SFS Minute 753: Small Experiments
School for Startups Minutes
Use small experiments to test your different messages. Use A/B testing to try different variations of your copy, your price, your imagery. All of those things can be tested using Google Analytics and other tools.
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SFS Minute 752: Talk Directly to Potential Customers
School for Startups Minutes
One of the ways to do free or very cheap market research is to talk directly to your potential customers. You can do that by going to trade shows. There’s a trade show for every industry, and just walking up to people and asking if you can ask them a few questions — they will probably help you. Or you should have a list of your potential customers. Call one of them and say, “If I developed a tool that did this and this and this, would you be interested?” Get their feedback — it's worth gold.
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SFS Minute 751: Conduct Surveys and Polls
School for Startups Minutes
One of the inexpensive tools that we can use to do market research is to conduct surveys and polls. Again, that sounds like it could be really expensive, but luckily, there are many free platforms that allow us to create short, simple, focused surveys that we can post on Facebook, in different groups, and put them in forums or on Reddit — another good place to post to get the data that you need.
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SFS Minute 750: Analyze Your Competitors
School for Startups Minutes
Part of any market analysis will be a detailed analysis of your competitors, and luckily, so much of that can be done for free by studying their websites and their reviews. The customer feedback that they get will give you incredible insight into how their products are being received and how the customers think of them. Also, use Moz - it's a free SEO tool that will help you find out what keywords are working for your competitors.
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SFS Minute 749: Free Online Tools
School for Startups Minutes
We all know that market research is absolutely critical, but when you're just getting started, you usually don't have a budget for it. So, this week we are talking about how to do market research on a budget. I'll give my first tip right after this. When you are doing market research on a budget, we are very lucky because there are many free online tools and resources. Google Trends will help analyze your product based on keywords that people use on Google. It will tell you how popular your product or service is. Statista will provide incredible market stats for you. So, if you need to know...
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SFS Minute 748: Adjust the Experience Continuously
School for Startups Minutes
Now that we have talked to our customers and gathered their feedback, we need to make the adjustments that will make them happy. Whether it's rearranging our store, redesigning our website, adjusting our prices, or training our team to better serve customers—whatever it is, we have to do it. The importance of this process lies in learning, continually iterating, and making your company and its processes better.
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SFS Minute 747: Collect Feedback in Natural Ways
School for Startups Minutes
After you have studied the customer profile, you need to collect feedback from them in normal ways—things that won’t freak them out. Offer them discount cards or talk to them casually and ask simple, natural questions, like “Why did you come back?” or “Would you recommend the store?” Also, be sure to monitor word of mouth and all social media platforms, and respond to everything you see online—especially negative complaints.
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SFS Minute 746: Observe and Analyze In-Person & Offline Behavior
School for Startups Minutes
Once you have the customer profiles or avatars, you need to observe each group and learn their differences—both online and offline. Watch how they shop: do they linger, do research, compare costs, and evaluate different options and prices? Do they buy things in bundles? If they always buy A, does that mean they’re likely to buy B and C as well? If you learn these things, you can sell more.
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SFS Minute 745: Build Real-Life Customer Profiles
School for Startups Minutes
The second step to understanding your customer journey is to build real-life customer profiles—or avatars. Start by talking to real buyers in your store, at events, or even by calling them on the phone. Ask why they chose your store and your product. Find out their common traits: lifestyle, shopping habits, budget, and values. Are they all eco-conscious? Is that the buying pattern of everyone? It's important that you know this, and that you understand the motivators. What makes them buy emotionally? Are they buying for comfort or beauty? These things are critical.
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SFS Minute 744: Define the Stages
School for Startups Minutes
I hope you're having a great week, and I think understanding your customer’s journey will make it a better week because you will sell more. That's right. You need to know the path—the process that your customer goes through—and you should design that path so that it is a pleasant one. This week, I will talk about the five steps for understanding your customer’s journey better. Today, in the beginning, we need to define the stages of the journey. There are three: awareness—how do customers find out about you? Is it from a trade show, word of mouth, or advertising? Second, what...
info_outlineStep four is to actively promote your email list, your website, and your lead magnet — the free gift you created. You want to promote it as widely as possible and give away as many lead magnets as you can. The more you give away, the more email addresses you’ll capture — and that means more potential customers for your business.