Defining market segments to help your business in development

Throughout 2011, experts in marketing circles have been urging small businesses to recognise the changing nature of consumer buying behaviour. Whether your customers are other businesses or end consumers, 2011 has been the year that has drawn a line in the sand between how we used to buy products and services, and how we currently make our purchases.

Nowadays, as shoppers, we do 70% of our research about buying a product or hiring a service before our first contact with a potential supplier. As a result, it is crucial for all businesses to understand customers at a deeper and more accurate level. For businesses, this will give them insights into their customers’ real needs allowing them to better position their message and accurately focus their business offering.

If generating more sales leads is one of your business growth goals, you can use a range of free, online market research tools to better understand your audience. Let’s look at how you can cast a virtual net over the sea of data available to help you understand your market and better target your business opportunities.

1.         Get Spanish statistics

     National Institute of Statistics: http://www.ine.es/en/welcome_en.htm

The Spanish Government’s statistics agency INE has a bilingual website with ready access to data across a range of industry sectors. These sources are often updated monthly so you can get current, localized information about people,places and industries.

E.g.,if your business offers concierge services to travellers, you can get statistics on who travels to Barcelona, what country they come from, how much they spend, and their motivations for choosing this city as their travel destination

2.         Understanding Global consumer trends

    Trendwatching: trendwatching.com

Trendwatching, the website that termed the phrase “popup” to describe the temporary restaurant has a fascinating offering that examines global trends. Their newsletter is an easily digestible market research summary that can help guide your ideas about
how to position your business, how to create new products that match emerging trends, and how to better understand buyer behaviours and consumer interests.

3.         Demographic tools

      Alexa: www.alexa.com

You can learn a lot about your potential audience by seeing who reads the websites in your industry sector. By looking at some of the bigger companies in your industry, you can identify potential audience segments and make some educated guesses about who is responsible for making the buying decisions.  I really like this site as it has a lot of information about how people find you or your competitors online and it also shows who links to them which can make for very interesting reading.

Demographic profiles can be a bit limited for smaller businesses that don’t have a lot of online visitors, but you can register for Alexa for free and over time they will start compiling demographic data for your website.

E.g.if you run an interior decorating business, you could look at the readership of getdecorating.com to see the average
reader profile. According to Alexa, 3.4% of this site’s readers are from Spain (around 340 visitors each day). Alexa has data about the gender, age, education level, and website content topics. You can use these demographic insights to improve how you pitch your business promotional messages to readers and buyers in your market.

 4.         Data sources management tool

      Junar: www.junar.com

It is easy these days to drown yourself in data or bury yourself in spreadsheets. The Chilean-based startup Junar has a simple interface to help you manage your data sources. They recently introduced new graphing functions that also help you analyse your market research data. One of the best features of this online tool is that it can automatically turn any website with data into an organized spreadsheet. You can then select specific items in the spreadsheet and create a graph.

5.         Data and information visualization tool

      Popplet: www.popplet.com

When you have collected your market research data and information from a variety of sources, you will want to be able to lay it out in a way that draws all the components together.

Popplet is a fun visual aid and information mapping tool that can help you collate and connect your market research, so you can refine your business messages to particular audience segments. You can use popplets like a mind map to lay out all of your information. Seeing your information visually can help you make connections you may not have thought of, and the mix of using data and images can engage your left and right brain to deepen your insight.

The most important market research tool for your business growth

While all of these free tools can help you investigate your market and industry sector at a more accurate and useful depth, there is no escaping the most important tool of all: time. Try and allocate a couple of hours every week – or perhaps schedule a meeting-free day each month to give yourself time to carry out market research activities and get to know your audience better. Tools like Junar and Popplet make the process easy and more enjoyable, so start integrating market research into your operations so you can keep growing your customer base. Knowing your market is essential to keeping your business in development and growing your business to the needs of the consumer

Let software make things easier for you.  Here are some applications that will help your productivity and efficiency.  Most are free too.

1. www.dropbox.com – Great free storage app, simple to use, you can download to your desktop so you simply save like you would to your harddrive except that it syncs with the online portal and anyone else´s dropbox with whom you have shared the folder.  Surprising easy to use and allows you to store, share and access your files on any device. Once you download the software you’ll never have to email a file again.

2. Google Apps– Google has quite a few free tools that can help you manage your business and most work seamlessly together. If you want to move your business fully "into the cloud" google apps is a great and cheap option. Includes, Google Reader, Calender, Alerts, email, and other integrated apps.

3. www.podio.com -  Said to be the new Basecamp, Podio is a social work platform for the enterprise or project team.  Podio is easy to use, just like Facebook and twitter but designed for business collaboration. Connect with your team, pass content, and hold group conversations across all of your business applications.  Very professional especially for connecting with employees or clients on projects.

4. www.basecamp.com – With some very new and innovative kids on the block Basecamp is said to have been ¨left behind¨in some features, but it still remains a project management app worth mentioning, it lets you keep all your files in one place, keep all your client discussions centralized, and keep track of important dates making life a lot more organised.

5. www.yast.com-  If you feel like you need better time management try yast.  It is simple, you do something, you time it, you see how long it took.  Great for keeping control of time taken on assignments or time-wasting things.  Has a good mobile app too.

6.  www.evernote.com  - If a big part of your job involves coming up with creative ideas from online resources, then Evernote would be perfect for your business. It allows users the ability to save sentences and paragraphs they see online and even entire web pages. You can also type random thoughts, and record your ideas using their audio recording feature, as well as create to-do lists and access past notes from anywhere.

7. www.skype.com – Is a free software application that lets you make and receive voice and video calls over the internet and to landline and mobiles at cheap rates.  Also a great instant messaging tool between employees and offices to pass notes, web links and documents in real time.

8. www.salesforce.com- All small businesses need a CRM as they increase organisation, follow.up rates and client response times.  Salesforce is one effective CRM that helps organise leads, opportunities and accounts and much more.  Easy to share and assign tasks between multiple employees.

9. www.linkedIn.com – LinkedIn is great for networking, but you can also use it as a tool to find prospects, service-providers or collaborations by geography, name, job title or the type of groups they frequent.  I´m a big fan, with very useful relevant profile information so people can find you and you can find them.

10. www.wordpress.com - do it yourself website and blog builder.  While it is still useful to have a designer design your website, nowadays you should be able to make small and regular content changes to your website to keep it relevant.

There is an abundance of innovative tools available today that are specifically designed to make start-ups and small businesses become more efficient, competitive and profitable. This is great news for small business owners because in today’s highly competitive market it is important to get all the tools and help we can to remain competitive and productive.

Don´t shy away from these tools, business ownership is about continual development and staying up to date with innovation. They are normally easier to use than first expected. However, there is an abundance to choose from so choose those that will really add benefit. Start with one or two, master them and incorporate them in your daily routine and then move onto the next ones.

Please add others that you think deserve a mention.

Happy productivity!

For more business tips and information please check out our web-page www.freegreenbeans.com