Your client will tell you what they want
A well designed market review, will tell you what your target audience is thinking about, how you can beat the competition and gives you a great opportunity to get customers.
Next to collect data about what your target audience is interested in, a market review or survey is a very legitimate excuse to let people know about your new venture, your own hair extensions store. You would be surprised to experience how many people get a positive attitude towards you if they hear you want to start a business. So the perfect time to perform a market investigation.
So my first advice if you approach people to perform your market review, is to share with the listeners that you want to start a business, this will open your audience to be more interested and positive towards your list of questions. So you can use this moment to ask for their contact details. I recommend to start to build up a newsletter list while you keep the market survey and even before you launch your business you can for example share (but without giving away your unique findings of course) the conclusion of the market study.
Nine tips for your hair market review
In order to increase the response rate, thus the number of people that will return the market review, think of the following:
1. Tell your audience why you are interested in their opinion about the market. Make sure they will feel motivated to help you and to spend their precious time on something that’s not helping them. People love to help and share their knowledge though, so feel free to make an appeal to this
2. Think on how to structure the market survey, make sure there is a logical order of the questions, start with questions that will make your audience feel at ease and put the difficult or more complex questions later. Allow your audience a warming up
3. Reward your audience for the time they invest in you, this reward does not have to be big, research shows a little reward in most cases does the trick. So consider instead of opening a contest (when was the last time you won a competition?) to share a small, cheap but original gift to everybody (and give them the feeling you respect them for sharing their knowledge and vision). This reward will also encourage people to answer all the questions
4. Use a free survey tooltool to perform your survey in a professional way
5. Divide before you ask any question your total audience group into sections, for example young versus more mature women, Students versus people with a job and thus higher income, end users versus stylists or salon owners. Make sure you put your questions at the interest level of the segment, this will increase the value of the market survey
6. If you have your audience segmented, think of the way they would appreciate to receive your market assessment, online or on a piece of paper, standing in the shopping mall or relaxed sitting on a chair and table
7. Less is more, also if you prefer to understand every single step of the decision making your target audience is going through before they purchase hair extensions. Limit the number of questions to say 25 closed end questions or 10 open ended. Make sure your survey will not exceed more than 5 to 10 minutes
8. Always tell your audience what you are going to do with the info and if possible give feedback. Consider to share only those pieces of information that will not give away your unique selling point
9. If needed, remind your target audience once or twice for the survey, possible people have forgotten it due to a busy live. But if they still do not respond, too bad you did not get their answers but at least you have their names and contact details.
Are you planning to perform your market survey as part of your business plan for your own successful hair business, we recommend SurveyGizmo to get your information without any risk and for USD 0.00 using their Free Online Survey Software
