Small Business Marketing Expert Patrick McFadden on How to Capture the Voice of Your Customer

Indispensable Marketing President and Marketing Consultant Patrick McFadden discusses how customers can be a great source for insights for your small business, how to capture these insights and make them actionable in response to a HARO reporter query.  Plus, Patrick weighs in with a real life example that teaches small business owners about the power of “feedback.”

Q: What are some simple and unobtrusive technology tools that small business owners can use to collect feedback from customers? 

A: We like to implement the online form builder  wufoo.com , which can be embedded into any webpage or have a stand alone page to collect feedback from customers. This tool allows business owners to assign rules to questions and answers that help control what happens when the survey taker chooses a certain answer. embed the survey form into any webpage in a simple and unobtrusive way.

Q: What are the kinds of data and information a small business owner should seek from customers? How can they figure out what’s important and what’s not?

A:  Constantly seeking feedback from your customers is a great way to learn how to market your business more effectively. The data and information a small business owner should seek includes: what made your customers hire you, the words and phrases and actual experiences that keep coming up over and over again, and the description of the perfect experience for buying what you sell.

One word of caution, business owners should not accept vague answers like “you provide good service.” While that may be true and good to hear, you can’t work with that. Business owners must push a bit and ask what good service looks like and maybe even if they can tell you about a specific instance in which they felt they got good service.

Q: How can a small business owner put this information into action to improve their business?

A: Well, if your customers are explaining what they value about what you do, you may want to consider making that the marketing message for your business. One of our clients message is “We help medical practices get paid faster”, “Getting Medical Practices Paid is What We Do.”