As marketers we are constantly searching for new customers and as a result, we have to do some research before we can start working with them. Today’s post will talk about just that. What we do to get the right information about a new potential customer, their setup and so on, so keep reading for some nice tips!

If you prefer it, check the video we made on this matter!

Whenever we prepare for a meeting with a potential new customer, we try to know as much as we can beforehand. The idea is to know what type of knowledge our customer has, in order to be more or less technical and specific in our approach.

This step is crucial to avoid proposing something that does not fit with the customer’s needs and to make sure we don’t waste anyone’s time.

Website

We look for several elements that can help us asses the customer's setup and saavyness.

Design

This is highly subjective, but if a design is good, this normally means the customer has worked with developers or has an internal resource, making our collaboration potentially smoother.

Interface

This is linked to the design but with experience you can pretty successfully guess what CMS a customer uses and how old that may be. Old interfaces may mean the website is not a priority.

Tracking

with the help of some chrome extensions, we can see if the website has any tracking elements in place. Do they have a Google Analytics code or a Facebook pixel? The more information we can see is being collected, the higher the knowledge we can assume the customer has.

Quick indexing

You can find out whether or not a website has been indexed in Google by simply writing site:website. If the result is positive, you can assume the customer knows about SEO or has more resources to work on it.

Social Media

This is the other section we focus on, in order to know a bit more about the customer.

Platforms

Being in every platform available is something many businesses want to do. We always ask ourselves, why do you want to be there? If a customer is in every platform, they either have the resources to take good care of them or they are prioritising wrong.

Nurture

There’s nothing that denotes lack of time and resources as a semi-abandoned platform. When users search for your social media, you'd better have a properly nurtured one. There is nothing worse than seeing your last publication is from 6 years ago.

Engagement

This is key to see if the customer understands social media. This is no longer a one-way conversation, but a dialogue. You want to hear what your audience has to say. Engament with the audiece will tell us if the customer gets it or not.

Negative feedback

Quite linked to the engagement section, one great indicator for us is to see how the customer reacts to negative feedback. Reacting in a constructive way indicates the customer understands the ins and outs and therefore may be more receptive to changes.

This is how we do our research but of course everyone has their own way. Once again there are not right or wrong answers and the research depends greatly on your industry and what you’re trying to pitch. We hope however, this has been useful if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Thanks for reading!