New Customers Are A Wonderful Source Of Data
I talked a couple of weeks ago about how you should be finding out where your business is coming from. And hopefully, you’re now asking the question and recording the answers somewhere.
Today I want to focus on the extended opportunity. You can get some amazing data by asking just a few more questions, and you’ll even find that the first answer given is often inaccurate!
Let me explain. When asked “Where did you hear about us?” people will often tell you where they found your contact details instead. So they will answer “Your website” or “The local newspaper” and if you stop there, you could be wrong. A little probing often reveals something like “Well, actually, I read about you in an article in a flight magazine, then, when I needed you, I Google’d you and found your website.”
It’s a very different result! And one you can get just by asking an additional question like “So you saw our advert, what did you like about it?” At worst you’ll get an answer like the one I suggest above, and at best you’ll get some good feedback about what elements of your advertising are working for you.
You should also take at least a mental note of anything else you can about your client. By being chatty, and asking some good open ended questions, you can find out who they are, how old they are, where they live, what they do for a living and plenty more. Don’t go overboard and start an interrogation, but building up a good picture of who your typical client is can make it so much easier to plan your future marketing.
If you’re not comfortable doing it face to face, then simply set up a mechanism to capture email addresses – you can do that by offering clients a monthly newsletter with offers. Most people will happily give you their email address to get a good deal. Then you can send them a survey to complete after a few months, which will give you fantastic data about what they like and don’t like. Services like Survey Monkey are free to use for short surveys, and look really professional.
Once you know a lot about your existing clients, and how they are finding you, planning your marketing, on and offline becomes easy and logical.
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