If you are just starting, one of best sources of information about your market is going to be the people who work in the door. An obsessive interest in who is walking in the door and who else might be like them will take you more than purchased customer data.
How do I know? I have a $300,000 budget for lead lists and buy another $200K of scan data from supermarkets through IRI.
All that data round out the picture of what we need to do as a business, but when it comes ot immediate business results, some of the best result we get are by asking customers one key question (and follow up questions depending on their answer)
On a scale of 1 to 10, would you recommend our coffee/business to a friend? Take the 9 and 10, ignore the 7 and 8, subtract the 1 through 6. That is that net promoter score. That is a very simple measure of our health. Look for articles or a book by Reichheld. Great stuff.
If they answer a 9 ot 10, ask for a referral. If a 1 to 6, ask what we need to do better. We get better over time and grow faster. And as we make things better, more people talk about it.
From the people who are willing to go to bat for us, we start a dialog. What do they like? How can we be more like that? Works wonders.
The thing that is so powerful about the net promoter is that people get direct mail and ads so constantly that they are a blur. Industry stats say people need to see an ad 600 times before it registers. We don't have that kind of money, even at our scale. One person referring something to a friend works.
How do you/we become the businesses/experiences/coffees that has something people want to talk about?
