Advertising is important for growing your brand and reaching a wider audience. However, optimised and targeted advertising can definitely increase your overall results. And in order to know how to optimize your marketing efforts you need to have accurate market data obtained through quality market research. Now, if you are uncertain how to go about market research, continue reading this article and find out.
Find out if someone has already done it
If you have a good idea for market research, before investing time and effort into it it would be wise to find out if it has been done before. In case it has, but a very long time ago, then there is a good chance that you might end up with different results now, so you should go ahead with your research agenda. On the other hand, if you find that someone has conducted the same research quite recently, you can see if you can get your hands on that data and save time and money on performing your own.
Understand the different types of market research
There are two main types of market research, primary and secondary. Primary market research has the goal of gathering data from analyzing current sales and the effectiveness of current practices.It also takes into account the practices utilized by your competitors. Several major ways of obtaining primary data include interviews, surveys, questionnaires and focus groups. Secondary market research includes data that has already been published. It serves the purpose of identifying competitors, establishing benchmarks and determining target segments- the people who fall into your targeted demographic.
Know who to ask
Selecting the right audience for your research is essential for getting usable results. If most of your customer base are millennials, there is little point conducting research among baby boomers. There are many different ways to conduct marketing research, social media and different types of polls usually do the trick. Also there are a lot of people who are willing to earn money online by participating in different types of surveys. You can contact a company specialized in such forms of market research and have them do it for you. Gathering data from the right focus groups can significantly improve the end results of your marketing campaign later on.
Prioritize your research goals
The fact of the matter is, you can’t research everything. So what you need to do is narrow the scope and be precise as possible in order to get viable results that you can use later on. This needs to be information that you can use quickly and efficiently in your marketing efforts so that you can expect a ROI on the entire market research project. This is not that easy especially if there are a lot of different parameters you are interested in. But it is important to narrow the scope otherwise you will end up with a lot of information that needs analyzing and you will be forced to spend additional money and time in order to go through it all.
Mistakes you want to avoid
There are several possible mistakes in market research that should definitely be avoided. Don’t focus only on web resources, they are available to everyone and at times are not the most accurate options, Instead try to find other sources of information like scientific databases and college research papers. The next common mistake is relying only on secondary data research, so only taking that which others have already gathered. You still need your own data that is related solely to your company in order to get the full picture when it comes to the state of the market. Finally, focusing on the opinions of only the people you know. So your already established customer base or your employees These focus groups are more likely to provide you with far more favourable results that would under no circumstance be realistic enough, and thus would be worthless for your marketing campaign.
So there you have it, you now possess the knowledge and tools to conduct quality market research. It is essential for your business that you conduct this correctly in order to achieve the best possible results.
