Survey Says? Just Tell Me What You Want!

A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece on the importance of research for small businesses; how research provides critical insight to customer wants and needs, and how research may focus the direction of a given business model. Well, now it is time for me to take my own advice! I’ve been offering my […]

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A couple of months ago, I wrote a piece on the importance of research for small businesses; how research provides critical insight to customer wants and needs, and how research may focus the direction of a given business model. Well, now it is time for me to take my own advice!

I’ve been offering my views via the “Small Is Beautiful” column in Search Engine Land for seven months now, and while there have been numerous retweets and a few comments about my musings, I don’t have a clear notion as to whom my customers are. Since it seems that I’ve not done my research, I’m asking for your help.

Who are you? Who who?

Stealthily appropriating lyrics from a well-known rock band presents the focus for this column: Who Are My Readers?

I assume that the readers of this column, whether it’s my monthly entry or others’ contributions, are primarily individuals who work in the online search marketing industry. My guess is that few actual small business owners are finding this and reading; however, I would love to be wrong. Some more sophisticated business owners may spend time researching information to improve and enhance their online marketing efforts by reading Search Engine Land and other online sources, but I suspect most owners of SMBs are too busy doing their jobs and sustaining their businesses to do a lot of reading about marketing.

Others of you may work with those same owners of small businesses, helping them to market their products and services via online marketing and advertising efforts. You probably work for a small marketing firm or you yourself run a one-person shop and can benefit from the info found here not only when advising your clients but also in marketing your company.

The point here is that I can speculate all day about who my readers are, but I have little notion as to whether those speculations are at all accurate. Your feedback can help me determine the topics to research and write on.

Where have we been?

Reviewing my columns from these last months, shows that I’ve offered tips on preparing your website launch successfully on search engines; the importance of research in SMB marketing success; the value of close geo-targeting; customer satisfaction; the value of online advertising using different formats; and mobile visibility.

My question is: what do you want to read about going forward?

Obviously, there will be events, products, movements on the part of the search engines that will contribute to the topic list. But it would benefit me enormously to know what the readers of this column would like to read about. So tell me. Call it my own customer satisfaction survey. Feel free to comment on the column below or click on “send the author an email” link that follows each column. I want to know what you think!

Going forward

For all I know, my editor at Search Engine Land will not be happy with my composition, as it does not “offer creative advice and tips that smaller, nimble search marketers can exploit to gain a competitive advantage online.” But the objective of this piece is to prompt suggestions for future columns that will do that very thing. I definitely see value here!

Do you want to know more about whether you should use social media? Are you familiar with crowd-sourcing? Do you want to be? Would it help your marketing efforts? Have you looked at the changes Google has been implementing in the past few weeks? Does it have any bearing on your marketing efforts? These are some of the things that can be the focus of future columns. What do you think?


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Debra Northart
Contributor

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