There are two types of businesses –those that succeed and those that don’t.

All businesses have to make decisions continuously – on such things as pricing, their routes to market, their websites, their marketing, their products and the services they provide.

Getting these decisions wrong is often what makes the difference between success and failure.

So businesses – new and established – should be making well-informed decisions about these all-important issues, but many just guess. If you’re guilty of doing just that you should be considering low-cost, effective market research so that you really understand these issues.

Of course, enterprises can fail for all sorts of reasons, but regardless of the industry you are in there are a few things that you can do help to grow your business.

One area is understanding your competition.

You should be considering what they do better or worse than you, whether that’s in terms of service or a specific product. Can you offer savings over your competitor, or further improve your customer’s lives in a way they can’t?

Another crucial factor in the key to success is understanding your customers – do you know who they are and what they want? What about how and where they prefer to buy your service or product, how they found out about it in the first place, when they want to buy it and why they buy it? Why they like or dislike a competitor’s product, what else they like to buy, what can they afford? And so on.

Usually this will pay for itself almost immediately, as the tiny tweaks you can make to your business (often at no cost) can just nudge you ahead of where you are now, make you better than your competition, and enable you to charge a little more or perhaps reduce your costs.

Using a simple online survey tool, such as Survey Mechanics, it’s quick and easy to ask your customers what they think. Don’t forget to ask your ex-customers as well – they are a mine of useful information, and also those customers who ended up not buying from you.

Trust us: customers will appreciate you more for asking what they think, and you will uncover information that could supercharge your business.

Or you could just guess…