10 Tips For Conducting Better Market Research
“Improve your market research with these 10 essential tips! Learn how to gather more accurate and actionable insights, identify key trends, and make better business decisions. Whether you’re launching a new product or trying to stay ahead of the competition, these tips will help you conduct more effective market research.”
Market research is so important that it can mean the difference between success and disaster for a business.
Today’s market, especially with the added challenges of COVID-19, is more volatile than ever. What may have been a “tried-and-true” method that worked five years ago may not see the same success today.
In addition to analyzing past and current trends, market researchers are faced with the daunting task of finding ways to improve, using forecasting to predict how the market is moving, and determining whether What a business can do to stay one step ahead of changes.
We’ll break down our top tips to help you improve market research for your business, whether you’re doing the research yourself or outsourcing it to a third-party professional.
Businesses rely on a variety of market research methods. The most common types of market research are surveys, customer observations, focus groups and interviews, but this is not an all-inclusive list.
Here are some ways to improve market research:
1. Recognize New Opportunities and Needs
One thing is certain about the market – it is always changing. This state of constant growth means that a market researcher needs to use his analytical skills to study:
· Current trends
· Demographics
· Market size
· Market shares
· Trend forecast
· Industry supplier
· Geographical Distribution
· Major competitor
· Market Gaps, Needs and Demands
Collecting this information and pinpointing potential areas of improvement is an important first step in understanding the current market and finding opportunities for business strategies, advertising, and products.
2. Understand Your Customers
To accurately target customers in your market, you need to know who your customers are. This type of research can be done through analytical data gathered from focus groups, questionnaires, surveys, interviews, and online interactions with your brand.
It is important to create a customer profile that not only identifies demographics such as age, income, and interests, but also identifies needs that are not being met and how your audience may change over time.
3. Conduct Brand Research
There is a surprising disconnect between how most companies see their brand and how their customers perceive it. Even the colors you choose can influence a brand’s identity by as much as 80%, which means minor details likely have a greater impact than business owners.
This is where thorough brand research can help businesses improve their overall branding and highlight the following:
· How familiar are customers with a brand.
· Logo and company name memorabilia.
· How customers view a brand compared to competitors.
· What type of reputation brand customers and potential customers think of.
· Overall brand perception and awareness in the market
· How customers feel about a brand’s website, social media presence, advertising, content, etc.
4. Collect and Analyze Data
Collecting data is a major part of the process, but even more important is being able to analyze that data and determine trends and changes that are currently or may soon affect your business.
Data collection and analysis should be a continuous process taking place at every stage. Even if you did extensive research before launching your latest product, you still need to follow up after launch and continue to collect customer feedback and market data.
Also, try to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns with analytics that will drive future campaigns.
5. Don’t make assumptions
One of the most dangerous pitfalls a market researcher can take is allowing losses to enter the equation. It’s easy to notice patterns and make automatic assumptions without having to dive deeper to figure out why certain trends are happening.
This is a recipe for disaster. Decisions should be made based on numbers, studies, feedback, and trends – not based on unverified assumptions.
6. Apply Individual Problem-Solving Techniques Per Project
Each project should be handled individually. There is no comprehensive, one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to problem solving for different aspects of the market.
If you are sending out surveys as your primary means of collecting data for your market research, take the time to consider your goal each time. Don’t create an all-in-one survey and send it to everyone.
Instead, formulate your questions and send them to the target people. Customers participating in your brand awareness survey should not receive a carbon copy of your customer satisfaction survey, nor should both groups receive a survey that includes questions from both topics.
Taking a personalized problem-solving approach on a project-by-project basis will improve the accuracy of your market research.
7. Improving Communication Skills
To collect the most useful data, participants must have a clear understanding of the questions that are being asked of them.
Must have strong oral and written communication skills to communicate information clearly and accurately and to produce well-documented reports.
8. Gather Product Feature Insights
You should conduct product research ahead of committing large-scale production costs and advertising expenses, whether you’re launching a new product or updating an existing one.
Consumer feedback on concepts and, when possible, prototypes can reveal design defects, packaging issues, and other problems that will save you a lot of time and money if these issues are addressed prior to official launch.
Qualitative research such as focus groups, interviews, and open-ended survey questions are best for gathering information that you might not expect from your beta testers.
9. Be Transparent
Market research usually involves interacting with participants in some capacity, be it personal interviews, virtual focus groups, telephone surveys, digital questionnaires, etc. Participants should have a clear understanding of how you intend to use their information. Be open and honest first. Failure to do so can lead to serious consequences later and your data may be lost if participants feel uncomfortable giving their correct opinion.
10. Keep your surveys, questionnaires, and interviews short and simple
We have already mentioned the importance of communication when it comes to improving market research. In addition to clearly communicating your needs and expectations, make sure you’re keeping the process simple.
The questions should not be complicated and confusing and your survey should not take long to complete. Studies have shown that if a survey takes more than 5 minutes to finish, the response rate drops by 15%, with a 40% drop rate in the last 10 minutes.
Market research is important, but if you need to collect a lot of data, try to break it down into smaller, more manageable sessions so the participants you assist don’t feel overwhelmed.
Improve the validity of market research for business success
Market research goes much deeper than just sending out a survey and generating a report of the responses.
When done thoroughly and carefully, market research can (and should) bring in a ton of increased revenue for your business.
Want to know more? Reach out to us at www.philomathresearch.com