By Elizabeth Boineau

Personal resolutions abound as the calendar turns over to a new year brimming with opportunities and the chance for a fresh start. It’s also a good time to closely examine the strength of your company and/or product and to spend a little time focusing on how to make a brand new year ring in benefits on the business side too.

So let’s begin where all good strategic planners would: by asking how our company is perceived in the eyes of our audiences—internal and external. How do they see us? What would they do differently? Who’s the competition in their eyes? Are the internal (employees, board members) and external (customer, prospects, influencers) opinions the same? If not, this process may help define what some key issues are, while offering a forum for feedback and recommendations for change.

First we go inside, where every employee is critical to success and whose opinions are often overlooked in the haste of today’s focus on customer service and quick responses. In the long term, however, if staff is out of step with the vision and direction of leadership, it could be detrimental to a company’s image and reputation. Simply not being asked their thoughts, opinions and attitudes may leave employees feeling alienated.

To get their feedback, hold routine staff meetings, send e-mail surveys, set a forum for discussion with a select body of employees who can take the word back and forth to the ranks. One way is to have employees nominate individuals to serve on what becomes an internal advisory panel, especially effective in mid- to large-size companies, or those with a number of locations, resulting in the potential for greater communication barriers. It’s important to communicate and collaborate with all teams, departments and locations to be sure you’re meeting their need for information and access and presenting a unified front to customers and prospects.

To get input from outside audiences, good options include a telephone or more in-depth interview with a short list of questions, or a roundtable discussion of 10 to12 people whom you reward with at least a meal, or maybe a stipend of either cash or a donation to their favorite charity. Mail surveys are sometimes used, but in my experience, compliance is worse, few are returned (particularly if there’s no incentive) and the answers are often hastily scribbled out in a one-way exchange that disallows valuable information you may gain from follow up questions and probing opportunities afforded by a phone or in-person forum.

Another method coming increasingly into favor for both internal and external audiences is online research. Some companies now have the ability to tap a specific demographic and ask key questions about product preference or brand perception. Prospective participants may be reached through banner ads asking them to respond to a survey that pops up based on some personal information they have just offered on an e-commerce site, for example.

Even sending an e-mail survey to all employees of a worldwide corporation is a cinch now as one is typically notified to respond by going to a special customized Web site the research firm has established for that company, complete the form and then results are automatically tallied, summarized and sent to management. It’s all objective, your boss won’t see your answers, and it’s quick, easy and cost-effective. You could do the same with your customers and prospects, but it’s generally better to have an outside firm send the survey to ensure candid, objective responses.

All of these methods gather what is known as primary information vs. secondary information (such as you might get from doing some online research, reviewing trade industry reports and the like) and are qualitative studies rather than quantitative. The latter, though statistically probable, are more expensive, large-scale, and involve pulling a random sampling from all members of the universe, which can be expensive and typically more expansive than most medium-size companies need.

To help you get started with the secondary variety, below is some free research from Interland, a provider of online services for small- to medium-size businesses, from its Spring 2004 Business Barometer of Online Activities, a survey of online usage by small businesses with Web sites. The group of businesses was asked to select marketing tools critical to driving business.

Results indicate that the most critical tool is a Web site (69%); search engine keywords and optimization (36%); public relations, including community activities (35%); e-mail marketing (24%); direct mail marketing (22%); a Yellow Pages listing (12%); newspaper advertising (5%); outdoor advertising (4%); and print coupons (2%). Might be worth taking these channels into account when you probe, plan and aim to reach your audience most successfully in this brand new year. Here’s to making sure it’s happy and prosperous!

Elizabeth L. Boineau runs E. Boineau & Co., a Charleston-based strategic marketing communications and public relations firm. She can be reached at eboineau@eboineauandco.com.

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