The main benefit of doing customer research is that it allows you to build a deeper understanding of your customer. Having this knowledge can help you save time, money and energy in the long-run because you can use it to focus your marketing on targeting the right customers. Understanding customer feedback will help you increase customer loyalty, too. Despite these benefits, less than 60% of businesses spend time on it.
Instead of avoiding customer research completely, a good way to approach it is to figure out whether or not you need to talk to customers directly, or if you can explore other research sources.
Talking to customers is most beneficial when you want to learn something specific about them, or when you want to answer a specific hypothesis about your business or your products.
A hypothesis is an assumption you have that needs to be tested or proven, and is commonly phrased as an if/then sentence: If (this is happening), then (I believe that will happen).
This is because talking to customers gets you highly detailed information straight from the source. If you are talking directly with customers, you can ask them questions that are explicitly tied to your business or your products, which makes their responses as relevant to you as possible. You can then take their responses and feedback and implement changes more confidently.
To talk to customers, you can conduct customer interviews virtually, over the phone or in-person (here are our top customer interview questions to help you get started!), or run a survey.
In research, talking to customers directly is referred to as gathering a primary source of information. Primary sources provide you with direct or firsthand knowledge about a topic.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you run a services business in your area of expertise, and you’re looking to expand your offerings. You have a few ideas, but you’re not sure what would resonate with your customers or what additional services they are in need of, so you decide to ask them. At first you send a survey to customers to learn more about what additional services they would be interested in. From the survey, you learn that your customers are also looking for services in an area that is tangential to what you currently offer.
You follow up with these customers by interviewing them one-on-one and learn more about their needs. From there, you design your next services offering and launch it to existing customers first, before sharing it widely. You make a few changes after launching and getting initial feedback from customers, and find that this offering is a great addition to your business.
If you don’t have time to talk to customers or don’t have a specific hypothesis to prove, it may be better to stick to other research sources. For example, if you’re looking to learn more about other businesses in your industry or find general trends, you can explore other forms of research. This can include doing online research, or finding relevant books, articles or reviews. These are typically considered secondary sources, which describe, discuss and analyze primary sources.
Some examples of these other research sources include:
Once you’ve gathered this research, you might find that you’ve learned enough to make an informed decision about changing your marketing or an aspect of your business. Or, you might find that your research results in forming a hypothesis you want to prove through talking with customers. Whatever new knowledge you learn through research, it should help you make better decisions with your marketing.
Sign up for our newsletter to get marketing tips & tricks delivered straight to your inbox!
As a thank you, we'll send you our free downloadable 12-month marketing calendar. Use this calendar to keep track of your tasks and build your marketing plan.
*We promise not to spam or share your details with anyone.
Ada Chen
Ada Chen
