one URL at a time, we’ll do to the post links first, so enter “post_link” into this box (you can’t use spaces)
- The Twitter component of this online marketing campaign will have two sources:
- “Campaign Name” = used to identify the larger campaign this link is a part of. Since your marketing efforts are focused on the Hot Deals landing page, enter “hot_deals_fall_09″
- Finally, click “Generate URL,” and your URL is built!
You’ll have to go through this process for each different link on your social media properties. So two for Twitter, changing the Campaign Content field for each kind, and for each Facebook link and Flickr link you’ll post.
Step 4: As you can see, this analytics systems results in a large inventory of URLs. To keep track of what values you’ve used for each tracking parameter, setup a spreadsheet that store each value used. Use the furthest-right column to leave yourself notes about how each URL was used, where and when. Again, the initial setup is a bit time consuming, but your efforts will provide solid social media analytics so you can focus your marketing efforts on activities that bring results.
Step 5: Now that you have your list of URLs in your handy spreadsheet, implement them on your target social media sites.
Step 6: Once your links are in the wild, you can move on to the exciting part: tracking the campaign results. Login to your Google Analytics account and click on “Traffic Sources” in the navigation on the left. The two sub-sections of interest in our case are “Campaigns” and “Ad Versions.” These reports will quickly overview the progress of your campaigns and the versions of your links you’ve posted on the social networks.
Additionally, you can view the Campaigns based on the other dimensions you set when building the URL, namely source, medium, and ad content.
Step 7: Watch your campaign for the next days and weeks to see which links are driving traffic to your website. Maybe you find that posting image links in your Facebook status drives twice the traffic as the Flickr photos, so you spend more time on that approach. Any combination of results is possible, but without analytics and metrics, you are completely in the dark about the effectiveness of your small business social media marketing efforts.
Hopefully this tutorial to setting up your social media analytics system has been helpful. Please comment if you have any other helpful social media marketing tips!
Small Business Branding: Perceptual Mapping and Your Product’s Position
Posted by Patrick Woods in General Marketing on
Do you know how your target audience views your small business’ product or service? Do you know where you stand in relation to your competition? Affirmative answers to these questions are integral to our small business marketing plan.
One method for helping you examine your small business’ position in your market is to complete a perceptual map that compares the target audience’s perception of the various competitors in your space.
Why is a perceptual map helpful?
- Enables comparison between your position and that of your competitors
- Provides an overview of the competitive landscape in your market
- Reveals overcrowded spaces as well as potential opportunities
- Provide direction for developing the positioning of a new product or service launch
How to create a perceptual map for your small business marketing plan
- List all the competitors in your market along with their position statement
- i.e. Lowest prices in town; best bang for your buck; only the finest luxury
- List our own position statement
- Determine the two axes of comparison
- Most often, positioning statements consider 2 factors: quality and price
- Comparing the position statements of your competitors will reveal the two most important factors
- Plot yourself and your competitors along the two axes
- Confirm your results
- Ask friends and family to have a look at the chart
- Create a survey for customers and clients to complete
- Remember, the perceptual map is somewhat subjective, so your self-perception may differ from that of your customers
- Apply the findings
- How does your brand relate to the wider competitive landscape?
- Is your small business taking advantage of open spaces on the map?
- If your brand falls in line with the pack, are you finding ways to differentiate yourself?
An example of how to do a perceptual map
Example of a Perceptual Map
Let’s say you’ve done some research and uncovered a need for a higher-quality dry cleaner in your town. You’ve talked to many people who are unsatisfied with the existing options, but you aren’t sure why. To help you understand the competitive landscape, you decide to complete a perceptual map.
First, you list all the dry cleaners in town along with what you know and have heard of them. You may even call them and ask, as a potential customer, why you should choose them over the competition.
You find out the two main factors are quality and price, so you plot them along those two axes.
In light of the example, you see that most cleaners in town are perceived as low-cost budget options that compete primarily on price alone. There is only one shop with a position of high quality. It appears that there is room to create a position of high value, of great bang-for-the-buck.
So you decide to found Value Dryclean as the affordable alternative to those overpriced guys, but with higher attention to detail than the budget crowd.
In this way, perceptual mapping helps the small business owner formulate the foundation for a solid small business marketing plan.
Is Your Image Imagined?
Posted by Patrick Woods in Market Research on
Photo by | spoon |
There was a line in a song from the mid-90s that claims: “You never know just how you look through other peoples’ eyes.” In marketing world, the parallel is that you may have an idea of how your your small business’ brand is perceived, but your potential customers may see something totally different.
You may see your product as the highest-quality option in the market, but people shopping in your category may see you as overpriced.
On the other hand, you may offer the lowest fees in town, mainly because you have low overhead and are looking to expand your client base. The problem is that, your target audience associates low cost with low quality.
The list of scenarios is almost endless. So what are some ways to bring into focus the difference between your own perception of your small business’ brand and the perception of your potential customers?
Small Business Brand Diagnosis
- Informal polling – when you’re out in the community (getting coffee, ordering lunch), ask people if they’ve heard of your business. Try to focus on members of your target audience. This may take some time depending on the size of your community, but it’s a simple process to build into your daily interactions.
- Avoid the family focus group – see my post on the dangers of lazy market research.
- Formal research – setup an online survey using a site like Survey Monkey. Promote the survey on your website and in your print collateral. Include a promotional drawing offer, like a $100 gas card, as a gift for responding. At the end of the survey period, you’ll have hard statistics on the perception of your small business.
- In-store polling – to compliment your research among potential customers, talk to your existing customers to see how the understand your small business. Compare the perceptions among clients and non-clients and note the discrepancies.
In a future post we’ll look at ways of implementing the results of your small business market research.
The Dangers of the Family Focus Group
Posted by Patrick Woods in Market Research on
How often have you run an idea for your small business past a few family members at a holiday get-together and then made important decisions based on that feedback? If you haven’t done so with family, you’ve probably taken the input of your golf partners or lunch buddies into the planning process with you. Small business owners conduct this kind of faux market research all the time.
The reasons for this kind of ad hoc focus group are obvious: the group is free and most importantly, they are there. Bouncing ideas off family and friends requires no planning and very little follow-up analysis.
But is the data gathered from informal focus groups valid for your small business marketing plan? Before I offer an emphatic “No!”, there are caveats. For instance, if you manufacture golf-related products for middle-aged men, then your golf buddy focus group may be somewhat valid. If you market toys for toddlers and your lunch friends all have toddlers of their own, again, your data may be of some use.
However, even if members of your family focus group actually do fall into your target audience, their opinions will naturally carry bias. Your mom holds back criticism to keep from hurting your feelings (and who could blame her?). Or, that sister who’s always jealous of your accomplishments may be overly critical in an attempt to somehow get even with you.
The problem is that these people know you and, most likely, don’t know your business and market.
So bite the bullet! Put some serious thought into gaining legitimate, statistically verifiable data for your small busines marketing plan. Once you have valid, unbiased results, you’ll be free to make strategic decisions and actually know you’re responding to market needs, and not to your sisters jealous intentions.
Researching your new business idea
Posted by Patrick Woods in Market Research on
Entrepreneur Magazine has an information-packed article on ways to explore your new business idea. The article focuses on new business starts, but the same principles apply to new product development or the offering of a new service.
Remember, marketing in the purest sense involves much more than running an ad or two and passing out brochure. You must always think strategically about your products and service and analyze new areas for growth. This article helps you do just that.
Is your small business guilty of these 6 market research mistakes?
Posted by Patrick Woods in Market Research on
Here is an insightful article about common research errors.
The article breaks-down and describes all 6, but here are the 6 research mistakes:
- Think it’s too expensive
- Try secondary research only
- Use web searching
- Hit the wall
- Rely on family focus group
- Big company attitude
