Market research is considered the basic backbone and one of the essential verticals for any brand to dive into before launching any new product/ service.
It’s the insights you get from conducting market research that helps you in pinpointing the markets you need to target, understanding what customers may want, competitors’ strengths & weaknesses, and how the market would prefer to receive the information and the success of new launches into the market.
Market research is a vital technique that helps make informed decisions to achieve notable profits and prevent project failure. A brand can collect qualitative and quantitative data on any aspect by conducting market research.
Market research can be primarily categorized into two types:
Primary research
Secondary research
If you know the basics of market research, conducting an effective project wouldn’t be that hard. However, the most important things to keep in count are the factors and KPIs that push market research in the right direction.
Here are some KPIs and factors you may consider while conducting your next market research project.
Remember your goals and objectives
There is always a point of interest that prompts every business to conduct market research on a particular product or service. While engaging in market research, first ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish. The answer to the question becomes your goal and the objective of your research activity.
Keep this factor in mind as you progress through the different stages of market research. Ensure that every decision and action you take guides you back to your initial goal. The results will help you determine whether your new product/ service will make a successful entry into the market or not.
Keep an eye on the latest trends
Let’s be honest — if you want to stay in the game, you got to learn and observe the trends. No matter which day, month, or year we are in — the market never remains the same. Thus, you must keep an eye on the latest trends in the market while conducting market research. Always remember that your target audience will crave something latest and unique, so you better provide them with that.
As of this writing, some of the important trends that you can look out for are:
Mobile app intelligence
Humanity in customer experience
Social listening
Inclusive research
Monitoring adjacent markets
Automation and efficiency, and
Consumer and brand alignment.
If you are in between a research project, keep these trends under your watch to meet your audience’s needs and grow your business effectively.
Think about your competitors
While conducting market research and compiling the data for final analysis, pay close attention to your competitors and their strategies. With the help of secondary market research sources, determine what have been their past activities and what they are up to.
Knowing this will help you spot any inconsistencies in the research or an important part of the target market that you didn’t include in your data collection. It will also provide you with a competitive advantage in your research and an upper hand over your competitors.
Seek professional help
Market research is a time-consuming long-term task — collecting data, processing, and analyzing it is neither a quick nor a one-time thing.
If you are doing it for the first time or are relatively new, it can become an overwhelming process. On the other hand, if your brand is new or less in team strength, it can get hectic. Thus, it’s advisable to seek outside help. Reaching out to a market research agency or a consultant can help you save loads of time and energy.
Segment market to boost engagement rates
Market segmentation is the process of dividing a larger market into smaller subsets of consumers who have similar needs or exhibit similar characteristics. Being an essential aspect of market research, it allows businesses to understand their target market in depth, thus enabling them to target specific groups of consumers effectively and helping them identify new growth opportunities.
Market segmentation is a critical aspect and should not be overlooked. It may sound tricky or lengthy, but it gives first-hand knowledge and data, which can result in great ROI.
If you are not doing so already, then you must do so to ensure better results. It will also help you boost engagement rates by recognizing what your target audience exactly wants.
If you are already onto this, then try to crack new ideas to understand and refine your target audience — figuring out where you are lagging by conducting a/b testing, developing effective marketing strategies, differentiating your brand from your competitors, and attracting new customers.
Offer giveaways
If you want people to participate in your market research, consider offering them an incentive.
Incentives can be a great way to encourage participation. Offer rewards such as gift cards or cash prizes. This will show your appreciation for them and will also help increase response and participation rates.
SWOT analysis
SWOT analysis stands for analyzing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the business. The information gained through this process will help plan marketing strategies in the future. It is one of the most efficient tasks that should be performed while conducting market research.
Key takeaways
Conducting market research is a vital process before launching any product or service. It is a time-consuming long-term task that must be done with keeping some factors and KPIs in mind.
Some of the important factors you need to consider are:
Remembering your goals and objectives
Keeping an eye on the latest trends
Thinking about your competitors
Seeking professional help
Doing market segmentation
Offering giveaways
Performing SWOT analysis
Again, remember that market research is not a one-time thing. Each factor that influences your business needs to be researched separately. After that, you can collaborate your findings to get a big-picture view of your positioning in the market.