Most people do zero market research before launching a product. They come up with an idea, they think “everyone will want this!” and then launch it, often times with no audience.
Hmm, I wonder why there’s an overwhelming sound of crickets chirping?
There are many ways to do market research, but I’m going to hone in on one particular method I love, and then I’ll tell you why you should be cautious.
I’m a huge proponent of surveys and polls.
If you have customers or have built any amount of community it is an absolute goldmine.
Some of my big decisions for my brand have come from my customers through polls.
If you aren’t using them, you should start immediately.
Use them on Social Media, such as in Facebook groups, Instagram stories, and surveys like Google Forms.
Here’s what I think polls are useful for in your research and data gathering:
- Identifying specific problems or pain your customers are having
- Opinions on new possible products: flavors, scents, names, colors, looks, etc.
- Ideas for expanding product lines
- Reactions to new ideas and products
- Gathering feedback and reviews on experiences they’ve already had with your brand
Now, all that is super helpful and you should absolutely be using polls and surveys on a regular basis, and I mean at least 2x month.
Here’s where I’m going to caution you.
Take surveys with a grain of salt.
Just because your customers vote for something does not automatically mean they are right, or that they are now the boss and make the decisions.
Here’s where you should NOT use polls to sway your decision making:
- Anything financial (like, don’t let them vote on your pricing, or they will put you out of business!)
- Internal operations (how you manufacture, or how you produce your products)
- Marketing and promotions. They will demand free shipping, etc, again – putting you out of business.
It actually is shocking what customers sometimes demand. If I followed their advice I’d be out of business in two days.
This is where we strike a balance and know where the lines are.
We do not take business advice from folks who don’t run businesses (or successful ones!).
But we DO listen to their wants, needs, and desires.
Here’s another interesting thing I’ve experienced:
Just because customers say they will buy something via a survey doesn’t mean they actually will!
We made that mistake with this one product.
I sent out a survey to thousands of customers.
I had a bunch of options on what other kinds of products they would like to see us sell.
We got a huge response.
One of the very top items was a roll-on fragrance perfume oil, which surprised me.
I thought, “ok interesting”.
We went to work on that item to get it manufactured.
Given the huge response we put in a minimum order (thousands of units), which I thought was way too low, since we had this huge customer base saying they wanted this product.
When we launched the product, we had a few sales, but NOTHING like we were expecting based on the response.
In our minds this was a total flop!
What the heck happened… why was there a disconnect?
Thousands of people raised their hand to say they wanted this product, and then didn’t buy it when we launched it.
So what do you do when a product doesn’t sell?
Well you start problem solving.
There are only a few possibilities why something isn’t selling:
It’s either..
- The pricing is off
- The photography/presentation isn’t persuasive
- The description or info isn’t persuasive
- The product itself isn’t in demand (you were over-optimistic)
- There’s too much resistance (difficult to make a purchase decision online) in some form
- Tech: there’s a problem with the checkout experience
- Or… it didn’t actually solve a real problem or pain for anyone.
In our case, we were just overly optimistic and took our survey data way too serious.
The best thing to do to test if it’s a product you should really sell: hold a pre-order.
Money talks.
If people want it, they will buy it.
If they don’t want it, you’ll find out.
Now, we did actually do a pre-order, but because we used mock-up photos, I was convinced it was the lack of photography that was the cause of lack of sales. And I was a little uncertain on the pricing also.
It turns out that people like the product, but they don’t LOVE it the way the love our other main product. We just simply over-estimated their enthusiasm.
Lesson:
Surveys are wonderful helpful tools to give you extra data and help aid your market research.
However, take the data with a grain of salt.
The data you get doesn’t determine success OR failure.
It’s just another way to help you gain insight.
Your market research does not start or stop with one tool, or one survey.
It’s repeated seeking and finding.
It’s repeated questions, observations, and data collection.
Plus, you should use your gut and intuition too!
