The Business Chat - Who are you? A Survey

Once upon a time in a land far away marketing was a scary word for micro companies because marketing cost a lot of money. To get your message right required people who went out and studied your customers, these people charged a lot and then they printed brochures that also cost a lot. It was tough for a small business to compete. Marketing was about you shoving your message at your customers and hoping they would listen. It was a one-way conversation and a dull one at that.

And then came the internet (cue the angels singing). Reaching your customers has never been so easy. Selling and marketing is simpler because now you can talk to your customers directly and they talk back! You have the ability to target the people who actually want to buy your product.Online it’s hard to tell the size of a company and budgets, while still important, can take second place to ingenuity. With all the new social media tools marketing has become more of a two-way conversation. As a creative business this conversation is critical because customers are buying more than a pair of earrings, they are buying a piece of the artist. Social media tools allow them to connect with the person behind the work and feel the magic behind the earrings/painting/sculpture. One of the easiest and most powerful of the social media tools are blogs. Doesn’t everyone have one? If you don’t, you should start thinking about one. It’s a way of explaining your work, your inspiration, you. And they’re free. It is important to remember that they are a tool, not a magic formula, and you still have to market and sell your work. As much as the new media have changed the rules of the game some of the old school marketing tactics still apply; the first being, know your product, the second being know your customer.

Surveys are a great way of finding out more about your customer/audience and tailoring your message to meet their needs. A survey also creates the beginning on a dialogue. If you have a blog or a website are you publishing the sort of information your reader wants? For that matter, who is you reader? Who is your online customer? Why not ask them with a survey?

This week I’m here to ask you, what do you want to read in The Business Chat? Who are you? Do you craft for fun or profit? What do you want information on? How can I help you? This was also an excuse for me to create my first survey! Yippeee!!!! I used surveymonkey.com, a free survey tool that many of my online colleagues have recommended. And I have to say, it was easy-peasy. So please, take my survey so that I can deliver the right information to help you with your creative endeavours. Let's begin our conversation.

Click here to take survey