They say, if we build it, they will come but really this can only happen if you know who it is for and why it’s for them but, too many people start their side hustle or full time business without any research.
So before you build research and to help you here are 2 of the easiest ways to do it
Asking Questions
Many people will immediately go to a search engine like google to “research” while some will not even bother as they assume research only applies to big companies. However, every business big small or micro needs to do some ground work. The first and easiest way is to ask questions.
Asking questions is like preparing the soil for planting. You cannot do any planting and in your case start a business if some questions have not been answered. It means the ground is not ready for planting. Ask questions that can answer the who, what, when, where, how and why? The questions can be in a survey form or via the questions option on your social media platform.
Ideally you should ask questions that will get you the information that you will need to make your business journey more informed. Say, you want to open a business in traditional foods that are home delivered. You must ask questions to people that frequent traditional food venues.
Ask them who recommended the place, what they like to eat there, when they eat there, where they come from, how they get there and why they come there? Also ask them if they would be willing to have the food delivered to them at home or at the office at a fee?
Asking the right questions and to the right audience is an important part of research.
Creating a Persona
This may come off as silly to some but it will help you to zoom in on who your customer is if you create a persona. This is really an imaginary ideal customer. Imagine who they might be and start by giving them a name, an age and a gender. Then, generate a picture of them using AI and print it.
Once you have identified them, give them an income a hobby and a family. The idea is to help you zero in on the specifics. That is what they want, what dreams they have and what fears they have. You can build a whole life around them that you think is who they are and start to test your business around them.
Creating a persona helps to understand users’ needs, experiences, behaviors and goals but an important next step is to go out and make sure your imaginary customer is close to the real one.
Go out and find out if the person you have built from your imagination does actually exist in the real world. And you can find this out by going out and talking to real potential customers. See if they speak and respond like your imagined customer.
If not, you may need to update something so that the imaginary person and the real person are as identical as possible; so that you get a realistic impression of the user type that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way.
