Last week I ran a survey called The Honest Audit with my newsletter subscribers. It’s a short survey about where they are in their business across the five criteria I use to help business owners start or grow: The 5Ps (People, Product, Price, Promotion and Productivity).
One question asked: “Do you know (with evidence) who your profitable customers are and what makes them buy from you?”
75% said: “I know my ideal customer in theory.”
In theory!
If you’re guessing who your customers are, you’re wasting time and money developing products and services or marketing to people who’ll never buy. It’s a polite way of saying “I’ve made some assumptions about who I think buys from me, but I haven’t actually checked if I’m right.”
Most Solopreneurs have created an ideal customer profile at some point. Maybe on a course, maybe in a planning session, maybe scribbled in a notebook. But those profiles are usually built on:
- Wishful thinking
- What you’d like to be true
- Guesses about demographics (and very little attention to psychographics)
- What someone else told you
What they’re not built on? Evidence.
Assumptions don’t pay the bills. Evidence does.
Why ‘Knowing Your Customer in Theory’ Is Costing You Money
When you’re attempting to sell to a theoretical customer, you’re:
- Writing marketing content that doesn’t resonate
- Trying to solve problems they don’t actually have
- Using language they don’t use
- Showing up in the wrong places
- Pricing based on guesswork or (worse) self-worth
And then you wonder why your business isn’t working.
The good news? You don’t need a £5,000 market research agency to fix this. You need to stop guessing and start asking. And AI can do the heavy lifting for you.
Two Paths: Choose Your Adventure
Whether you’ve got customers or you’re just starting out, there’s a way forward. Pick your path:
Path 1: I Don’t Have Customers Yet – You will need to research your market and your target customer group
Path 2: I’ve Got Customers But I’ve Never/Rarely Asked Them Anything – You need to collect your data (yes, you do have some) and analyse it
Both paths can use the same free (or cheap) AI tools to make sense of the information you need to collect (Path 1) or analyse (Path 2).
Here’s how.
The Free (or Nearly Free)Tools You’ll Need
Before I get into the AI prompts you can use to get the most out of using AI for this process, here’s a ‘Toolkit’ that I think will help:
1. AI Tools for Research and Analysis
- ChatGPT (free tier works fine) think of it as your research assistant
- Claude.ai (free tier available) is brilliant for analysing longer documents and finding patterns
- Perplexity (free) is great for quick market research questions with sources
2. Survey Tools (For Collecting Customer Data)
- Microsoft Forms (free tier available) is dead simple and works really well with Excel
- Google Forms (free) makes it easy to share with others
- Typeform (free tier available) can be ‘prettier’ and can encourage a better response rate
3. Analytics (You’ve Already Got These)
- Your email marketing platform will provide you with lots of analytical information including who opens your email, who clicks on your links
- Google Analytics gathers so much information! Yes, it can be a bit confusing but by taking a little bit of time to get to know it you will be amazed at what it can tell you about who visits your website
- If you’re using social media, each platform has a section for insights; the place it sorts and collates your data.
4. Free Market Research Sources
- Answer The Public will show you what people are actually searching for on the Internet
- Reddit hosts real conversations, by real people. Be prepared for unfiltered opinions!
- Google Reviews help you understand how customers interact and rate your competition as you can read their reviews
- Online groups, for example, Facebook or LinkedIn will allow you to read the questions your customers ask or the complaints they make
Path 1: Market Research (When You Don’t Have Customers Yet)
You’re just starting. You haven’t sold anything yet. You can’t survey customers because you don’t have any.
That’s fine. You’re going to use AI to research the market instead.
What You’re Looking For
- Who are your competitors targeting?
- What problems exist in your market that people will pay to solve?
- What language do potential customers use when they talk about these problems?
- What’s working (and not working) for similar businesses?
AI Prompts for Market Research
Feel free to copy these prompts into ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity (or any other AI tool you may be using). Replace the bits in [square brackets] with your details.
Prompt 1: Identify the Problems
“I’m a [your service/product] targeting [rough customer type]. What are the top 5 problems this audience faces that they’d pay to solve? For each problem, explain why it matters to them and what happens if they don’t fix it.”
Prompt 2: Analyse Competitor Reviews
“I’m researching [competitor name or type of business]. Can you find and analyse common complaints in reviews for [similar services/products]? What patterns do you see? What are customers frustrated about?”
Prompt 3: Understand the Language
“What questions do [your target audience] ask most frequently about [your topic]? List them by category and show me the exact wording they use.”
Prompt 4: Build a Customer Profile
“I’m targeting [rough description]. Based on market data, what demographics, behaviours, and characteristics should I research further? What evidence would prove or disprove my assumptions?”
Prompt 5: Find Where They Hang Out
“Where do [your target audience] spend time online? Which forums, social media groups, websites, or communities do they use? What are they discussing in those spaces?”
What To Do With The Answers
Don’t just read them and move on.
Save them. Compare them. Use the language you discover on your website, in your marketing and what you say at networking.
Find the online and social media spaces where those people interact and listen to their real conversations.
Path 2: Customer Research (When You’ve Got Customers)
You’ve sold things. You’ve got customers. You’ve maybe never asked them why they bought from you.
Time to fix that.
Step 1: Collect What You Already Have
Most business owners are sitting on a goldmine of customer data. They just haven’t used it.
To get started, gather together all of this information and pop it into a single Word document or Google Doc (yes, it’s likely to be a big document!):
- Emails from customers (especially the “yes, I’ll buy” ones)
- Testimonials and reviews
- Questions people asked before they bought
- Social media comments and DMs
- Notes from consultations or discovery calls
- Requests for explanations or support queries
- Any complaints (gold dust, those)
Don’t edit it. Don’t organise it. Just get it all in one place.
Step 2: Ask Your Customers Directly
Create a short survey. 5-7 questions maximum. Don’t ask “what do you want?”, ask “why did you buy?”
Sample survey questions:
- What problem were you trying to solve when you found me?
- What nearly stopped you from buying?
- What convinced you to buy anyway?
- How would you describe what I do to a friend?
- What’s changed for you since working with me / buying this?
Use Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, or Typeform. Send it to your email list. Stick it in your social media. Offer a small incentive if you need to (£10 Amazon voucher, free resource, entry into a prize draw).
Step 3: Analyse It With AI
Now you’ve got data. Time to make sense of it.
Prompt 1: Find the Patterns
“Here are [X] customer testimonials / survey responses / emails [paste them]. What common themes, pain points, and language patterns do you see? Group them into categories.”
Prompt 2: Understand Buying Triggers
“I’ve pasted emails from customers who bought from me. What were the deciding factors that made them buy? What objections did they have before purchasing? What language did they use to describe their problems?”
Prompt 3: Spot What You’re Missing
“Based on this customer feedback [paste], what questions am I not asking that I should be? What gaps in my understanding do you see?”
Prompt 4: Build an Evidence-Based Profile
“Based on this evidence [paste], create a customer profile including: demographics, pain points, buying triggers, common objections, and the language they use. Show me which parts are backed by evidence and which parts I still need to verify.”
Prompt 5: Compare Customer Segments
“Compare these two sets of customers [paste data about high-value vs low-value customers, or different product buyers]. What’s different about them? What patterns do you see?”
Prompt 6: Test Your Assumptions
“I think my ideal customer is [paste your current customer profile or assumptions]. Based on this evidence [paste customer data], am I right or wrong? What does the evidence actually say?”
What to Do With All This Information
You’ve done the research. You’ve collected the data. You’ve asked AI to analyse it. Now what?
Don’t just file it away. Use it.
1. Update Your Marketing
- Use the exact language your customers use in your website copy, emails, and social media
- Talk about the problems they actually have (not the ones you think they have)
- Address the objections that nearly stopped them buying
2. Fix Your Offer
- If customers keep asking questions about the same thing, you’re not explaining it clearly enough
- If they’re solving a different problem than you thought, adjust your positioning
- If they’re getting value from something unexpected, make that the focus
3. Show Up in the Right Places
- If you’ve identified where your customers hang out online, be there
- If they’re asking questions on forums or in groups, answer them
- If they’re searching for specific things, create content that shows up in those searches
4. Keep Going
This isn’t a one-and-done exercise. Markets change. Customers change. What they need changes.
- Ask for feedback after every sale
- Run a customer survey once or twice a year
- Pay attention to what people ask you
- Keep analysing your data with AI
The Bottom Line
You don’t need expensive market research.
You need to stop assuming and start asking.
If you’ve got no customers yet, use AI to research the market. If you’ve got customers, collect the data you’re already sitting on and use AI to analyse it.
The tools are free. The prompts are above. You can start today.
Done beats perfect.
Need Help Turning Research Into Results?
Knowing who your customers are is just the first step. Turning that knowledge into a business that actually works – that’s where most business owners get stuck.
If you’ve done this research and you’re still not sure what to do with it, that’s what I’m here for. So, if you want proper help turning your customer research into a profitable business strategy, book a freebie 30-Minute Consult. We’ll look at what the evidence is actually telling you and what you need to do next.
Evidence doesn’t mean anything if you don’t act on it!