Table of contents
Knowing your customer is the single most important thing an entrepreneur can do.
You can leave an empty chair in your meetings to symbolize your customer (or a mini-chair on your table if you're a one-man team).
"If your customer were here, what would she say?"
🏛️ How to do market research
Focus on customer frustrations, then build the solution.
There are many ways to do research, each with their own pros and cons. Interviews are great for initially developing your ideal customer persona. Surveys are good after an initial need is verified, and can collect actionable data points that help you design your product.
Interviews: Find potential customers with different comsumer behaviours (e.g. impulsive buyers vs thoughtful buyers). Ask open-ended questions like how do they do things now? How do they wish to do things? What do you think can bridge that gap?
Internet research: Research competition, market size, and general market trend. Ask friendly strangers on Reddit or Quora.
Surveys: Ask pointed questions to get actionable takeaways in designing your product.
✅ Do's and don'ts
Do get them to tell a story. Listen more than you talk. Focus on the need, not the solution. Ask "why" 5 times to really dive deep.
Don't expect customers to have the solutions, they only know about their frustrations. Beware of confirmation bias, don't go in with presuppositions. Don't sell your ideas, let them talk.
🚀 How to analyze your data
Sort your notes by categories (e.g. Age, sex, income, consumer behaviour). Then find insights for every customer type, and who has the biggest unmet need.
Decide which customer type you want as your ideal customer, then dive deep and focus on solving that customer's problems.
"If the customer doesn't scream, you don't have product-market fit."
Conclusion
I know these tips are vague and not that actionable. There is no hard and fast rule for doing things. You have to find your own way.
In business, you will hear many conflicting advice. Even when these advice come from extremely successful people who know what they're doing.
Take note that they're giving advice baseed on their very specific experience of a very specific company in a specific point in time.
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