Blog

About

Careers

Contact

Solo's blog provides the resources that microbusinesses, solopreneurs, freelancers, and other super-small businesses need to start, operate, and grow.

Blog for starting, running, and growing your business | Solo.co

Blog - All Posts

In this article:\nDo I need a restaurant feedback system?\n3 easy ways to get restaurant customer feedback\nTexting simplifies immediate feedback process\nThe importance of online reviews\nRestaurant customer satisfaction survey\nHow to get useful restaurant customer feedback is an age-old problem for restaurateurs. The operative word here is “useful.” Every restaurant will have some grumpy customers who love to complain and make their opinions heard, and today these diners trumpet their criticisms through reviews on Yelp, Google, TripAdvisor, and OpenTable.\nWhile you can’t (and shouldn’t) ignore these detractors, you need a more comprehensive view of how patrons are experiencing your restaurant. So, how can you get inside your customers’ heads to know what’s working and what isn’t?\nYou don’t really need a specific “restaurant feedback tool.” Here are three easy steps you can implement to know what your customers are thinking.\n1. \nAsk restaurant customers to text you their feedback\nYour customers have opinions about what you’re serving up, and they want to be heard. But, are you getting the message?\nReceiving feedback via text is one of the lowest-lift, simplest ways to interact with your patrons. Consider this: Research shows that 92% of people will stop visiting a restaurant after just one bad dining experience, but 90% say they’ll return to that restaurant if they are able to speak with management.\nToday, most people prefer to communicate via text, particularly if they have anything that might be somewhat negative to say.\nThat’s why texting is a great way to get more restaurant feedback. It gives your patrons the unique opportunity to converse with you directly, which means they’re more likely to tell you exactly how they feel—the good and the bad—so you can improve the customer experience and keep more customers loyal.\nafrican american woman texting customer satisfaction review restaurant\n\n2. \nRemind restaurant customers to post online reviews via Google My Business, TripAdvisor, etc.\nOnline reviews can make or break a restaurant. In fact, research shows that 95% of people look at review sites when choosing a place to dine.\nBasically, online review sites are your new homepage if you run a local restaurant.\nOnline reviews are great sources of customer feedback, and the more you have the more likely it is that new diners will find your business.\nAnd, getting regular reviews is vital, so you need to find a way to encourage customers to share their feedback about your restaurant online. If you don’t have reviews, start taking matters into your own hands. Research shows that 70% of people will leave an online review if asked — so, ask!\nYou might also like: \n4 steps of an effective marketing strategy for your restaurant\n3. \nAsk restaurant customers to complete a feedback/satisfaction survey\nIf you want to delve a little deeper inside of your customers’ minds, creating a restaurant feedback survey is the way to go. Conducting a survey gives you the opportunity to pick a specific area that you want to examine—your customer service, your menu, etc.—and ask your customers questions about it.\nSurveys are also a great way to discover customer trends that you can use in marketing material and to help you make strategic changes. But, it’s not always easy getting customers to complete surveys. Here are a three keys to consider:\nMake it short and sweet.\n No one wants to spend more than a couple minutes responding, so make the survey short and easy to complete.\nMake it accessible.\n Provide a link to the survey on receipts, the menu, your website—put it everywhere. You can also send out an email or include a “leave us feedback” box on your website or app.\nOffer incentives. \nEveryone likes a free drink or dessert. Offer your customers a special reward if they complete the survey, and they’ll be more likely to do it.\nIn the end, customers want to be heard. If you pay attention to what they’re saying, you can improve your business and build a loyal customer base. 

3 easy ways to get restaurant customer feedback

In this article:\n10 best practices for small business email marketing\nWhy should every small business consider email marketing?\nHow much does email marketing cost?\nWhat is the ROI of email marketing for small businesses?\nAs we’ve written before, \nemail marketing\n is hands-down the most powerful, effective, and efficient marketing tool for small businesses. If you follow the email marketing best practices detailed below, you can increase customer loyalty and revenue, improve conversion of potential customers, and expand your marketing audience.\nHow much does small business email marketing cost?\nDespite what you might think, small business email doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Websites like BEE free, Stripo, Chamaileon offer free HTML email templates, including simple drag and drop options. You can also elect to simply send a personalized email to your list from your business email account, using the default template.\nMany small businesses prefer to use dedicated business email platforms like MailChimp or Constant Contact, both of which offer robust tools for creating professional-looking emails and managing your lists. \nAccording to the sources we found, Constant Contact costs between $20 and $70 per month, depending on your number of contacts and the features you want. MailChimp offers free plans to get you started, the next tier is $10/month, and the “Pro” level plans start at $199 and up (an unlikely choice for a truly small business). Whether these are worth the cost of entry is up to you. \nIs email marketing worth it for small businesses?\nDespite a commonly held belief that email marketing is outdated or ineffective, it has been shown to have an unparalleled ROI of up to 42:1. \nOf course, this is not to say that you are guaranteed to make $42 for every $1 you spend on email marketing, but industry data supports that general figure. One report specifically for small business email marketing reported that users experienced a 183% return on their investments. So it’s clear that it’s worth your time.\nWhichever email service provider you choose, be sure to follow the best practices below to maximize benefit and minimize potential problems when sending promotional emails.\nLet's go over the top 10 email marketing best practices for small businesses:\n1. Get permission, and build your email list the right way\nWhile studies show 86% of customers actually want email from businesses they patronize, it is without question better to get permission before you email potential or current customers. \nGetting email addresses doesn’t have to be an awkward or involved process. It can be as simple as adding an email address field on your point-of-sale platform at checkout, including a “send me an email receipt” option during the purchase process or on your online or order form, or you can go truly old-school and leave a bowl for business cards or a clipboard near the check-out counter where customers can elect to write down their email addresses to receive promotions.\nYou should also encourage your social media followers to send you their email addresses to be included in special offers and promotions for your business.\nPopular business email platforms like MailChimp and Constant Contact allow “opt-in” or even a “double opt-in” process. A double opt-in requires a potential recipient to first agree to receive emails, but also requires that they then click a link in a welcome email confirming their subscription to begin receiving marketing emails.

You may get fewer email addresses on your “send” list this way, but remember the point of email marketing is to send timely messaging to your most profitable customer base, not to simply build an impressively large email list and blast out thousands of emails to people who really aren’t interested (and who will likely mark your emails as spam, which could get you in hot water with your email service provider and even with the FTC—see below).

So, while it’s likely not a huge problem to send occasional reminders or relevant offers to everyone associated with your business whom you have an email address for (as long as you follow the rules), you will almost certainly see better results if you are 100% up front about getting customers’ specific permission before you send them promotional emails.  \nMaking sure you have a solid “opt in” process in place will set you up for greater success as regulations change.\n2. Learn the regulations and follow them\nSending unsolicited emails is illegal in quite a few European countries, and consumer privacy laws are being tightened in the U.S. as well. \nYou need to familiarize yourself with the FTC’s Compliance Guide on the CAN-SPAM act, and which types of email are subject to these regulations, \nhere\n.\nMake sure to comply with regulatory directives regarding spam and unsubscribing. Include an unsubscribe link in every email and make sure to promptly and correctly remove any addresses that request to be unsubscribed, to avoid landing in hot water. \nPersonal email service providers like Gmail are very wary of “spammers,” but as long as you are emailing people who have opted in to receiving promotional emails, or you are emailing your actual customers rather than a purchased list of random contacts, you should be perfectly fine (as long as you comply with the CAN-SPAM act and follow correct unsubscribe practices).\n3. Avoid common “spam” techniques \nSmall business owners are often tempted to emulate the promotional emails they themselves receive… but this can be a big mistake. \nWhen crafting your subject lines, headers, and content, you should avoid generic subjects, caps lock, lots of special characters or EXCLAMATION!!! MARKS!!!! or anything even close to resembling “OMG!! TRY THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK TO SAVE $$MONEY$$!!!!” \nemail marketing best practices 3\nMany popular email service providers will automatically scan such emails and send them to the spam folder, and you may be flagged as a disreputable sender, which will defeat the purpose of sending emails to build loyalty.\n4. Be brief, interesting, and accurate\nUse the appropriate format and messaging expected by your industry and audience. This might include newsletters, offers, sales, birthday wishes, “thank yous” for purchases, reminders, holiday hours notifications, discounts, product announcements, or whatever else you think your customers might want to hear about.\nMake sure your company name or brand appears in the “from” line correctly, and keep your subject lines to 8 words or less, and <40 characters, including spaces. Include a compelling reason for people to read your email in the subject line.\n5. Make it worth customers’ while\nThink of ways to incentivize signing up for your email list. Can you give 10% off today’s purchase when they sign up? Can you promise 5% off all future purchases for everyone on your list? You should ask yourself, “What’s in this for my customers?” \n6. Make sure your links and any embedded content actually work properly\nBefore you send an email, double check that everything displays and works the way it should: videos play, links actually function and redirect to the proper websites, click-to-order takes you to the correct product or offer on your website, email contact links open the appropriate email software and populate the address correctly, HTML emails display content correctly on desktop and mobile, etc. Send yourself and/or your employees test emails and ideally check function on multiple platforms and browsers.\n7. Keep images small\nAny images you include should be optimized for web and should be kept below 100K in size—50K or below is preferable. This helps the email load quickly and fully. You only have one or two seconds before today’s impatient users will give up on your email and delete it. (Pro tip: this also applies to your website pages.)\n8. Proofread your copy\nIf you aren’t the best writer or editor in the world, hire or beg the services of someone you trust to proofread the “copy” (words) for typos, grammatical errors, clarity, and brevity. Professional-looking emails will be free of common mistakes, text formatting issues, etc. \n9. Consider including a text-only version for people who prefer not to open HTML emails\nSources disagree on which format produces the best results (HTML or plain text) but it’s a good idea to cover your bets when possible. So, you might include a plain-text version of every HTML email you send. \nWhy? Some people won’t even look at plain text emails, and some won’t look at HTML emails. When you build an HTML email in most of the common email platforms, there will be an option to also create a plain-text version that will be displayed for recipients who have their preferences set to display plain-text email only, and vice versa. \n10. Try drip campaigns\nWhile a more general email blast to all customers on your list can be effective, more sophisticated users might consider creating “drip” campaigns. \nDrip campaigns are series of emails intended to accomplish a particular goal for a particular group of customers. For example, you can select only those customers who have made recent purchases. A simple after-purchase drip campaign might look like this:\nThank you email —-> offer special pricing on a similar purchase —-> reminder —->\nIf you have a website where customers can purchase from you, you can send a drip campaign specifically to customers who have put items in their virtual shopping cart but then left the website. A drip campaign in this case might look like this: \n(cart abandonment) —-> nudge (“item left in your cart”) —-> purchase confirmation —-> thank you —-> (start a post-purchase drip campaign)\nNaturally, you can create drip campaigns for any group of customers, such as those who have purchased several times in the past but haven’t visited within the last year. \nSources:\n
\nhttps://www.constantcontact.com/blog/email-marketing-best-practices/\n
\nhttps://mailchimp.com/help/best-practices-mailchimp-email/\n
\nhttps://www.fundera.com/blog/email-marketing-strategy\n
\nhttps://www.betterbuys.com/marketing-automation/reviews/constant-contact/\n
\nhttps://ecommerce-platforms.com/compare/mailchimp-vs-constant-contact\n

Top 10 best practices for small business email marketing

In this 4-minute read:\nDon’t be afraid of skepticism\nHow to tell if a review is fake\nWhy do people post fake reviews?\nWhat’s being done about fake reviews?\nThe most common way to determine whether to shop at a new business is to look at their online reviews, whether those are from Google, Yelp, Facebook, or any other review platform. Sometimes, however, it can be difficult to tell if the reviews we read are real.\nWe’ve all heard of businesses paying for positive reviews, and many people create fake profiles online. So, how do you know if you can trust online reviews for the local businesses you research? \nSkepticism about online reviews is good\nFirst, don’t feel bad if you are skeptical of a particular review or set of reviews. \nFake reviews\n do exist, so you need to trust your instincts, and skepticism is constructive for helping you sort out the trustworthy reviews from those that aren’t. \nThere are all kinds of sketchy practices that businesses use to game the review system, so if you feel that something is off, it’s probably because it is. \nHow to tell if a review is fake\nIt can be difficult to tell is a review is trustworthy, but it all comes back to that skepticism. Be smart and trust your instinct. Pay attention to these signs to see if something feels off about the reviews you are reading:\nAfter not receiving reviews for months, there are suddenly 20 reviews within the span of 30 minutes\nA huge influx of new reviews at the time a new product is released\nRepetitive phrases throughout different reviews\nAnonymous profiles with no image or with images that aren’t of real people\nFalse information about the company\nRead \nhow to spot fake online reviews\n for a more in-depth look. \nYou can also try browser extensions like ReviewMeta and FakeSpot to see what trust ratings they give to the reviews you read. There are tons of resources created to help consumers like you to find good, honest reviews.\nWhy do people or businesses post fake reviews?\nOnline reviews have a powerful impact on businesses. They can help local businesses rank better in the search engines (so they can show up in front of customers like you), and they also have a huge impact on converting new customers to their products and services. \nMost of us read reviews before opting into a new service or committing to a new product. And this is why there is such a huge emphasis on online reviews. Some companies will do anything they can to get your business, even to the point of buying or creating fake reviews. \nWhen a company posts fake reviews or pays someone to post fake positive reviews on their own listings, they are just trying to get you to buy what they’re selling. It’s a “black hat” tactic that goes against most search engines’ guidelines. \nAnother type of fake review is when business owners or employees post fake negative reviews on their competitors’ listings to influence potential customers. This is also against most review platforms’ policies, and can create more confusion about the legitimacy of online reviews. \nWhat is being done about fake reviews?\nWith the amount of false information on the internet, is there even a way to trust \nany\n of the reviews that we read? Fortunately, the search engines and review platforms are dedicated to providing authentic experiences and they each have their own way of handling review scammers. \nYelp and Google both have the ability for any of their users to report suspicious reviews for possible removal by the platform administrators. To learn more, see our \ncomplete guide to removing fake reviews\n, and help report false reviews when you come across them. \nIn addition to the popular search engines and review platforms cracking down and trying to provide the best customer experience for their users, law enforcement and regulatory authorities are taking this type of false information seriously and have put laws into place to protect people from unjust review practices. \nPurposely misleading customers violates federal law and can be grounds for a lawsuit under the Lanham Act, which was enacted by Congress in 1946. The Lanham Act was put into place for trademark registration and protection, but it also covers deceptive advertising practices. \nIn recent years, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought a case against fake paid reviews in which a company posted fake reviews on Amazon for a weight-loss supplement. This led to an investigation into their product and huge financial obligations. \nIt is the goal of the FTC to protect and educate consumers, so there are guidelines and laws in place that require these online review platforms to subject to trustworthy practices. As the problem of fake reviews increases, the attention from regulatory authorities and review platforms is also increasing.\nShould I just ignore online reviews?\nDefinitely not. Don’t discount all reviews because of the few that may be misleading. While it may seem there is a huge amount of deception out there, there are a lot of genuine reviews, too. You just need to know the signs to look out for and pay attention to the reviews that come from real profiles, with full names, and photos of real people. \nPay attention to business owners’ responses on Google and Yelp reviews. These can offer you more insight into fake negative reviews and give you more information about how businesses treat their customers. \nOnline reviews can tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly about the businesses you are researching, and that research is important for making sure you get the best customer experience possible. \nReal reviews are valuable to consumers and businesses\nWith more and more news coming out about the FTC and other organizations fighting fake reviews, most local businesses are trying to adhere to trustworthy review practices and provide their customers with feedback from real people. \nYou can help contribute to the solution by sharing your own honest experiences with the businesses you come across.

Can you trust online reviews for local businesses?

In this article:\nOnline appointment scheduling benefits\nIncrease web traffic\nImproved customer retention\nSave company time\nAnd more!\nThe more information and access to your business that you can provide online, the better opportunities you’ll have to gain new customers. \nOne way to help your salon really improve online sales and gain new customers is to include a platform for online scheduling on your website or app. We’ve outlined several ways that an online booking system can help your salon. \n1. Increase web traffic and customer loyalty for your salon\nThe ability to schedule salon appointments online is appealing to customers and may just help you get more traffic to your website over your competitors’ sites. \nHaving a website and a platform to book appointments will attract more customers to your website and help your existing customers to engage with your business easier. \nWhen someone lands on your website and sees that they can book an appointment online, they are more likely to stay on your site and schedule an appointment right then and there, rather than looking through other options. \n2. Provide a clear call to action\nAn online booking platform will help you to provide a clear call to action on your salon’s website. Rather than encouraging customers to call your business, you can direct them to schedule an appointment on your website. \nSometimes people land on a website and aren’t sure exactly what they are looking for, but if you provide a clear CTA for them to book an appointment, they don’t need to know because you already have the answer right in front of them. \n3. Give your salon customers instant results when they schedule online\nPeople don’t like waiting for things. So the thought of having to call a business to schedule an appointment and being placed on hold while the salon tries to figure out the best openings for that customer can deter people from calling you. \nOnline scheduling allows your customers to see the openings your employees have available and instantly get their appointment set up. This is much more gratifying and takes less time for the customer. \n4. Provide more information about your salon business\nOnline booking forms can provide more information about your services, which makes choosing your salon a lot more appealing. When a customer is in research mode, they want all of the information they can get upfront. \nThey are looking for availability, prices, and the services you offer. Most online booking platforms will have places for you to show all of these types of information and more. \nThis also provides a place for your clients to see their scheduled appointments, update their contact information, access purchase histories, and check loyalty point balances. \n5. Accept online payments\nWith online scheduling, you can often collect payments from your customers online before they even show up to their appointment. This helps improve your salon’s cash flow and ensures that customers will keep their appointments because they’ve already paid for it. \nYou don’t have to accept payments at the time that customers book their appointments, but you can encourage it by offering a discount for those that do pay for their appointments at the time of booking. \n6. Fewer missed salon appointments\nAs we’ve mentioned, if customers pay online when they book their appointment, they are less likely to miss it. \nOnline scheduling for your salon can also help remind customers of upcoming appointments so they don’t forget if they booked it months ago. \nEven if a customer doesn’t have an appointment scheduled, you can set up reminders to go out at the time when they will need a trim or touch-up on their coloring. This will encourage more appointments and increase customer retention. \n7. Manage employee schedules\nWith online scheduling, your employees’ (if you have any) schedules are more easily managed. Their time slots get filled automatically as customers go online to book appointments. \nYou can enter each employee’s availability into your online booking system so it will manage their schedules for you. You can even let the system show each individual employee’s schedule on your website so customers can select which stylist they want to have for their appointment. \n8. Save time for your hair or nail salon business\nAll of the reasons mentioned above help save time for your business. The more you can do to automate some of the tedious tasks like scheduling appointments and managing employee schedules, to more time you can save and revenue you can gain for your salon.\nHere are a few well-known online booking solutions that you can try for your salon:\n\nDaySmart Salon\n\n\nPhorest\n\n\nRosy\n\n

8 reasons why your hair or nail salon needs online scheduling

As a small business owner or operator, there are endless initiatives you could be focusing on to market your goods and services. \nSocial media, blogging, search engine marketing, billboards, influencer marketing, event marketing — the list goes on and on. In today’s hectic business environment, how do you know what you should prioritize? \nOur proposition: email marketing is hands-down the most powerful, effective, and efficient marketing tool for small businesses\nIf you’re not leveraging small business email marketing, you’re missing out on enormous opportunities to reach, delight, and serve your customers. And bring in a boatload of sales.\nYou might be thinking: what about social media? And it’s true — social media gets a lot of attention. Facebook boasts 2.2 billion users. Instagram grew over 13% last year. And over 500 million tweets are sent on Twitter \nper day\n.\nBut these social networks are dwarfed by email. There are over 3.8 \nbillion\n email users worldwide. And unlike a social network, which is owned and managed by one company (we’ll let you decide if that’s a positive or a negative), email is decentralized in an open market. You can use any email client you want — you don’t have to be subjugated to one provider. \nConsider this: 281 billion emails are sent per day. That’s 562 times the number of Tweets per day.\nWhy email marketing is king for local businesses\nWhat do we make of this? \nYour business is built on email\n. Social networks come and go, but email is not going anywhere and therefore it’s worth investing in.\nBut emails get ignored, deleted, and filtered out by customers, right? \nWrong. It depends on the email. \nBad\n emails get blocked and tossed, yes, but high-value emails that deliver insights, interesting stories, and good information are not only opened and clicked-through, they’re eagerly awaited by your customers. \nFor example, news media startup Axios opened its doors with a purely email-based business model. They refused the typical revenue model of content companies (programmatic advertising) and entrusted whole-hog their business’s success to… email newsletters. And it’s worked marvelously. Axios touts a 45% average open rate and charges anywhere from $8,000 to $150,000 depending on the newsletter, according to \nan article by Adweek\n.\nAnother successful business started from a mere email chain: Product Hunt, the online product discovery and community platform with now over 8 million users and multiple millions in venture backing, started with the founder simply sending emails to friends about interesting products he had found. \nThe ROI of email marketing is astounding. For every $1 spent on email marketing, it returns $42 in revenue, according to one study. VentureBeat wrote a post about how successful email marketing works: \n“In a survey of companies regarding email use, enterprise companies saw 117 percent return on investment, SMB firms indicated their return was 183 percent, and midsized companies reported a whopping 246 percent ROI.”\nStill not convinced? Keep reading.\nThe story of how Benjamin Hardy used small business email marketing to make $21,000 in one week\nBenjamin Hardy, an Inc. contributor, author, and Medium’s number one writer of all time, built an email list of 300,000 subscribers in two years. \nOne of his mentors told him: “Email your subscribers and tell them you’re offering coaching. Then get those who are interested on the phone for a 15 minute strategy call to determine fit.”\nHardy spent the next week on the phone with 150 people for 15 minutes each. Out of this group, seven people signed up for coaching at a price of $1,000 a month for a minimum commitment of three months. Doing the math, Hardy sold $21,000 of business in a week! And it all started with one email.\nOkay\n, you might be thinking, \ngood for them\n. Axios, Product Hunt, and Benjamin Hardy can all be successful, but what about me, a super-small business in a town NOT located in or around Silicon Valley?\nFollow these strategies and tactics to make an email strategy that works (well!) for you.\n4 tips to make small business email marketing work for you\nSet up a routine that makes email marketing easier for you. If the idea of sitting down and writing an email to your subscribers opens your mouth in a yawn like the Cave of Wonders, or you just have too much on your plate, make it easier on yourself by setting up a routine. Pick a consistent day of the week and a time (studies show subscribers prefer weekly regularity!), establish an outline and a template for the email, and let it flow. A weekly practice like this will reap massive financial rewards down the road.\nMake your email about the story, not the click. Provide value in every email. Avoid over-selling or promoting your products or services. Make it personal, relevant to the times, or interesting, not salesy. Our brains our wired for stories, so tell a story in your email. Don’t just focus on getting subscribers to click through—this is a short-term mindset that won’t last in the long run.\nAvoid common email formatting mistakes. Triple-check your links to make sure they work! Keep your emails short (~150 words) and avoid huge walls of text that are tough to read on a mobile device. Make sure everything is spelled right and correct all typos. Test your emails with a few teammates and get their feedback before sending to your main list.\nAutomate your email marketing. There are two sides of the spectrum you want to avoid: one, sending \nzero\n emails and two, sending \ntoo many\n bulk and generic emails. The key is to land in the middle—sending well-timed, personalized emails. \nLastly, one of the most powerful emails you can send your customer is a well-written thank you email after a customer shops at your store. \nOne final thought to leave you with: happy customers often don’t come back to your store. According to a Bain & Company study, 60-80% of customers who describe themselves as satisfied do not go back to do more business with the company that initially satisfied them. Why? \nOne Forbes writer says\n it’s because there is a lack of connection. \nCustomers forget. It’s natural. \nFor small business owners, email marketing is the best way to create a lasting connection that keeps customers coming back with smiles on their faces and cash in their hands. 

Why small business email marketing should be your top priority in 2022

In this article:\nMarket research questions to ask before starting your business\nQuestions to ask your target audience\nWhat questions to ask your current customers\nMarket research questions to ask about your competitors\nWhether you’ve been in the game for a while or you are just starting up, market research is an important part of any successful business. It helps you identify the best opportunities for gaining new customers and growing your business. \nBut where do you start? It can be difficult to know which questions are important to ask and what the answers to those questions might mean for your business. \nWe’ll guide you through the most important market research questions you should ask before starting your small business. \nWe’re going to break these questions up into four categories: \nGeneral\nTarget audience\nCurrent customers\nCompetitors\nLet’s get started! \nMarket research questions to ask yourself before starting your business\nIt’s always a good idea to narrow down your market before diving too deep into the nitty-gritty details. Asking general market research questions will help you do that. Ask these questions of your market to determine the potential reach that your business could have in your current market. \nHow big is our potential market?\nYou’ll want to know the potential that your business has for growth. A larger market generally means more opportunity. A market that is too small or narrow may not provide much room for growth. \nHowever, a narrow market doesn’t mean to avoid it altogether. You may just need to expand into multiple markets for better growth potential.  \nIs this market going to grow or shrink? How much?\nDetermine what the growth trends are for your market. A growing market, again, provides more opportunity. Research the trends and learn whether your market is growing or declining. \nTrends can change, so don’t get discouraged if things aren’t looking up. But be realistic about your income if you choose to enter a declining market. \nimage of people holding up a market growth arrow for small business research\n\nAre there other products/services similar to ours? What are they?\nIt’s good to know what else is out there. Look for products or services that are similar to your offerings and learn more about them so you can do it better. You don’t want consumers to think that you are simply ripping off something that already exists. \nWho are our primary competitors? What is their market share?\nYou need to know who your competitors will be and what share of the market they already own. If they completely dominate the market for your business offerings, it’s going to be much more difficult to enter as a newbie. \nLearn everything you can about your competitors (we’ll have some more questions on this below). \nIs there any significant market share available for us?\nFind out what the demand is for your prospective business offerings. Is there a growing demand and are consumers looking for other options? What share of the market could you potentially grab hold of?\nMarket research questions to ask your target audience\nLearning more about your target audience will help you determine who your ideal customers are and how you can best market to them. You need to learn what makes them tick and how you can solve their problems with your offerings. \nThese questions are a little more straightforward and don’t require additional explanation:\nHow old are they?\nWhere are they located?\nWhat is their income?\nWhat is their profession?\nWhat is their household size?\nWhat is their gender, age, race?\nWhat interests do they have?\nWhat do they need?\nWhat problems do they face each day?\nWhat objections will they have to your business?\nWhat does a typical day look like for them?\nWhat do they enjoy doing?\nWhere do they currently shop?\nHow do they like to make purchases?\nWhere do they spend most of their time?\nWhat media outlets are they using?\nattractive woman average customer for market research\n\nMarket research questions to ask your current customers\nIf you are in the research phase of a new potential business, you likely don’t have customers yet. But you’ll need to test out your offerings, so use those people to determine how your customers would respond to the following questions. \nDo you like the product/service?\nDid our offering solve a need for you?\nWhat did you like most about this product/service?\nWhat did you like least about it?\nHow does this offering fit into your daily workflow?\nHow would you rate your experience with our company?\nWould you recommend us to a friend?\nIf you don’t have existing customers or haven’t tested out your offerings yet, ask these questions to people who use similar products/services. \nwoman pressing virtual emojis during market customer research survey\n\nMarket research questions to ask about your competitors\nYou are going to want to know what you’re up against as you start your new venture. Get to know your competitors on a personal level and through the eyes of their customers. \nWho are your main competitors?\nWhere are they located?\nWhat are they doing well?\nWhat could they do better?\nWhat offerings do they have? Is it more or less than what you plan on offering?\nAre their offerings different from yours?\nWhat are their prices like? Can you compete with that?\nWhat benefits/value do they provide to their customers?\nWhat do their customers like about them?\nWhat potential companies could become competitors in the future?\nHow are they marketing to their customers?\nDo they have good or bad online reviews?\nWhat is their online visibility like?\nThese last couple of questions are key. Online marketing, reviews, and overall visibility in the search engines is something you need to think about as you start your new business. You don’t just have to compete to get customers to visit your physical storefront (if you have one) but also to get them to visit your digital storefront. 


121 articles found in “Customer relations”

3 easy ways to get restaurant customer feedback

Top 10 best practices for small business email marketing

Can you trust online reviews for local businesses?

8 reasons why your hair or nail salon needs online scheduling

Why small business email marketing should be your top priority in 2022

Important market research questions to ask before starting a new business

Recommended

How to spot fake online reviews

25 free business listing websites every small or local business should be on (Updated for 2022!)

How much does it cost to rent space for a small business?

The 6 elements of an effective customer loyalty program

Important market research questions to ask before starting a new business