Getting unsolicited feedback is never fun. No matter if it’s in your day to day business life, or in a personal matter. However, in business, seeking feedback from the public is key to success.

In this article, we’re going to look at some specific examples within business when public feedback can go a long way.

1. Is your Idea Attractive Enough?

Firstly, there’s public feedback when it comes to creating a new product. This is called concept testing. This is done relatively early on in the new product development cycle, once you have created a concept through a creative process. At the moments before concept testing, everyone in your company might think that you have the best idea in the world since sliced bread.

However, concept testing can show you the brutal reality of whether or not the public is interested in your idea. It can be hard to hear if your idea does not go down well with the public. However, it’s a lot more important to find out during concept testing that this is the case than on the day that a product is launched after spending a lot of money on it.

2. Is your Brand Known?

Next, as your company grows, your brand becomes a bigger asset to you. It’s important to check in on your brand and knowing how much value it’s adding to your business.

Your brand is the way in which you choose how to present yourself to the public. This means you’re not going to know how well your brand is doing without engaging the public. This value is often known as brand equity. This will use different metrics such as unprompted brand recall, net promoter scores and purchase intent to calculate an overall value of your brand.

3. Are your Products/Services on Demand?

Finally, it’s important to remember, this type of public feedback we’ve talked about so far is only good if it’s unbiased. Take concept testing for example, if the concept was surrounded by the brand and a marketing strategy, then it’ll sway public feedback. This will distort the truth of what people genuinely think about a concept, which makes the information gained worthless.

Similarly, if your own company is asking members of the public what they think about their brand, they may give the answers they think you want to hear, and not the actual truth. Therefore, if you’re considering getting the public involved to help you in some form, consider doing it via a market research specialist instead of doing it in house.