The four decisions to come out with
Most market research rounds for a small business produce decisions in four areas. Customer - who you're going to focus on next. Offer - what you're going to sell, drop or sharpen. Message - the sentence or two you'll lead with. Channel - where you'll spend your time and money to reach the customer.
Notice that pricing isn't on this list. Pricing is a downstream decision that depends on the four above. There's a whole separate eBook for it. Notice also that there's no "strategy" decision. The four small decisions, taken together, are the strategy.
Writing each decision
Each decision should fit on one or two lines and use plain language. "We're going to focus on landlords with five to twenty properties within fifteen miles, dropping single-property landlords for now." "We're going to lead with same-hour emergency response and the maintenance contract that's grown out of it, instead of advertising domestic plumbing generally." "Our headline becomes 'The plumber landlords use when they're tired of chasing.'" "We're putting our channel time into Google Business Profile reviews and the two letting agents we already do business with, and pausing the social media we've been struggling to keep up with."
Notice the shape: each one names what we're doing and what we're explicitly not doing. The "not doing" half is what gives the decision its teeth. A choice that doesn't close any other option isn't really a choice.
The one-page summary
- Date of the research round.
- The question you started with.
- Top three demand findings, in one sentence each.
- Top three competitor findings, in one sentence each.
- Top three customer phrases, in their own words.
- The four decisions: customer, offer, message, channel.
- What you'll measure to know if the decisions are working.
- When you'll review (usually three months from now).
Stick it on the wall. Take a photo. Put it at the front of whatever notebook or folder you're using. The point is that it's visible and that you can find it again three months later without searching.
What to measure
The measurement section is what stops the decisions becoming hopeful intentions. Keep it small and specific. "By the end of next quarter, half our enquiries should mention the maintenance contract." "Our average new customer should be a landlord with at least three properties, not a single homeowner." "Google review count should grow from forty to sixty." "Time spent on social media should drop to under an hour a week."
Each measure should be something you'd actually notice. If a measure requires a complicated tool to track, it'll quietly stop being tracked. The point is to know, three months from now, whether the decisions worked.
When to review
Three months is the right gap. Long enough for the decisions to have had a chance to land. Short enough that you don't drift into a year of running the wrong offer. Block the review date in your calendar at the same time you write the page. Without the calendar entry, the review date will quietly slip into next year.
When the next round disagrees
Three months from now, you'll run a lighter version of this whole exercise. Half a day of demand checks, an hour each on three competitors, fresh review reading, a couple of customer conversations. Sometimes the picture will confirm what you decided last quarter. Often something will have shifted.
When something disagrees, don't immediately swap the decision. First check whether the change is real (a clear pattern over weeks) or a one-off blip. Then check whether your current decisions are working - if they are, change carefully; if they aren't, change quickly. The owners who handle this well treat their one-page summary as a living document, not a contract.
Building the rhythm
Once a quarter for the lighter round. Once a year for the full week. That's the rhythm. Most owners spend less than five working days a year on market research and end up with a sharper view of their market than competitors who never look up. The compounding effect of running this every quarter for a few years is large and quiet.
What to do this week
Take whatever research you've done so far. Write the four decisions on a single page using the template above. Add the measures and the review date. Stick it on the wall. Even if your research isn't complete, having the page in draft form makes the gaps obvious and gets you moving.
Review results and improve the system. That's the principle that closes this eBook. The next book in this category is 'Customer Interviews and Buyer Research', which goes deeper on the conversation work in chapter five. After that, the journey moves into 'Designing Your First Offer' in the next category, where the four decisions you've just made become the input.
