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Research Trends to Prepare for the Upswing

Three-legged Stool of ResearchIn the last two blog posts, we covered market research tools and methods for Customer Intelligence and Competitor Intelligence. Today we add a third leg to the proverbial stool by listing website resources for gathering trend information to inform business strategy.

1. What are the most popular searches on the web right now or over some past period of time? There are countless tools and methods to gather this information but if you want to capture a snapshot “pulse” of the web, here are a few suggestions.

Explore real-time hot topics and hot searches with Google tools such as Google Trends. For more advanced analysis from search data, try Google Insights which provides drill down capability by category, geography, seasonality, and properties of search.

SEOmoz has comprehensive tools for search engine optimization but for the purpose of trend monitoring, there are several free keyword tools that can help you with trend research. SEO Book and WordStream are also SEO tool providers with a variety of keyword research, competitive research and web traffic evaluation capabilities. I won’t speak to their respective strengths and weaknesses but offer these tools only as a means to monitor current trends.

2. What is the buzz on the blogs, forums, and social networks?

Blog Pulse : gives you a real-time snapshot on the hot topics being discussed in the blogosphere. In addition, a searchable archival database of topics over the past 180 days can be used to research on any topic and provide popular blog pots on the topic based upon user engagement.

Social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious show popular content such as articles and blog posts submitted by and voted on by their respective web communities.

What the Trend provides information on top trending topics on Twitter as well as trends over the past 30 days. Twitter keeps a running log of the top trending topics worldwide and in selected locations. Twitter Search provides real-time hot topics and advanced search capabilities to find tweets on any topic you choose.

Biz Sugar provides social bookmarking focused on small and medium business information. As with other social bookmarking sites, content is submitted and voted upon by the community but in this case, the community consists mainly of entrepreneurs like you.

3. My personal favorite places to follow trends combine the wisdom of the crowds with analysis from professional trend analysts into a combination of real-time aggregators and analyst reports (free and fee-based) covering every conceivable social, economic, and political trend.

Trend Hunter: You could lose days in this community of over 30,000 scouts who contribute real-time trends to this site which analyzes and aggregates the data on 100’s of categories of trends. Once you find your way through the site, subscribe to the newsletter or create separate subscriptions and notifications based on your topics of interest. (I continue to recommend Exploiting Chaos as one of the best books for business inspiration I have read – please check it out!)

Trend Watching : Great free and subscription based reports with analysis of key trends from 100’s of trend watchers worldwide. I subscribe to their newsletter and find it an invaluable tool.

Poll Daddy : Not only does Poll Daddy offer widgets you can embed in your website or Facebook page to poll customers but the company provides an amazing searchable database of millions of active and archived polls and their results.

Trendpedia : Check out popular current topics from the blogosphere, along with top trends from the past week and month. In addition, compare the relative buzz on several topics and gage interest on those topics in the blogosphere.

Following the trends provides inspiration for new product lines as well as ideas for re-positioning existing products. Many of the tools noted above have more advanced and professional versions available for a subscription fee. I suggest you begin with this list of tools and subscribe to those which provide the most insight for your strategic thinking process.

Again, this is simply a short list of web-based resources I utilize. What are you using to keep abreast of the social, economic, and political trends?

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PREPARE FOR THE RECOVERY: RESEARCH COMPETITORS

Competitive IntelligenceThis is the fourth post in a monthly series dedicated to preparing your business for the upcoming economic recovery. Today, I discuss gathering competitive intelligence, one form of market research which can easily be performed by the small business owner in preparation for business growth.

Market research is the foundation of business strategy. Good market research validates assumptions, informs strategy, and inspires business vision.

What do you want to know about your competitors?

1. Product assortment
2. Services and how they are delivered
3. Locations and Distribution methods
4. Company reputation among suppliers and partners
5. Marketing plans and strategy
6. Management strategies
7. Executive changes
8. Promotion and pricing strategies
9. Customer service strengths and weaknesses
10. Positive or negative public relations
11. Customer buzz: Identify advocates and naysayers
12. Financial position
13. Credit policies
14. Advertising : Appearance and content
15. Website analytics

This is just a starting point for your research as each business will have different list – the imperative is to begin your research with purpose. Create a spreadsheet to make notes of your observations and analysis for each key factor.

Where can you find competitive intelligence?

A competitor’s website is the natural starting point for research. Web presence (or lack thereof) points to opportunities and threats based upon the products and services defined and the marketing message encapsulating the company brand. However, the competitor’s website does not tell the full story so use the following websites to gather more intelligence on your rivals:

1. Do a Google search on your target and see where your competitor has an active online presence. Do they have a Facebook page? A Twitter presence? A branded community? Check out where your competition is most active and assess the engagement level of their customers.

2. Compete.com and Alexa.com can be used to evaluate web traffic to your competitors’ site vis-à-vis your website and can also determine the search keywords visitors use to locate their site.

3. Have your competitors recently changed their website? Are you interested in seeing the web archives of their website? Check out http://web.archive.org to see all archived web pages of your competitors. A product such as Copernic Tracker is worth the nominal fee as a way to gather timely future content changes on your competitor’s website – all you need to know from new products to promotions to new customer recommendations.

4. Where do customers and experts in your industry add ratings and reviews? If you are a restaurant, check Yelp and Urban Spoon to see what is being said about your rival. If you are a contractor, check Angie’s List. Are you looking for consumer product reviews? Check epinions.com or pissedconsumer.com. Consumers are increasing their participation both as critics and brand ambassadors so you will likely find real consumer feedback about most businesses.

5. PRNewswire.com provides a history of news releases relevant to a company or products in the business of creating press releases over a period of time.

6. Check the buzz about your competitors on social networking sights using www.search.twitter.com, www.boardtracker.com , www.boardreader.com , and www.socialmention.com. You will be able to read comments, assess sentiment about your competitors, and identify their issues which can become your opportunities. Using social networking intelligence, you can also determine who your competitors critics and evangelists are and why.

Who should you include in your competitive intelligence search? Obviously direct competitors in your target market are included but don’t stop there. Broaden your research to include similar businesses in other markets – you may gain inspiration from their marketing practices. Don’t forget related businesses that may be expanding product lines in response to the recession. For example, many home construction companies are now actively pursuing the remodeling market as the new home market declines.

Combining competitive intelligence with customer research and market trends will help you craft business strategy to propel you out of the recession and into growth. Using inexpensive web-based tools, there is no excuse for the small business owner not to have access to high quality research that used to be the sole bastion of large organizations. In the next few posts, we will discuss tools and methods for researching customers and trends.

What are you using to keep track of your competitors?

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101+1 Small Business Marketing Questions…With a Sense of Humor

woman at desk laughing uid 1053967 This is the time of year when I encourage entrepreneurs to begin planning for the New Year. Planning can be a positive and reflective process. It can be inspiring to look back over the mountains you have climbed in the past year and look ahead with optimism to the journey ahead.

Thanks to Scott Blitstein of eSeMBe, I found 101+1 Small Business Marketing Questions For People Who Don’t Speak Marketing which is a humorous twist on serious marketing questions every small business owner should ask. I agree with Naomi Dunford’s suggestion to choose 25-50 questions and come back to the list periodically. I generally suggest every entrepreneur block off one full day to create a plan for the coming year. If you are unable (or resistant?) to give yourself the gift of a day to reflect and plan for the upcoming year, give yourself the gift of an hour a week for the next 8 weeks as we head into 2010.

Begin with your vision, this list, and a sense of humor…entrepreneurship can be fun!

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Cheating the Customer?

After speaking recently at the SN4BW Online Global Training Event, I was asked if I recommend small businesses hire Virtual Assistants to respond to business tweets on Twitter. My initial reaction was a strong negative. I reasoned that outsourcing your social interaction on Twitter is equivalent to sending a secretary in your place to a cocktail party or a networking event to which you have been personally invited. The value and the beauty of social media as a marketing tool is that business participation in the media feels personal to the customer, makes the customer feel special and valued. I suggest that the use of “auto-tweets” while generally used for promotion and information, are not good practice for developing relationships or enhancing the value of your brand to a customer.

I tried to think of how and why you would want to outsource responses to your tweets if you are a small office/home office so I decided to consult with Carle Henry , CEO of Chrevian, Inc. and a TeleWeb Service Consultant. Carle is one of the first executives I worked with whose focus was on looking at the business from the outside in, viewing everything in the business from the perspective of the customer and then designing processes and systems around the customer’s perspective and needs. Carle has worked with companies like Harrods, Eddie Bauer, Monster.com, and Sealy to create multi-channel customer experiences. He pointed out several issues with the concept of having a VA respond to auto-tweets.

“The whole cache of social media, what makes it cool and clever is the personalization of the customer experience. My first reaction is that it is way too personal an interaction to outsource. Essentially, the challenge is that most cannot keep a VA knowledge base up to date for traditional inquiries. Once you apply this concept to the Social Media world, it’s as if you’ve put the somewhat acceptable flaws on steroids. The result will be an obvious, exaggerated ‘cheat’ on what should be an intimate, personal experience.” Carle went on to say, “The knowledge base is the most relevant point. If a customer gets a bad answer from a VA, they will search your website for a 1-800 number until they find a way to contact a real person to respond. In other words, customers who interact with you using twitter want a personal exchange: knowledge bases won’t cut it.”

Carle acknowledged he projects most customer service outsourcers of the future will include responding to Tweets (and some do already) from within large corporate customer service departments. The key to making it successful is to train the VA or outsourcing agency (with a long-term commitment in mind) in order to transfer relevant brand knowledge, product knowledge, and company culture and policy. Companies who do not properly train their outsourced service providers suffer the consequences of lost customers, reduced loyalty and brands with tarnished reputations. Some large brands such as Comcast are using Twitter and other social marketing tools to repair brand issues and poor customer service reputations.

If you are a small business, you have a natural desire to build your business with social marketing tools. But, if you are going to use tools such as Twitter, Facebook status updates and such to promote your business, think twice about the frequency and content of your status updates. Too much promotion comes across as Spam. So much self-promotion that you cannot respond to your own tweets is definitely Spam. Outsourcing your status updates and social marketing to a VA can be done ONLY if you have invested enough training so you trust the VA to represent your brand, your products, and your culture in a seamless way. Are your customer and your brand reputation worth the risk?

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