“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” ~Galileo Galilei 
I'm a firm believer that the key to marketing success is in uncovering a leverageable consumer insight. Some people call this a consumer "wow," others the "big idea." Whatever you want to call it, at its basic level it is the key motivation that connects your products or services to deliver benefits to a consumer. It's the idea that makes your customers or prospects say "that's exactly what I need." When I was a Brand Manager at Clorox, we had extravagant market research budgets and we constantly conducted primary research, both quantitative and qualitative in nature. If we wanted to make sure that a change in the formula of Pine-Sol would not be noticed, we would conduct In-Home-Use-Tests (IHUT). If we wanted to test a concept for a new Formula 409 product, we could conduct mall intercept studies in 8 cities and measure concept interest and purchase intent. If we wanted to select the best ad against which to spend a multi-million dollar budget buying TV media, we would test ars persuasion scores. Or if we just wanted to get further into the heads of charcoal users for Kingsford, we could spend a day at the home of a consumer in Detroit via ethnography studies. The results of this spending and processes were deep consumer insights that resulted in delivering products and in creating advertising that persuaded consumers to buy. Unfortunately, small business owners don't have these kinds of luxuries. Nevertheless, finding ways to get feedback from customers and prospects can make the difference in developing marketing programs that are powerful from those that fall flat. With a little bit of planning, and some creativity, you can conduct low cost market research to help you uncover your own leverageable insight.
- Analyze your yelp.com comments – I recently completed a project where I was able to unearth a wealth of information about a company just by reading, categorizing and trending yelp business reviews. For this particular retail business, I categorized comments relating to a) product; b) value; c) assortment/inventory; d) customer service; and e) business concept. I created charts from the data. I created a rating system around the five business activities to give me insight into what customers were happy about and what they'd like to see improvement on. And I ultimately drew conclusions about how to create new business initiatives and marketing programs;
- Post questions in forums – Sometimes when I want to test an idea, or need the feedback from others around a business issue where I don't have expertise, or where I'm unsure, I'll post a question at a variety of internet forums or discussion boards. For business issues, I post in LinkedIn Answers. I've also posted questions at Yahoo Answers. If you desire answers from a more targeted sample of your customers, you're surely able to find industry specific forums such as for men's clothing, restaurant and food issues or even mommies;
- Create an online survey – If you have an email list from your website visitors, or fans on your Facebook page, or even twitter followers, you can ask them to complete a survey for you. There are a number of free survey websites available such as surveymonkey.com, zoomerang.com and esurveyspro.com that allow you to ask a limited number of questions and either provide a link to take the survey, or to email the survey to respondents who volunteer;
- Hand out paper surveys – If you operate a retail store, you can train your staff to ask customers to take a survey home with them and return it either in person or via the mail. You might need to offer some type of small gift (a free cup of coffee? a 20% purchase discount?) to entice them to complete the survey, but it's a variable cost that's tied to the level of participation you achieve;
- Host a focus group – I've seen savvy business owners invite their most loyal customers to visit and engage in a discussion about new product ideas, about service issues or other subjects that will help the business improve the customer experience. Because you're asking a customer to invest an hour or more of their time in helping you identify new ideas, you may want to spring for a catered meal and provide small gifts of appreciation at the end of the discussion;
