Borrow a page from the wise Politician

Politicians who stay in office for a long career learn the same lesson. Their constituency's voting patterns are not based on the strident special interest group demonstrators.

Sometimes to survive a primary, a politician will focus on pleasing special interest groups, but when it comes to the general election - the wise politician realizes that the independent vote is often the deciding factor. He also realizes that the size of a market segment is not based on the volume of the vociferous few.

As a business, to discover how to please your customer base, you need to discover how large the silent majority is and what the gripes of the silent majority are.

Seth Godin wrote "Listening to the Loud People."