Customer satisfaction surveys, online survey questions, questionnaires with open-ended questions and answers from potential customers and positive and negative customer feedback and... these are all great ways to find out what your customers actually want and can improve business prospects. As a business owner, getting to know your audience and your customers is a huge part of establishing your brand. How you relate to and how much you know your customers will determine how successful your business will be. If you don’t know your audience, there is no way you can market to them appropriately.

Giving customers (and potential customers) a questionnaire will not only help you get to know them better, but it will also help you decide how you should shape your marketing and sales strategies. A questionnaire can also give you valuable information and insight about your target audience, which will help you determine what products you should be selling and how you should be selling these products.

Results from a questionnaire can also give you valuable insight into how to appeal to your customers, which will help guide your marketing strategy in a direction that strengthens and deepens your connections and relationships with customers.

This type of audience research will help you identify your customers’ needs, lifestyles, habits, dislikes, likes and more.

The Benefits of Customer Questionnaires

There are all sorts of advantages of getting to know your customers through the use of a questionnaire, including:

• Helps you determine what and why they purchase
• Helps build value for customers
• Improves customer relationships
• Informs you of what your customers expect from you
• Can help lower costs
• Can give you insight into what consumers think about your competitors

A questionnaire will help improve your business and your product and will also help you gain an understanding of your market audience. Questionnaires help businesses capture essential and valuable information that they can use to develop their marketing and sales strategies.

Cycling is a very niche industry. This is why it is extremely important to capture the interests and buying habits of this market. There is a lot of money to be made from niche industries as long as you know what your audience likes and what they are looking for.

Identifying what your market audience likes will help you develop a deeper connection with them and will also enhance engagement and sales. A questionnaire will give you an idea as to how your customers purchase and why they are buying certain products.

Other ways to get to know your customers:

• Customer reviews
• Keyword research
• Market research outside of your customer base
• Social media analysis
• Leverage social media

Creating a Template for a Questionnaire

Determining what you should put on your questionnaire depends on what you hope to achieve from the results of the questionnaire. If you are hoping to sell products, you need to ask questions which will help you determine what and how you should be selling these products.

Here are some questions you should be asking yourself as you start to develop the template and outline of your questionnaire:

• How does your audience think?
• Which demographic group is likely to purchase from you?
• What needs do your customers and audience have?
• How does your product help your target market?
• What makes them purchase?
• How do your customers think?
• What are customers purchasing from your competitors?
• What is the best way to reach your customers?
• What media do they use?

A questionnaire that is dedicated to getting to know your customers is meant to inform you about their habits and buying patterns. Be sure to incorporate the following questions to reap the rewards of a customer-focused questionnaire.

1. How did you hear about us?

It’s important to know what channels your customers went through to reach you. It will help you understand what channels you need to incorporate into your marketing strategy when trying to bring in new customers. Knowing where your customers are coming from will give you the ability to market directly to the medium they are reaching you from. Rather than them coming to you, you open up the opportunity to reach them first through this channel.

2. Why do you cycle?

It’s important to find out why your customers are cycling. Do they do it for fun? Recreational purposes? Extreme sports? Do they cycle competitively? Finding out why the majority of your customers are cycling will help you understand who you should cater to and how you should develop your products and brand to cater to them.

3. What do you like the most about cycling? What do you dislike?

Getting to know your customers’ likes and dislikes will directly tell you what you need to focus on in your sales and marketing strategies. Getting to know what your customers don’t like will also help you understand what products you don’t need to spend your efforts on.

4. What cycling events (if any) do you frequent?

Knowing what events your customers are going to gives you the chance to attend these events as a vendor, putting a face on your business and giving you the opportunity to speak directly to your customers. This will help establish a relationship and rapport with customers and the cycling community.

5. Where else do you shop for your cycling needs? What do you like and dislike about them?

Getting to know who your competitors are and what they are doing is imperative in running a successful business. Seeing what works and doesn’t work for your competitors can help you optimise your business so that you can gain an edge over them. It’s important to know what your competitors are doing so that you can always stay one step ahead.

6. What do you buy?

Finding out what your customers buy will help you develop a sales strategy that is geared to selling the products that your customers want. Knowing what your customers are buying will help you allocate the right resources into your sales strategy, which will, in turn, maximise your profits.

7. What will you use our cycle shop for?

Find out what your customers value and what they like. Do your customers look for quality? Quantity? Brand names? Accessories? Finding out their main reasons for visiting your store will help you develop a sales strategy that caters towards these things.

Ask the Right Questions

At the end of the day, you need to make sure that you are asking the right questions and really getting to know your customers through your questionnaire. It will be a way for you to actually get into the minds of your customers and see how they are thinking and why they think that way.

A questionnaire will also help you understand what your competitors are doing right and what they’re doing wrong, which will be a huge part of how you develop your sales strategy.