This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Oh yeah, welcome to Side Hustle School. Your host, Chris Guillebeau, here. Today we're gonna hear from Bill, a caller in Madison, Wisconsin. Madison, Wisconsin. Lovely place, I went there a couple times.
But it's been a while, I should get back there. All right, on topic here. Bill is looking for advice on how to use customer feedback to improve his marketing strategy for, let's see, what is it for? Oh, it's for his side hustle. Oh, well that makes sense, since this is side hustle school.
So gathering feedback from customers, you're probably familiar with that. It is an important tool for any small business owner. But in terms of how you actually use it, how do you apply it? It can be challenging to know how to do that effectively. So let's hear Bill's question.
Let's see what insights we can offer. That's coming up in just 30 seconds after this shout out to our sponsor. [Music]
Hi there, my name is Bill and I'm calling from Madison, Wisconsin. I recently started my latest side hustle and I'm eager to improve my marketing strategy. I know that customer feedback is an important tool for making informed decisions, but I'm not sure how to use it effectively.
Can you share some tips on how I can use customer feedback to improve my marketing strategy and make the new hustle a success? [Music]
All right, shout out to Bill for the question. Customer feedback can be a valuable tool for any business. I think a lot of businesses just kind of accept feedback, but don't do anything with it, right? And that can also be fine, you know?
Like if you know what you want to achieve, you don't necessarily need feedback. But you know, most businesses are going to be able to use feedback to improve their process, to improve their service and product and hopefully be able to sell more of it, right? So if you want to use customer feedback effectively, I think it's important to begin by asking the right questions. And the right question is not like, "Hey, did you like our service?" You know, it's something much more detailed, like what did you like, what did you not like? Is there anything that could make this more magical for you, you know, more special or just better in general?
It could be something specific about like what about the packaging? What about, you know, whatever kind of outreach we did, whatever kind of onboarding we did. So there's a few different ways to do it, but I think just understanding like what kind of feedback are you looking for and then asking the right questions, that's a big start or the right start. And then you want to make sure you're listening actively. Like, are you actually paying attention to that?
Taking the time to think about what you're hearing. You could be like reviewing some written comments in a survey or something. It might not always be like a face-to-face conversation or a telephone conversation, but however you take in this information, listen or process it actively. Let's say, you know, write down these comments, categorize them, like devote some time to looking for patterns or trends. And so if you've done those first two things, if you've asked the right questions and you've taken some time to process it, then, you know, that's when you're going to act on it, right?
So use those insights to improve your marketing, could be changing the product, the message, the marketing channel. The key at that point is to make informed decisions that will help you better serve your customers because you have set it up well in the first place. So that's what I think about that. I could do it better myself, you know, like in just in like formulating that answer. I'm like, oh, I could listen to feedback better than I do.
And I would like to get better at that. So I'm going to try to work on that. Listeners, you can hold me accountable. You can also ask questions if you'd like, sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll continue to feature them each week.
We have a new episode of the podcast every day, seven days a week. It's all free. Thanks for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
