Success for a small business means watching your pennies. Margins are usually small, sales are often weak, and there is little or no cushion available to absorb a mistake. It is also true that small business owners must not get so caught up in watching pennies that they miss the holes that are leaking dollars. […]
Small-business Data Gathering: Use It for Growth
Read anything offering marketing tips and you will be encouraged to learn who your customers are. You want to understand the demographic make-up as well as their likes and dislikes and, of course, what they buy. Yet, so often that is the end of the effort. Getting the data can be done with registration information, […]
Use Small-Business Interest to Your Advantage
Customers like doing business with people they know. As a small-business owner, you can use that to your advantage. Some advantages can include knowing your customers by name. You can learn what products and services they want. If customers have a problem, “talking to the boss” to get an immediate solution is easy for them. […]
Build Your Business With Data
A lot has been written about how market research will help you achieve business success, and many of these claims are true. That connection, however, is not a simple, direct link. Collecting information about your potential market is useful only if you take the next step of analyzing the data. Data analysis yields clues about who […]