You’ll have greater success the better you know your customers. So, how do you get to know your customers? Follow these guidelines and ideas to hop in your customers’ shoes and figure out what exactly they want:

Ask them what they want. Yep, it can be that simple! Just ask – when they are in your store, by email or mail or by comment cards. Do some postcard printing and mail out postcards with short, tear-off surveys that can be sent back to you, postage prepaid.

If you have a Web site or blog (and you should have one of these by now), leave a place for comments and questions. Web sites have made it easy to get candid feedback because people can remain anonymous, which means they can be more honest.

Imagine yourself as your customer. You should know the basics of your customers’ lives – are they married? Where do they live and work? Do they have kids and/or pets?

Sometimes just asking them won’t give you good results because people like to be nice and don’t want to hurt your feelings. Try to imagine what your customer is feeling when he or she walks in your store – what attracts them? What repels them? Go through your store as if you were a customer – are things easy to find? Do whatever you can to get in the minds of your customers.

Surf the ‘net to find customer opinions. Sites like Epinions.com and blogs and forums related directly to your product or industry can give you great insight into your customers’ opinions. People can and are blunt on the Web. You can read specific complaints and even sometimes get ideas on how to fix something that’s wrong.

What are your customers’ Googling? Google has keyword research devices that you can use to see what keywords are using to search for your products and products like yours. You can find out what people are searching your competitors’ Web sites for, and what your competitor has that you don’t on your site.

Talk to your competitors’ customers. You can do this in-person by perusing your competitions’ stores, or online on their Web sites or on forums. Find out what customers like about your competitors and see if you can do that same thing better. You may even gain insight into activities that you do as well as your competitors, but people just don’t know you do it. That’s a big flag that you aren’t marketing the right aspects of your business or that you aren’t using language that your customers understand or pay attention to.

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Kaye Z. Marks is an avid writer and follower of developments in  http://www.printplace.com/printing/postcard-printing.aspx postcard printing industry and how these improvements can benefit small to medium-scale businesses. www.printplace.com