Staying Ahead Of The Consumer Perceptual Curve

Staying relevant in the market you’re most concerned with will be best achieved by understanding the shifting needs of the consumers you appeal to. This is not something you can predict, but it is something you can hope to shape. To get to that point, you will need to flow with the tide in order to understand how to make it work for you. This can come from a variety of sources, but we’d like to offer you the best and most advantageous means of doing so through the lens of your small personal enterprise:

RSS Feeds

Setting up a terminal (or second monitor if your operation is humble,) dedicated to viewing RSS feeds from multiple different industry-specific news and businesses can help you stay ahead of the curve. Reading widely and deeply during the day about how businesses around you are conducting their business, innovating and adapting to a growing market will help you sniff out some of the methods of the big players in your field. It will also help you recognize patterns, and sometimes that is the most important thing you can hope to do when predicting future trends.

Social Media

The best way to gain a grip of the zeitgeist is through social media. Simply favorite a few simple hashtag through twitter such as #businesscasestudy, #marketing or industry-specific tags such as #Apple or #technology will help you see shifting perceptions from the ground level. This is a wonderful tool if you know how to use it correctly. Just be sure that you manage your social media accounts well via staff training or maintain them personally, as it’s easy to commit social media blunders from your firm page if you’re not careful.

Read

It’s no accident blogs like this exist. Helpful blogs benefit from giving the readers something positive they can take elsewhere.You should focus on reading case studies, learning the history of how industries have developed, as well as staying on top of the biggest topics which offer a complete revolution in the way we conduct business (automation and AI to name a couple.) Reading full compendium guides can help you learn the best practices of eCommerce among other fascinating and intrinsically useful tidbits of advice.

Discuss & Feedback

Sometimes, reading what people have to say in one format can be slightly misleading. Try to gain a range of perspectives through different mediums. For a more direct conversation why not ask your customers for their thoughts directly? Allow them to give criticism, feedback and ask them to ponder what they would like to see in the future. Discussion and feedback from a primary source such as this can mean a world of good when it comes to assessing how customers are feeling in the present day, as that is all that matters. With time you may become wise and tuned in to how the market is growing, and you will provide the product of tomorrow which will rocket you into further exposure.

Consumers can be fickle, but with these tips, you’ll have a little more solid footing in the progression of your industry.