Starting a new marketing campaign? Launching a new product? Or just trying to refine your current marketing strategy? It may be time to do some market research.
What is Market Research?
Market Research allows you to gather information about the market for a new product or service and how relevant and feasible it is to potential consumers. This research could be defining your target audience, where consumers do their product research, industry competition and standards, challenges of the market, and what influences purchases. This information is essential to structuring a marketing solution or product that sells well and makes the most of your marketing budget!
Market Research Basics
So how do you do market research, and what is the process behind it? Let’s review some of the basic steps of market research:
- Question/Problem. First and foremost, define what you’re trying to solve or find an answer to. Are you trying to narrow and target a specific audience or find your demographic? Or are you learning where your customers buy your product? Most of the time, market research will give you great information on your audience’s demographics, so don’t be surprised if the majority of your questions pertaining to this. But asking yourself what you’re trying to learn will define the information you need and how you will get it.
- Plan Your Method. Once you’ve determined what you’re trying to learn, it’s time to think about your data collection method. This can vary depending on what information you’re trying to get. A good research plan will use a few ways but answer many of your questions. Standard methods include interviewing customers, running surveys, and running user tests on your website. Running user tests provide a great return on investment (ROI) since you can experiment with different marketing techniques and see how consumers respond. You can also research organizations in your industry of a similar size and see what kind of research they’ve done. If you’re lucky, you may find that they’ve already done a similar market research study!
- Collect. It’s time to collect your data! Your research plan will yield one of two types of data (or both): qualitative or quantitative. Quantitative data is numbers-driven, whereas qualitative is descriptive. So, if you’re interviewing consumers, you’ll be getting qualitative data. Just make sure that whatever you’re collecting is unbiased and impartial. This will skew your data and give you inaccurate answers to your questions.
- Analyze. After collecting your research, you can analyze the results. Look for trends in your data and data that may stand out from the rest. Make sure you look for patterns beyond the assumptions you may have made before conducting the research, as this will also skew the results. Depending on your market research, you can write a formal report on the results. Otherwise, an overall understanding of the results is fine, so you can…
- Execute! Analyzing the data should give you a lot of insight into what you need to do in a marketing campaign. It’s time to put what you’ve learned into action and see the results of your hard work come in. You should have successful results if you’ve done your market research correctly and interpreted the data well. Although your market research is complete, you should always analyze trends and stay updated on your industry’s audience. The market is constantly changing, and staying on top of it and adapting to it will ensure you stay successful.
Let Merrimack Digital Do Your Research!
Conducting market research is integral to your digital marketing efforts. However, creating a new strategy or refining your current one can be overwhelming and time-consuming, making it vital to consider a digital marketing agency to research and maximize your campaign’s potential.
The good news is that the experienced digital marketing team at Merrimack Digital has your back! Don’t miss out on the variety of digital marketing opportunities for your brand! Contact Merrimack Digital today to help do your marketing the right way.
Sources:
https://www.questionpro.com/blog/what-is-market-research/
https://www.smartbugmedia.com/blog/the-5-step-marketing-research-process
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/market-research-buyers-journey-guide
