Jeremy Kaplan
Successful businesses use market research to stay in touch with the latest trends, as well as making better business decisions that maintain their competitive edge.
No matter whether you are starting a business or expanding an already well-established one, there is no compensation for not researching your target market. Knowing who is buying your products and how this changes over time will help you maintain an increase in sales.
Your marketing strategy as any graduate with a marketing diploma will tell you, is the overarching plan that will drive your business forward. It will be the plan that sets out who is doing what, what tweets and updates will be posted when, the design of the leaflets and the timing of press releases and more.
But this marketing strategy needs to be based on solid footings – and this means understanding if there is a demand for your products, goods and services, who your customers are, where they are and why they would look to buy from you, as opposed to a competitor.
And this is how market research really boosts your marketing strategy;
I. Market Research Improves Your Branding
If you don’t quite have a handle on your brand, you need to ask yourself some questions – how do your customers perceive you? How does you brand stand alongside your competitors?
Market research can be used to improve your branding by exploring subjects such as;
- Personification – what characteristics do customers associate with your brand?
- Brand awareness – are customers are of your brand? How familiar are they with it?
- Comparison – how does your brand compare to that of your main competitors?
You can seek the opinion of your customers on a wide variety of topics, such as the appeal of your website, what they think of the ordering process or your customers service. The more information you have, the better changes and improvements you can make.
II. You Can Understand Your Customers Better
You will no doubt understand the need to know who your customers are. When you started your business, you probably gathered this information. But, are your customers today the same people as they were last week, last year or 10 years ago?
It is common for the customer demographic of a business to change over the years and this is why market research will help to understand your customer demographic better.
Knowing who is buying your products (and who isn’t) will help you target your marketing better. Can you create a customer profile from the information you already know about your customers? If you can’t, you really need to update this knowledge.
III. Promotes Improved Marketing Effectiveness
You invest a lot of time, money and effort into creating marketing campaigns that you ‘hope’ will work.
But ‘hoping’ isn’t enough and shouldn’t be the basis of any marketing campaign. We touched on this in the previous point about knowing who your customers are.
That’s only part of the equation. You also need to gauge their response to your current marketing campaign. How well received was it? Did your customers react well to the marketing message, if at all?
By understanding how customers react to a campaign, you can build these ideas into future marketing and promotional campaigns, improving their reach, engagement and effectiveness.
IV. Market Research Can Identify New Opportunities
Expanding and growing your business is essential to survival and market research can provide the information you need to expand in to new areas.
For example, if you have a new product lined up, you can test market readiness with market research. Or, if you are expanding into a new geographical location, you can use market research as the basis for whether this happens or not, what the opportunities and threats are.
You can analyse market size, demographics, key competitors and information on the local area, to name just a few pieces of information you may need.
V. Improve Product Features
Have you noticed how some businesses release a product, run with it for a while and then release a new and improved version?
This all comes from market research. This is because the brand has taken the time to gauge the response to their product and what the customer feedback is on what needs to change. This is a great way to keep evolving.
In Summary
Market research allows you to connect with your customers, being genuinely interested in their feedback and using this information to make the changes that improve your business.
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