Whether a business is just starting out or is an established one, they need to do a market assessment and see where they stand in that mix - or would like to stand in case they are brand new. Consciously or subconsciously they do what the marketing gurus call - a SWOT analysis. SWOT is an acronym. Simply put, it stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Let's expand on this just a little bit. Your company's list of 'Strengths' is basically all the areas where your business is better than your competition eg: better range of services, lower pricing, better vendors etc. 'Weaknesses' are all those areas where you think your business still has room to grow eg: customer service, crunchier pizza base. 'Opportunities' are usually external to your organization and are things that you feel you can or could achieve, that would help your business grow. 'Threats' are again external but make you acknowledge all the factors going against you eg: customer shopping trends, seasonality etc.
A lot of this planning can be usually done with available information on public domains. If you are an established business, you have another mighty weapon that you can use to add accuracy and granularity in your analysis - Customer Reviews.
Today, more than ever, customers are taking the effort to write reviews for products and services they use. An industry study pegs this number at 80% amongst younger customer set (18-34 years). Amongst older demographics, this number is a little lower but it still proves our point - people are writing more reviews than they ever were. There are several review sites where customers can leave their feedback and prospective customers read that feedback. Google, for instance, is almost considered the God of the internet. So people find it easy to leave Google reviews. And the feedback that they provide in these reviews is a goldmine.
In these reviews, they are telling the world - what they like and don't like about your product or services. They are also telling you where they think your competition is better and also where you can possibly extend your product line or range of services.
Here are some typical statements that you come across in customer reviews:
"Love the ambiance and ever helpful staff" - Strength
"Their pizza base is soggy" - Weakness
"Wish they also had a 6-quart pot that XYZ Co. has" - Opportunity
"Too bad they don't sell online like their competitors" - Threat
These customer reviews provide you with a mountain of data. But, if you dig deep, you can identify these valuable nuggets that could potentially validate or even add to your market analysis.
Let me know what you think!
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