A wise man once said that sales is nothing more than finding out what the other guy wants, and then finding the most efficient way to give it to him. While no plan is perfect, you can do a lot of brainstorming once you really understand what your customers want. Oddly enough, sometimes the most surprising answers come straight from your customers themselves. Marketing isn’t just a bunch of ninjas hunching over a magical stew pot and chanting in ancient languages.

Sometimes there are simple technological ways to discern what “the other guy” wants, and from time to time they don’t even carry a cost. For instance, you can find free online surveys that will allow you to ask questions that will tell you all kinds of things about your customers and your website’s visitors. You can find out the basics, like their ages, occupations and educational levels, which will give you a fairly solid base from which you can tell what they want. From there, you can also identify what they like about what you’ve been doing so far.

Sometimes you’ll be surprised at how asking a few questions can open up your customers to really giving you feedback. While most of the vocal minority will be people who either think you can do no wrong or just as strongly believe you’re a laughing stock, sometimes you’ll get some great ideas if you allow an “other” answer to some questions. A very simple question you can include in any survey can go something like, “What do I do better than any other site?” The scariest answer you can get actually isn’t “nothing” — it’s silence.