How can you make your product stand out amongst the competition? Is there another target audience you haven’t identified yet? What new product should you focus on developing?
The answer to just about everything lies in market research.
It is the holy grail of business, no matter what industry you’re in. Whether it’s pharmaceuticals, FMG, machinery, hospitality (or just about anything else), as long as you’re selling a product or service, you need to know your market.
That’s why market research is a field in itself. With professionals working on understanding the intricacies of consumer behavior, market dynamics, and observing the changing patterns and trends to predict needs, market research offers businesses unique opportunities to succeed.
However, even professionals have their favorites. While there are several market research methods, from brand awareness, competitor research, usability testing and more, here are their favorite (and most effective) survey methods to answer some of the market’s most enigmatic questions.
1. Market Segmentation Surveys
Marketing is never a one-size-fits all strategy. So, when you want to ensure an effective marketing campaign, you need to understand the varying audience personas you cater to.
Market segmentation surveys focus on various factors including demographics, location, age, gender, preferences, and more.
When done properly, a market segmentation survey can give you key insight into your audience needs and preferences, dividing and focusing your marketing strategies for maximum impact.
Best used for:
· Analyzing target audience preferences to deliver focused marketing efforts
· Identifying new audience segments
2. Customer Experience Surveys
What do your customers think? Was the registration process easy? Did they enjoy the in-store experience?
Customer Experience surveys can be automated to be sent out at key touch-points of the customer journey – whether it’s checking out their online shopping, payment, delivery, or even a follow-up on the product purchase.
It helps you understand the nuances of your business experience while also proactively flagging any key concerns customers may have at specific points.
These include the Net Promoter Score survey and the Customer Satisfaction surve
amongst others.
Best used for:
· Isolating specific stages of the customer experience journey that may have experience gaps
· Identifying critical strengths and weaknesses in your CX strategy
· Understanding audience expectations
3. Brand Research Surveys
Brand research surveys are essential to understand how your brand is perceived in the market. What are the narratives associated with your brand? Is the marketing increasing value? Is your product catering to the demand?
Brand research surveys come into play at various points of the brand journey. Whether you’re launching a new product, re-branding, or even just doing a health-check on your brand’s public perception, these surveys give you all the insights you need.
When it comes to brand research, you can also conduct in-person or call interviews and meta-analyses of previous data to deep dive and create specific audience segments that will better inform your brand strategy.
A Key Driver Analysis can be derived based on the surveys and questions you ask to pin-point critical brand drivers and weaknesses that need immediate attention.
Best used for:
· Understanding and analyzing public perception of your brand
· Analyzing customer loyalty and churn rate
· Increasing brand awareness
· Understanding brand positioning to determine the impact it has on your consumer
· Gauging brand value
4. Product Development and Testing Surveys
Almost 85-90% of the new products introduced fail. So, in order to ensure success, the more information you have the better.
When you’re creating a new product, launching it, or testing to see its demand, market research is pivotal. It will help you gain a competitive edge while fulfilling market vacuums that may not be otherwise identified.
You can use a Dimensional Analysis Report to assess the changing patterns in user feedback and monitor improvement over time.
Best used for:
· Apt product conception
· Product development to cater to market demand
· Effective product roll-out
· Continuous improvement of product or service to deliver a constantly evolving service
5. Usability Testing Surveys
Products that withstand the test of time (and weather the competition) are usually the products that provide value and are easy to use. In fact, the modern consumer has a significantly reduce waiting period, and products that they deem ‘difficult’ are often replaced with their competitors.
This is especially common owing to the highly competitive market of today.
That’s why usability testing and surveys have gained significant momentum. The focus is on understanding the learning curve of a user when it comes to your product – whether it’s an app, a mechanical product, or anything else.
The Customer Effort Score survey can help you understand just how much effort customer expend to learn the software or app, or even get their problem resolved.
Best used for:
· Understanding ease of user experience
· Improving UX to deliver a competitive product
6. Competitor Analysis
You’ve perfected your product, got the customer experience surveys in, and are working on ensuring a continuous product development and improvement process. But something just isn’t clicking yet.
Have you looked at what your competitors are doing?
No business exists in a vacuum. In fact, almost all markets are rife with competition, that’s why it’s especially important to stay ahead of the curve.
Even if you’re doing especially well, it never hurts to do an intensive competitor analysis to understand how your brand is positioned in your segment.
Send out surveys to your customers to see just why they prefer you (or don’t) over your competition. Analyze your competitions’ ads and marketing strategies to understand how it’s influencing the market, and conduct trend analysis to see the change in customer behavior and preferences over time.
Best used for:
· Understanding and improving marketing strategies based on competition
· Re-strategizing marketing and positioning
· Assessing the health of your marketing campaigns
In Conclusion
There is a wealth of data in online surveys. They help you connect with the right audience and understand market influences, needs, and preferences.
However, cater your approach based on the questions you want to answer. While the right surveys can open many doors, a word of caution here – never limit yourself to just conducting surveys.
Take interviews, analyze with the help of focus groups, observe behavioral pattern and click time (if you’re trying to understand the impact of website design), or even conduct a meta-analysis of previously conducted surveys. The right strategies will give you answers to question you never even thought to ask – and can transform your business.
