Page 31 - 101 Ways to Market Your Business

101 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS

important because you have taken the time to ask them
their opinion and, most importantly, you will receive valu-
able information about exactly what the market wants, not
what you feel the market wants—two very different pieces
of information.

Once the questionnaires have been completed you will
need to interpret the information. You need to look for
trends and majority answers. If 99 per cent of the responses
said that they buy their lunch from ‘Tom’s Takeaway’ and
they have for a hundred years and, most importantly, they
love it, you may have a problem. If they said that they use
‘Tom’s Takeaway’ because it’s close but the food is lousy
and the staff are rude, you probably have a winner on your
hands.

Another commonly used form of market research is the
‘mystery shopper’. This is the practice of hiring someone
to buy something from your business to assess how good
your service is. There are companies established that do
this. Our company does a lot of ‘mystery shopper’ and, like
all market research, the results are always interesting.

Some of the items assessed include the appearance of
your business, the promptness of the service, after-sales
follow-up, technical knowledge, telephone manner, pricing
etc. I recently conducted a campaign like this for a limousine
company. They asked me to request rates and information
on hiring a limousine for a wedding from their company
and from their six main competitors. The results were
amazing.

The survey results showed that they offered the best
customer service but their pricing was confusing and they
did not have a brochure to send out—two problems that
they were aware of but the survey reinforced the urgency
of sorting them out. Their six competitors were far worse.
Each of the six promised to send out a brochure—not one
did. None of the competitors even bothered to make a
follow-up call.

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