Find Your Natural Differentiator
This is the first of 10 occassional follow-up posts to 10 Advantages of Local Businesses
“Focus” is the top advantage of local businesses noted by John Jantsch.
But how do you decide what to Focus on?
You could go through extensive analysis about your particular advantage, given your skills, experience, interest and local market conditions. Then you could make up all of your marketing materials and hope that you were right.
Or you could do something easier and just about guaranteed to be right—ask your customers.
Their insights about your services will not only help you improve, but if you ask them, they will tell you good things you never expected.
You can ask your customers why they
a) Purchased from you
b) Liked (or didn’t) your services and
c) Purchased again
d) Recommended you to another person
The good news is that this doesn’t take much effort. As a matter of fact, it’s a simple two-step process
- Setup an online survey
- Email all of your current customers and ask them to spend 10 minutes providing feedback
If you’d like to go to a bit more effort, or you’d rather not use email, an alternative approach is to:
- Get some inexpensive business cards printed up, making sure to include the web address of the survey
- When you complete work for a client, give them a survey card and ask them to give their feedback
There are many options for web-based surveys:
During the period you’re most interested in getting reponses, you may want to offer an incentive to get a higher percentage of people participating.
One way or the other, you’re sure to get valuable feedback.
