The Craps and Piss of Marketing Research

In small business, if you do not perform some sort of marketing research before going into business, you might as well be stepping up to a craps table in Vegas and putting all of your chips in. Business is risky period so why get a million from the bank without first checking if it will work or not.

The market research you should do primarily boils down to polling or surveying your target market and asking: how much will you spend and how often will you frequent my business. These answers should result in a revenue projection but also, can lead to valuable input in order to refine your business. Questions for improvement center around - "what do you like about this product or offering, what do you not like" as well as "in this type of business, what have you found that you don't like" referring to your competition.

Also, you can leverage technology such as Google Adwords to perform some market research. If you are a brick and mortar that is focused on local customers, you can set an AdWords ad to target local folks only. The methodology is to have a website in place that can capture e-mails so you can open the communication lines and again ask - "how much, how often, what do you think about some of my ideas (name, product offering, etc.)" all valuable information you need before going into business. You can also use a Facebook Page in a similar manner - open the lines of communication and ask.

Remember also, marketing research does not stop once you get the doors open (or website up and running.) You want to keep a finger on the pulse of your customers. The net-net is that you can piss off customers at anytime and need a way to catch when you have done so and then apply a remedy.

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