Market research is information about the needs and preferences of the market. It affects every aspect of the business, including brand, product, customer, sales and marketing services. By understanding how your audience feels and behaves, you can take steps to meet those needs and reduce the risk of a gap between what your audience expects from you and what you deliver.
Market research helps you avoid mistakes, stick to your message, and anticipate customer needs.
A marketing agency task is to use research to arrive at the best possible solution based on the research available. They must then implement the solution, modify it, and successfully introduce that solution to the market.
Why should you conduct market research?
By conducting marketing research, you can obtain important data backed by facts. Based on this data, you can make informed decisions about the development of your business. Marketing research gives a direct idea of what customers want to see.
Marketing research is important because:
- You can study and understand your competitors.
You can research your competitors’ success rates, strategy gaps, and trends with market research. Using this information, your business can create highly effective campaigns to stand out from your competitors, improve engagement, and win potential customers.
- Develop better products and services of higher quality.
Market research allows a business to gather data about its customer base, including understanding what they value in its products and services. Using the data collected through customer satisfaction surveys, you can iterate on the feedback to further improve your products, services, and customer satisfaction.
- Understand trends and preferences in the market
Research helps your business create effective marketing campaigns and develop in the right direction.
- Improve your marketing strategies.
Developing a marketing strategy and product takes time and money. Marketing research can help you validate your ideas, confirm that you can continue, or sound the alarm.
Paid traffic is a great option to attract attention and build awareness. But when you’re trying to create a compelling image and become a thought leader in your industry, marketing research will provide you with facts to build your campaigns, attract organic traffic, and build the trust of customers.
Types of marketing research methods
There are several different types of marketing research. The most common are:
- Primary research and secondary research;
- Quantitative research and qualitative research.
These are the methods that underlie most market research. Internet marketing agency can fulfil both types of research online and proceed with planning marketing campaigns that are based on the proven data.
Market research methods
There are many different methods of how full-cycle marketing agency can conduct research. Each focuses on a specific aspect of an industry or potential customer and uses tools such as:
- Interviews;
- Surveys;
- Focus groups;
- Product/service usage research;
- Buyer persona research;
- Observational research;
- Pricing research;
- Market segmentation research;
- Customer satisfaction and loyalty research;
- Competitive analysis research;
- Campaign analysis;
- Brand awareness research.
Surveys and interviews are especially important because they provide a good understanding of what is happening in the market and what people expect.
How to do a market research
Now that we have covered the main types of marketing research and the most commonly used methods let’s find out how to conduct marketing research.
In order for market research to be structured and useful, you need to understand what your company needs to achieve. To do this, you need to identify your target customers, understand general market trends, and assess your competitors’ activities and the demand for your products.
Buyer personas are fictional, generalised representations of your customers. Using personas, you can recreate buyer behavior and understand their problems and the decision-making processes they use to select products and services.
- Identify a Group of Personas to Interact With
Identify a group of real people to ask questions to. If chosen correctly, this group should be a representative sample of your target customers.
- List Your Key Competitors
Prepare and research information about your key competitors. Identify strengths, weaknesses, financial position, reputation, etc. for each.
Once you have collected enough data, analyse it to conclude. You need to understand the market patterns and trends, customer needs, and pain points. Perhaps the market does not cover some customer needs, and there is a niche where your company can enter.
Prepare a document with your research, analyse your strengths and weaknesses, and share it with the rest of the team, project managers, marketing directors, heads of other departments, etc.
- Monitor and update your research
Market conditions are constantly changing, so you must constantly conduct market research to stay informed and adjust your strategies.
- Choose technologies that automate and simplify the processes of obtaining, transmitting, and sharing data
In the case of marketing research, data is the most valuable resource. To improve and optimise it and make it available for subsequent marketing processes (communications with clients, lead generation and development), use technologies that allow you to quickly extract information in a clear and understandable form.
When should you conduct market research?
Knowing when to conduct market research is also important. Conduct research before making any major business decision.
Here are some specific scenarios:
- Conversion rates are falling, and marketing campaigns are underperforming;
- You are launching new products and need to identify customer needs and gaps in the market;
- When entering unfamiliar markets;
- Your customer acquisition costs are increasing;
- To optimise your sales funnel;
- When the competitive landscape is changing, you need to adapt to new players or trends.
Even a short period of market research can pay off and improve your company’s position over months or even years.
