A quick guide of things to consider when doing market research. This guide can be applied to a business of any size. Planning prevents future frustration.
Market research is the collection of data from customers and competitors. It helps to get insight and in-depth needs of the society. Conducting the analysis helps to know about the competitors you’re surrounded with. It’s vital to know what people think about your services and products. Understanding your market’s needs improves customer satisfaction and most importantly saves you time and money. You can create a website or product without market research but you will experience much frustration. Take all feedback as valuable business data.
“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates
Things to consider for market research
There exist a lot of data resources that assist you in Market Research like your competitors, customers, location, and industry. Market Research consists of two types of sources, like primary and secondary. Primary research comprises of information or data collection from sources which are explained below:
1. Figure out industry competitors
First of all, you need to identify the industry and competitors who are overlapping with your products or services. Start it with high-level terms like education, retailing services, telecommunications, and agriculture, etc. Search them on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and compare your market report with others.
2. Do surveys
Ask a lot of questions to collect feedback through surveys that are composed of multiple questions. These can be conducted via an on-screen questionnaire or via email. You can gather a lot of data through surveys. Questions are composed of what, why, and how terminologies.
3. Conduct interviews
Interviews are conducted through a one-on-one conversation. You can come in direct communication with ideal customers of your targeted market. In-depth interviews will benefit a lot in comprehending target market of your small business. If face-to-face interviews are not possible, conduct it on video conferencing and analyse the behaviour of the customer.
4. Customer feedback
Successful Market Research isn’t about getting new information; it’s about refactoring it. Small business needs more feedback from their customers to earn reputation and a place in the industry. It’s a great learning process to fix your bugs where your customers feel a need for improvement.
5. SWOT analysis
Undergo a deep analysis phase of Market Research where you can highlight your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in comparison with your competitors. Make strategies on how to overlap your competitors and how to figure out opportunities for your small business that may become threats for your opponents.
6. Focus groups
Focus group is about your targeted audience, for what kind of people you’re going to provide your services. It needs deep research to specify the market. For instance, Redo targeted youngsters who are fond of expending their money on watches. Some businesses hit brand specifiers while some are bounded to the local market.
7. In-depth observation
A customer observation session is arranged in which a person from the company notifies the activities of the customers secretly. He observes how the users engage with products and how they use it! It’s less expensive activities, but you will get a sense of how people interact with your product naturally.
8. Analyse your data
Market research isn’t somewhat that is only done by the larger organization, but smaller ones need more to enlarge their circle. The business environment of today’s world has become competitive, the more you know about customer’s needs, understand their desires, and more you read their minds many likely chances are there to touch the sky. Best Market Research suits the proverb ‘Knowledge is power’.
