One of the core activities of any business is to gather information regarding their customers. In order to provide services or products which cater to their target market’s needs and preferences, a business has to have an accurate gauge of the market’s pulse, so to speak. As such, market research is one of the most important endeavors of any business.
Any businessman would know that in order to obtain results which are as accurate as can be, market research has to be conducted with as wide a coverage as possible. In order to achieve such a coverage, money has to be expended – a considerable amount. Yet there is another way to conduct market research without having to expend too many resources – both in terms of time, money, and personnel.
A business blog can do just that. Take the example of Stone Creek Coffee, a coffee store chain in the U.S. When they to make their presence felt online, they chose the blog to do the job. Tom Pionek, technology and marketing director, shares that their blog present more opportunities to interact with customers as compared to press releases and similar forms of business communications. Their blog also went on to serve as way of getting feedback from the customers – a form of market research.
According to consultant Dana Vanden Heuvel, blogs are “one of the largest free, for what that’s worth, market research test-beds. It goes beyond the focus groups and some of the other market-research vehicles that people have used in the past or companies have used in the past.â€
With more and more people turning to the Internet for information, a business blog could give you the edge that you need.
Originally posted on September 15, 2007 @ 4:20 pm
