Customer Research: Interviews, Surveys and Personas That Help

A lot of small business marketing is built on guesses: who the customer is, what they care about, which words they use and where they look for help. Some of those guesses are right. The ones that aren't quietly waste money on the wrong message, the wrong channel or the wrong offer.

Customer research replaces guesses with evidence, and it doesn't require a research budget. A handful of good conversations, a short survey and an honest look at the data you already have can change how you describe your business. The UK government's service design guidance puts the principle well: "Treat any opinions or suggestions that do not come from users as assumptions that have to be proven by doing research."

This guide covers where to start, how to run customer interviews, how to write survey questions that produce usable answers, and how to turn what you learn into personas and marketing decisions.

Start With What You Already Have

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) describes two routes to market research: existing sources and doing the research yourself. Existing sources save time and suit general, quantifiable questions such as industry trends, demographics and household incomes. Direct research takes more effort but answers questions specific to your business, such as reactions to your logo, ways to improve the buying experience, and where customers might go instead of you. The SBA points to free federal sources, including the Census Bureau's Census Business Builder and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Your own records count as existing evidence too. GOV.UK's guidance lists sources such as analytics, search logs and call center data. For a small business, that might mean:

• Questions people ask by phone, email or chat.
• Your reviews and your competitors' reviews, including the complaints.
• Search queries in Google Search Console that lead people to your site.
• Notes on why people chose you, or why they didn't.

Read these first and write down what you think is true. Those notes become the assumptions your interviews and surveys will test.

Customer Interviews

Interviews are the best way to learn the why behind behavior. GOV.UK's guidance on in-depth interviews says they help you learn about people's circumstances, how they use a service and what they need from it, and give you a deeper understanding of the problems they mention.

Plan the sessions.

• Talk to current or likely customers. For marketing, it helps to include recent buyers, long-time customers and, if you can reach them, people who considered you but chose someone else.
• Interviews usually involve one person at a time. GOV.UK says they can run from 30 minutes to 2 hours; longer sessions give more detail but make recruiting harder.
• Bring a note-taker if you can. The U.S. government's human-centered design guide on Digital.gov recommends an interviewer and a notetaker, and advises scheduling no more than two interviews per team per day, because interviewing is tiring.

Write a short discussion guide with the topics you want to cover, a starter question for each, and possible follow-ups. GOV.UK suggests testing it by interviewing a colleague first.

During the interview, GOV.UK recommends open, neutral questions such as "How do you…?" and "What do you think about…?", with simple follow-ups like "Can you tell me more about…?" Focus on stories and real examples rather than generalities or how things "should" happen, and stay quiet: the more you talk, the less the participant will. Digital.gov's guide also describes "laddering," or asking "why" repeatedly to get beneath an abstract answer.

For marketing, a few questions tend to be revealing. These are examples, not a script:

• "Tell me about the last time you needed something like this. What was going on?"
• "What did you try before you found us?"
• "What almost stopped you from buying?"
• "How would you describe what we do to a friend?"

The answer to that last question often gives you better headline wording than anything written in a meeting.

Surveys That Produce Usable Answers

Interviews show you what's going on; surveys help you measure how common it is. Pew Research Center's guide to writing survey questions offers advice that applies directly to a small business survey:

• Use open-ended questions to explore and closed-ended ones to measure. Pew notes researchers sometimes run open-ended questions first to find the most common answers, then turn those into answer choices.
• Keep answer lists short. Pew suggests four or perhaps five choices at most in most cases, more for factual or demographic questions.
• Make answer choices cover all reasonable responses without overlapping.
• Ask one thing at a time. A question like "How satisfied are you with our prices and service?" is double-barreled; split it into two.
• Use simple, concrete language, and avoid double negatives and jargon.
• Be wary of agree-disagree statements. Pew describes "acquiescence bias," a tendency for some respondents to agree, and suggests offering a choice between alternative statements instead.
• Watch the order. Earlier questions can shape answers to later ones, and in self-administered surveys respondents tend to pick items near the top of a list.
• Pretest before sending it widely.

Remember who answered. A survey sent to your email list describes your email list, which may be your most loyal customers, not the wider market you want to reach.

Personas That Earn Their Keep

A persona is a short profile of a group of customers with similar needs and behavior. GOV.UK suggests user profiles or personas as one way to share what you've learned. The useful ones are built from research, not imagination.

A research-based persona for marketing usually includes:

• The situation that triggers the need.
• The goal, in the customer's own words.
• The main worries or obstacles.
• Where they look for information and whose opinion they trust.
• Phrases they actually used in interviews.

GOV.UK's format for writing needs is a helpful discipline: "I need to… so that…" Its guidance says good needs should sound like something a real user might say, be based on research evidence rather than assumptions, and focus on the problem rather than a solution.

For example, a hypothetical bike repair shop might find two groups in its interviews: commuters who say "I need my bike fixed the same day so I can get to work," and weekend riders who want a tune-up before a big ride. Those two needs call for different messages, different timing and possibly different channels. Details such as an invented name, age or favorite food add little unless they change a decision.

Turning Research Into Marketing

Research is only worth doing if it changes something. Common uses include:

• Rewriting headlines, ads and page copy using customers' own words. Our guide How to Write a Value Proposition Customers Understand shows how.
• Answering the objections you heard ("What almost stopped you?") directly on landing pages.
• Choosing channels based on where people said they look for help.
• Turning repeated questions into guides, videos or FAQ entries.

Revisit your findings at least once a year, or after a big change in your offer or market.

Treat Participants With Respect

Ask for informed consent. GOV.UK's guidance says participants should understand who is doing the research and why, what data you're collecting, how results will be used, that taking part is voluntary and they can stop at any time, and whether the session is observed or recorded. Store notes and recordings securely, use them only as agreed, and thank people for their time.

Key takeaways

• Start with existing evidence, from federal data sources to your own reviews, emails and search queries, and list your assumptions.
• Use short interviews with open, neutral questions and real stories to learn why customers act as they do.
• Use surveys to measure what interviews uncover, following basic question-writing rules from survey researchers.
• Build personas from research, focused on needs, triggers, obstacles and customers' own words.
• Get informed consent and turn findings into specific changes in copy, channels and content.

Sources

• U.S. Small Business Administration, Plan your business: Market research and competitive analysis
• GOV.UK Service Manual, Learning about users and their needs
• GOV.UK Service Manual, Using in-depth interviews
• GOV.UK Service Manual, Getting informed consent for user research
• Digital.gov, HCD Discovery Operations Guide: Interviews and observations
• Digital.gov, HCD Discovery Operations Guide: Research planning
• Pew Research Center, Writing Survey Questions