Conduct market research
No matter how great you think your small business idea is, you must test it by conducting thorough market research. Research involves asking your potential (or existing) customers first – before you launch a new product, open a store or change something within your business. Use the following tools to collect input:
- Surveys. Create a simple questionnaire to collect answers to your business questions. Ask potential or existing customers to comment on issues such as pricing, location, marketing, shopping times, delivery, budgets and competition. Start with open-ended questions and move to more specific ones.
- Focus Groups. Try to get a small group of potential customers together to discuss your business idea. Describe your business and what it intends to do, then ask participants for their comments. Guide but don’t lead the discussions. The goal is to glean insight into what people want and collect some new ideas.
- Secondary data. Check out your industry, the competition and assess market potential by gathering some secondary data. For example, someone opening a pet store will want to know how much money people spend on pets in Canada. Such information will give context to the primary data you collected from your surveys and focus groups. Government websites offer plenty of help at www.strategis.gc.ca or www.statscan.ca or www.cbsc.org.
