Market Research – A specific guide for every marketers

What is market research? What is the purpose of business’s market research? Let’s find out in this article with CleverAds!

1. What is market research?

Market Research is the process of gathering information about the target audience. In the process, you will discover who your customers are and what they want. It allows you to search for answers to questions like:

What are the Demographics of the target audience?
What are their preferences and buying habits?
What do they think about my business or industry/industry?
What problems can my products or services help them solve?
How can I best connect with them?

2. What is the purpose of enterprise market research?

Understanding your target audience allows you to identify opportunities, convince stakeholders, and attract loyal customers. All of these contribute to a healthy business plan and a strong marketing strategy.

Market research is directly related to data analysis. It’s not just about tracking numbers like traffic or the number of items a customer buys. Instead, this is intended to uncover the “why” behind the numbers.

3. When is market research done?

The short answer to this question has always been. Because markets and customers are constantly changing, staying informed is essential. Market research takes a lot of time and resources. You’ll want to be strategic about when to do your research.

Here are four times when you should do market research:

Before launching a new business or venture: Initial market research is crucial when investing in new companies or ventures. It will help you discover competitive products, pricing structures, and marketing efforts.
Timing Before Entering New Markets: Understanding your potential customers in new markets is essential. Economic shifts, emerging trends, and cultural values vary from place to place. Market research can help you avoid costly and costly mistakes.
Before developing or launching new products or services: As your company grows, you will likely launch new products/services. You need to understand market conditions well before making any big moves.
After any of the above: After launching a new business, entering a new market, or releasing a new product or service, plan on doing the next round of research. This will help you determine what is working and what should work.

4. Types of Market Research

When you’re ready to start researching, consider what insights you’re looking for. Are you trying to understand your competitors? Do you want to market your products better? Want to solve customer pain points?

To get the answers you’re looking for, there are two main types of market research:

4.1. Primary Research

Primary market research is completed “in-house” through your resources. As a result, you can tailor your research to your specific products and services and have the most precise quality control of your study.

Research methods include:

Focus group
Interview
Observational research (direct observation, video, case studies)
Buyer personality research
Market segmentation research

From these research methods, you can collect two different types of data:

Qualitative – Not counted or measured data, including people’s likes, dislikes, and emotional reactions. Interviews and discussion groups often produce qualitative data. You probably won’t use algorithms or equations to conclude this data.
Quantitative – Data generated from numbers. It includes page views, survey results, and social media followers. With this data type, you can create charts and graphs.

4.2. Secondary research

Secondary market research is research done by someone else. Because the data is already available, it is often more cost-effective and takes less time and resources to collect. Here are some secondary data sources:

Corporate Reports – Reports generated by companies about their own business:

Company website
Investor relations website
Yahoo and Google Finance

Industry Statistics – Information and data on entire industries, as opposed to single companies: Statista, Pew, Gartner, Forrester.

Whitepapers – Authoritative market analysis written by 3rd parties on a specific topic related to a particular industry:

Trade magazine
Market research company

Government agency data – Information and data collected by the government and shared with the public.

Bureau of Labor Statistics
Census data
US Securities and Exchange Commission

With secondary sources, if you know how to do the proper market research, you will have macro coverage of the industry and detailed information about other competitors in the market. Ensure the data and insights are valid, accurate, and reliable.

5. Market Research Process

Step 1: Determine the focus of the research

Before collecting data, you must clearly define your research’s focus. This helps you choose the correct research methods and tools.

Based on your initial observations or assumptions, you can start observing what people search on the internet to determine their intentions, pain points, and preferences. This can narrow your focus and take you to the next steps in developing a research plan.

Step 2: Develop a market research plan

Once the research objective is in place, develop a plan for taking steps toward new answers and conclusions. It would help if you determined which primary and secondary sources to use to get started.

What primary resources will you tap?
Will you be interviewing key individuals?
Is it possible to survey people about their experiences?

What sub-resources will you exploit?

Which 3rd party research company did your market research?
Is it possible to access customer reviews?

Can you look at other companies’ marketing efforts?

Step 3: Collect data for market research

How you collect and process data will depend on your research method.

With qualitative research, focus groups, or interviews, write down your answers and compare notes afterwards. With surveys, you can generate reports. Tools like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey often offer free reports that organize your data and even include illustrations where available.

For quantitative research, collect raw data using a simple spreadsheet or more advanced data warehousing software. Once the data is collected, tools like Google Data Studio or Tableau allow you to organize and describe the data in graphs or charts.

Step 4: Analyze data and generate insights

Data analytics helps you uncover answers to your original research questions and turn those answers into strategy. This process begins with filtering and sorting the data.

With quantitative data, add everything and put it in the central places of a statistical tool, like a spreadsheet. Sort rankings, “yes and no” answers, multiple choice questions, and other data. Once sorted, calculate the numbers to look for the mean, range, or other vital statistics.

Review all collected data for qualitative data and organize it into categories, such as concerns, questions, frustrations, strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations. Managing this data will help clarify topics.

Once your data is organized, review your original research objectives. Here are some guiding questions:

Does the data shed light on any trends?
Can I have any explanations for these trends?
What is surprising or interesting about the data?
Will the data collected help answer my initial questions?
Does it lead to any other interesting questions?

Step 5: Present the conclusions, adjust the plan, and maintain monitoring and control

Now that you’ve completed the complex processes, it’s time to put the analytical results to use. Typically, this involves presenting your research to stakeholders and discussing business or marketing plan improvements.

When presenting data, you should specify the following:

How research generates data
How the data led to your insights
How your insights led to helpful recommendations

6. Conclusion

Market research is a complex but necessary process for a business to stand out in a competitive market. Continuity is crucial whether a company has the resources to execute massive research or agile tactics.

Market research costs and difficulty have improved with advances in data analytics technology. In the future, additional solutions will undoubtedly be launched, making research more accessible and affordable.