Market research is a method to collect information from your business buyers and a focused audience on analyzing the viability of your product. It will support you to judge how your product will be successful in the target audience or their reaction.
This research will also help you to know about the exact location of your buyers. As our digital world rises and needs more of our focus, it becomes priceless. So, while knowing buyers’ issues and their demanding solutions, we can tailor our brand and services to request them.
Generally, market research falls into the following;
- Interviews
- Focus groups
- Investigation into the use of product or service
- Observational research
- Buyer personality research
- Market distribution research
- Pricing research
- Competitive analysis research
- Research on buyer’s satisfaction and loyalty
- Brand awareness research
- And campaign research
Importance of Market Research
The market research gives an understanding of different things that affect your bottom line, with:
- Where your focused group and existing clients research their product or service.
- Which of your competitors does your target audience seek for information, choices, or buying?
- What are the trends in your industry and the mind of your customers?
- Who builds your market, and what are their problems?
- How your purchases and conversions affect your focused groups.
Types of Market Research
Generally, market research is divided into major types;
1- Primary Research
Primary research is about getting first-hand information about your market and the customers in your market. This is useful when dividing your market and creating a buyer’s personality. Such type of market research is categorized into the investigative and specialized analysis.
-
Investigative Research
This type of core market research is less about assessable purchaser leanings and more about latent issues that a team will address. This is usually the first step; before any thorough research has been done and may include open interviews with very few people.
-
Specialized Research
Specialized market research frequently follows exploratory research. It is helpful to find problems or opportunities that the brand has already recognized as significant. In this research, an organization can engage a small or more accurate part of their groups and ask questions about resolving a suspicious issue.
2- Secondary Research
Secondary research is all about the information and public records you collect at your discarding, including trend reports, market data, industry content, and sales data on your business, etc. This type of research is particularly helpful for analyzing your competitors. It will further be categorized into the following;
-
Public sources
These resources are the essential and most available part of your content when doing secondary market research. They are mostly free to explore and review – lots of things here for your money. We can say that government statistics are one of the most mutual kinds of public resources.
-
Marketable Sources
Mostly we can see these sources in the types of market reports, which include industry understandings compiled by research agencies such as Pew, Gartner, or Forrester. As this information is transferable and distributable, it usually costs money to download and retrieve it.
-
Internal Sources
Internal sources need more praise than usual for assisting in market research. Do you know why? It is the industry information that you already have! Average sales profits, client retaining rates, and other past data related to the accuracy of old and new accounts can support you to conclude what your customers want right now.
After covering the basic market research types, we are going to narrow down those essential steps required for good research.
However, conducting the best market research is not as easy as assuming if we want to make our spot in the competitive market. So here, we have enlisted the basic steps to conduct good market research for the desired output.
7 Steps To Conduct a Good Market Research
1- Understand the personality of your buyer.
At the essential step, you should know the personality of your buyer. You must know who they are. You can also use different free tools to build buyer personality to market, sell and offer the best services.
These tools will support you to see your audience, smooth out your statement, and describe your plan. You should know the age, gender, location, resignations, incomes, and problems of your target audience.
This personal guideline will help you effectively reach and learn about the actual audience members in your market. You should think about each personality when you are planning and improving your content and campaigns.
2- Identify a personal group to engage.
After learning about your buyers, you can use this information to recognize a group that will engage in your market research. It should be a demonstrative sample of your focused audience. Hence you can effectively understand their problems and the nature of buying.
The recognized engaging group must include those personalities who have freshly made a purchase or have deliberately decided not to purchase. Here are some tips for targeting the exact people to engage for your research;
- Choose those who have recently connected you.
- Make a list of those who purchase the same brand from your competitors.
- Note down those who encourage or praise your product but did not buy it.
- Reach folk people who follow you on social media but did not purchase because of some confusion.
- Motivate people by sending thank you notes or offering free access to your content.
3- Create research questions
Prepare a discussion guide either for a target group, online survey, or phone interview. It will help you to ensure that you cover all the questions in mind and use your time sensibly. Your discussion should follow an appropriate outline structure, i.e., total time, open-ended questions for each part, etc.
The in-person interview can include questions of;
- Buyer’s background Information: Job responsibilities, team structure, team objective, past year problems, etc.
- Awareness section: How do they realize that they have these challenges to address?
- Consideration: What was their first source to solve their problem? Did this source help them or not? Which words or phrases did they use in search engines for their solution?
- Decision: Which source helps them more? How do they compare their solutions from different sources? Did they also involve any other personality in their final decision? What leads to finally making a purchase?
- Closing: What was better for them in the whole process? And in the end, thanks to them for their precious time.
4- Make a list of your main competitors.
Now it’s time to create a list of your main competitors. However, you should note that this listing is not very easy. It may also happen that the partition of an organization may compete with your core product or service, although that company’s brand may put more effort into it.
Let’s consider this from an example;
Apple is popular with its laptop and mobile device, but its music contest with Spotify on its music streaming service.
You can contest with blogs, YouTube channels, or other similar posts for incoming website traffic from the content perspective. It does not matter whether their products do not compete with you at all.
5- Recognize Industry Competitors
If you want to recognize your competitors whose products or services intersect with your brand; you should analyze which industry you are following. Again, try to start it from a high stage, with the help of phrases like education, construction, media and entertainment, food service, healthcare, marketing, financial services, broadcasting, and farming.
You should find an industry term that recognizes you. After this, use it to set a list of companies related to this industry. You can also follow these simple steps to develop your list;
- Analyze your industry quadrant on G2 Crowd
- Get a market report
- Use social media for searching
6- Recognize Content Competitors
Search engines are your second hand for secondary market research. To search the online magazines you compete with, take the industry term you identified above. And land with a few of the more precise industry phrases that your company classifies with.
After it, do an effective google search for your related industry term. Now check the competition in the website domains that appear. Finally, check out the first two or three results pages of whatever you’ve searched for.
The content that this website creates in your industry is appreciated. So, it should be viewed sensibly when you make your library of videos, reports, web pages, and blog posts.
7- Summarize your results.
Now it’s time to summarize your results. However, if you are overwhelmed by the notes you have taken, our recommendation is to find common themes that will support you in describing a story and develop a list of action items.
Conclusion
Market research is an important factor when designing your marketing strategy. If you do it appropriately, it can help illuminate your marketing activities, like understanding the needs of your focused group, helping them understand what important messages you need to convey. Further, it will also help you to know how to deliver your message.
Click here to lear about;