• Survey of Rural Challenges
  • Small Town Speaker Becky McCray
  • Shop Local video
  • SaveYour.Town

Small Biz Survival

The small town and rural business resource

A row of small town shops
  • Front Page
  • Latest stories
  • About
  • Guided Tour
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
  • RSS

Understand Your Small-business Customers Through Conversation

By Glenn Muske

Conversation

Photo (CC) Dan Lacher, on Flickr

Market research focuses on understanding your customers.

There are a variety of tools to help you do that. Yet one of the most overlooked tools that offers a great deal and costs very little, except for time, is conversation.

Conversation is great in terms of getting to know your customers as individuals. What are their motivators, desires and drivers? What do they like and what do they avoid? What are their beliefs and what are their goals?

You can use this basic core information to build on your other market research results. It helps you do specific targeting of individuals and groups, something that technology has difficulty capturing.

Understanding customers at that level takes something more than what a survey often can gather. Even if you want to use a survey for gathering some of this information, you often run into two obstacles:

  • Developing the right questions
  • Getting customers to divulge such information because it is often private and hard to put into words

It goes back to understanding customer behavior. Often behavior is driven emotions or desires such as ‘a feeling of comfort’ or a smell that reminds them of home or something that just makes it ‘easy,’ ‘fun’ or ‘exciting.’ Those things are hard to quantify or capture in a survey. Conversations are a great way to get to this level of understanding.

Yet gathering this information is not done easily. It takes time. To do it well, be prepared to:

  • After the conversation, take notes of what you heard. Don’t depend on your memory.
  • Remember that this information depends on its depth and richness, which comes from building that data through time. It is a lifetime of conversations and building trust and relationships.
  • Analyze what you get. Conversations don’t help if you don’t critically look at what the information is telling you.
  • Maintain confidentiality. Conversations may lead to information that people do not want divulged. Tell people how you will use the data and that you will not disclose specifics but only use the information in a generic sense to help you better market your products.

Having conversations is a great way to learn about your customer. It gets deeper, giving you greater insight as to what the customer wants. And it has a great secondary benefit of building a relationship, something that will continue to pay off.

So get started today. Have a conversation

  • About the Author
  • Latest Posts

About Glenn Muske

Glenn Muske is an independent expert on rural small business, working as GM Consulting – Your partner in achieving small business success. He provides consulting, and writes articles for county extension agents and newspapers across North Dakota. Previously, he was the Rural and Agribusiness Enterprise Development Specialist at the North Dakota State University Extension Service – Center for Community Vitality.
  • Change - December 26, 2018
  • Regular Customers Form Your Base - December 12, 2018
  • Disasters: Is Your Small Business Ready? - December 5, 2018
  • Business Startup: Steps to Remember - November 28, 2018
  • HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM SMALL BIZ SURVIVAL - November 21, 2018
  • Finding a Business Idea - November 14, 2018
  • Does Your Networking Have Punch? - November 7, 2018
  • Build Tomorrow’s Community Business Sector - October 24, 2018
  • Are You Changing? - October 17, 2018
  • Is it really a deal? - October 10, 2018

August 13, 2015 Filed Under: rural, Small Biz 100, success Tagged With: consumer data, data gathering, effective marketing, marketing, rural, small business

Wondering what is and is not allowed in the comments?
Or how to get a nifty photo beside your name?
Check our commenting policy.
Use your real name, not a business name.


Don't see the comment form?
Comments are automatically closed on older posts, but you can send me your comment via this contact form and I'll add it manually for you. Thanks!

Howdy!

Glad you dropped in to the rural and small town business blog, established in 2006.

We want you to feel at home, so please take our guided tour.

Meet our authors on the About page.

Have something to say? You can give us a holler on the contact form.

If you would like permission to re-use an article you've read here, please make a Reprint Request.

Want to search our past articles? Catch up with the latest stories? Browse through the categories? All the good stuff is on the Front Page.

Shop Local

Buy local buttonReady to set up a shop local campaign in your small town? You'll need a guide who understands how we're different and what really works: Shop Local Campaigns for Small Towns.

Best of Small Biz Survival

What is holding us back? Why does every project take so long in small towns?

How any business can be part of downtown events by going mobile

Concert-goers talking and enjoying the evening in downtown Webster City, Iowa.

Why do people say there’s nothing to do here then not come to our concerts?

Retailers: Fill all empty space, floor to ceiling

More of the best of Small Biz Survival

Copyright © 2023 Becky McCray
Front Page · Log in