I run an ecommerce website but I've just realized that I really don't "know my customer". But I don't even know where to begin when figuring out the demographics of my average customer. How does a small business with limited resources conduct marketing research? How do I begin to find this information? Where do I look? How do I figure out her wants? Needs? Income? Spending habits? What does she read? I have no idea where to start... Help!
Get Google Analytics, after a while you can check the heatmaps to see what users click on the most, and then figure out what people like from that? If that is what you mean.
Thanks for your reply. I'm referring to the marketing research that should be done before the ecommerce website is even developed - demographics, psychographics and all that. The kind of info you need to figure out what kind of consumer you should be targeting - age, location, income, education, wants, needs - that type of info. You use it to build a consumer profile which helps you create a more targeted ad campaign. I'm lost as to how to conduct that kind of research. It's hard for small businesses to conduct in depth marketing research because they sometimes lack the resources - that's me. But I need to build a customer profile because at the moment, I'm using trial-and-error in my advertising efforts - time and money is being flushed down the drain. I need to focus on a specific consumer but I have no idea who they are...
IMHO, demographic info is only useful when mass marketing. Psychographic info is only useful if you have the ability to finely segment audience. Neither are usually possible for small businesses with small budgets. With that said, if you are selling a product, chances are, the market research has already boon done by someone else. If your products are the same, the results should be similar enough to represent your potential customer base. You will most likely get the best info out of a survey of your current customers. I like surveymonkey for that sort of think. It's cheap, easy, and gets responses fast. Try offering a draw for some free product with an entry for every customer that completes the entire survey.
^ Thank you! I see what you mean. And it seems to be everyone's opinion to just go to the surveys. I think I will just continue w/ that. Thanks!
Have you tried the Microsoft Demographics-Prediction tools? adlab.microsoft.com/Demographics-Prediction
If you already run an ecommerce site, collect the data from your customer accounts or your checkout logs.
You can try also the Alexa, here is the example: alexa.com/siteinfo/apple.com -> "Demographics" section