As hard as you try to follow the best advice when marketing your small business, it doesn’t always work out the way you expect.

You are told to offer something of value so you do.

You hear that you should have special offers for your products or services so you include these as well.

You engage with your customers in various ways as you have been advised.

From your perspective all the boxes have been ticked but you are not getting the repeat business, new customers or referrals etc that you want.

Whilst there could be many reasons for this, one is that you do not know is important from your customers’ point of view.  Their reality can be very different from your take on what is important.

You can’t draw up an imaginary customer on paper and then begin marketing to them as to what you perceive is important. You need to find out and continue to keep in touch to make sure you are strengthening the relationship.

 What is Important to your customers?

As a starting point if you are hesitant to directly ask them questions, track the results you are getting from your marketing activities and look at the trends. For example you may be sending out email newsletters with information and offers every week but find that you get better results on every second newsletter.

Also look at the way you give customer service, product or service delivery and just record the reactions or discussions and again see if there is a trend. For example you may be phoning your customers every time they send you a question by email, but you may find that when you email them step by step help you get a more positive reaction.

Surveys

Once you have some data you do need talk to your customers or develop a survey. If you have a website that your customers visit add a survey with questions using for example PollDaddy. You could take one area of your business a month for example customer service before moving to a different area the next month.

You can develop surveys very easily with QuestionPro or SurveyBob for example and email the link to your customers. If you do this consider a small token of appreciation such as an Amazon gift voucher as a thank you.

The key point is that you can’t step in to your customers’ shoes to see what is important to them because it will still be your perception.

 You do need their input and feedback so that you can fine tune your marketing to strengthen your customer relationships and succeed in your market.

Next Steps: Please share your thoughts and leave a comment below. You can easily get future posts  delivered by email or via a reader and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.