“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat but If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
I have met many business owners who are interested in strategy, branding, and advertising but rarely have I met someone who is interested in market research.
Every time you talk about market research, the response is, “We don’t have a budget for that,” or “We would rather invest that money in running some digital ad campaigns.” Without solid insights gained through this easiest guide for market research, any kind of marketing you do is like throwing your pamphlets at Times Square and hoping somebody will pick them up, read them, become interested, and get the product. That happens… just not so often.
Another thing I have observed is that all the market research projects happen at the time of the launch of a business or a new product line. Once that phase is over, nobody even remembers what market research is. Many research projects that help us understand our customers, market, and business are supposed to be done once the project is launched. But it looks like a majority of small business owners and young entrepreneurs are ignoring that.
Lack of market research is also an important factor that causes business failure. That’s why I decided to educate my readers about the importance of market research, how they can do it, and how they can reap the benefits of it.
What to Research
“There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.” – Henry Ford
Before we can start market researching, we need to know what we want to research. The answer shouldn’t be anything.
Market research is a huge field. You can learn and everything about your business through market research. But if you don’t have a specific reason for doing the research or a particular direction to pursue, you will just find yourself drowning in a sea of data, without ever reaching the shore.
To emphasize, market research is an integral part of your business and this is the easiest guide for market research.
Some of the questions it can answer for you are:
- Is your product loved by your audience?
- Is your product priced right?
- How are your competitors doing?
- How long will you last in this market without any innovation?
- Does your audience ignore you?
- Where do you rank in the industry?
- What is your market share?
- How good is your brand reputation?
- Do people talk about you when you are not there?
- Do people recommend your products to others?
- Are people satisfied with your brand?
- Is your social media performing well? Do you need to change your strategy?
- How are people interacting with your website?
- What should the name of your company be?
- Is the product you’re launching going to gain popularity among the masses?
- Is the innovation you’re working on worth pursuing?
- What kind of product do people want and who is your audience
- What are the needs of your chosen audience?
- How can you extend your reach to more people?
- How much brand awareness do you have?
- Should you invest in an online app or not?
- How much should your marketing budget be?
- How strong is your online presence?
- Should you consider advertising?
- What doesn’t your audience like about you and how can you improve that?
- How can you gain a competitive edge?
- How can you increase your market share?
- Is there any trend that you can ride on and become successful?
- How can you expand your brand to other countries?
And many others.
The list here is endless. As I mentioned, there is nothing you can’t learn through some good market research.
Let me explain with an Example
If you’re planning to start a business, maybe you want to learn more about the feasibility of your product, how open the audience is going to be to accept your product, how much competition there is in the market, and what the weaknesses of your competitors are.
However, if you have recently launched a product, then maybe you want to know how much people know about you, how people are reacting to your product, and what areas of your products need improvement.
In case you have been in the market for a few years and are doing well, then you want to research what your competitors are doing at the moment, what their strengths and weaknesses are, how your product is performing in the market, what your brand reputation is, and so on.
On the other hand, if you have been in the market for a few years and are still struggling, then you want to figure out what it is about your product that makes it less desirable to many, if your product has enough brand awareness, if enough people know about your product, and if they do, you should ask if they choose yours over your competitors’, and if not, why?
But if you have been a part of the market for a long time, you want to know what your market share is, how you can increase it, how you can expand your market, what the current customer sentiments are about your brand, how your customer needs are evolving, what your customer equity is, and how you can increase it.
Market research is an ongoing part of any business. It shouldn’t be done just when you’re launching a product or when you’re struggling with business growth.
Now, when you have learned that there are various reasons for conducting market research with easiest guide, let’s figure out what yours should be.
Figuring out the purpose of your market research is going to be a two-step process.
Step 1) Identification of the Problem or Identification of the Opportunity
The process of market research starts with the identification of the problem. Problems and opportunities are two sides of the same coin. When we learn how to deal with our problems, we grow and become a better version of ourselves.
Same for our products. When we deal with the problems that our brand or our products are facing, we come up with a product 2.0 to overcome those, giving us an edge over others.
So, you can brainstorm what kind of business problem you are facing at the moment. For example, maybe you want to know why your audience picks up your competitors’ product over yours.
Once you are done with that research, you can think about how you can make your product more desirable.
That’s why, before you start your research project, you should think about what your end goals are, where you are at the moment, and what seems to be stopping you from reaching your destination.
Were you planning to sell one million products in a month but so far you have sold only six? What’s the problem here? Is it your product? Your price? Your reputation? Competition?
Step 2) Breaking Down Your Problem into Smaller Problems
Once you have identified the problem, you can start your market research. If you know exactly what is causing the problem, then you can direct your research to that area.
If you have no idea whether the problem is with your product, price, or something else, then it’s a good idea to start with a little research. It’s going to help you understand what the main problem is, or why people are not buying more of your products.
Once you know the main cause, you can easily drill down further to smaller connecting problems.
Let’s say people are not buying enough of your products because of the price issues.
By knowing that, you can go deeper and understand why your target market doesn’t like the price you’re charging.
Are there too many competing products and are you the one who charges the most? why charging an average price have less interest in your products? Is it because you have no name in the market? Nobody trusts you, is familiar with you, or respects you? Or is your reputation not strong enough?
So, break down your problem as much as you can, but don’t do it on the basis of your guesses. If you don’t know exactly what is wrong, use market research to break down your problem further and further until you reach the very point of your trouble.
Why Should You Conduct Market Research?
For those who still have doubts about this easiest guide for market research, here are the reasons why you should consider it:
To Understand Your Customers Better
You can turn any business into a successful one, but only if you can figure out what customers really need, what current brands are offering to fill that need, and how big the gap between customer needs and the existing product is.
Customers will prefer whichever brand reduces this gap the most.
Always remember that you’re in this business because of your customers. If they are not there, you will stop existing as well. So, start learning more about them. Don’t remain strangers.
If your customers are your building blocks, it becomes crucial for you to understand their needs and keep them satisfied all the time. You must have heard “Happy wife, happy (peaceful) life.” For businesses, it is “Happy customers, happy (flourishing) business.”
To Gain Competitive Edge
Keep your friends close but your enemies closer. This is something that we used in the past to win wars and we now use it to succeed in our businesses. There is no better tool to bring you closer to your competitors than market research. So, keep your friends close and your competitors even closer with the help of this easiest guide for market research.
So many times, we find ourselves shocked when our competitors launch something that we have been thinking about for so long or upgrade their product, ultimately stealing our market share.
In cases like these, we always regret not striking when the iron was hot. However, you wouldn’t have been in a vulnerable position like this if you had done competitive research, which would have informed you of your competitors’ weaknesses and strengths, giving you plenty of chances to gain an edge over them.
In other words, market research gives you enough time to learn from your competitors’ mistakes, take inspiration from their strengths, and exploit their weaknesses.
To Reduce the Risk of Product or Business Failure
Not doing market research leads to business failure!
Why have many products failed in the past?
Let’s examine that for a moment.
Lack of innovation? How to solve that? Market research.
Launching a product that nobody wants or lacks demand? Solution: Market research.
Launching a product too soon or too late? Solution: Market research.
A competitor takes over the market? Solution: Market research.
Whatever the reason is, good market research would have made you aware of the real picture at the right time, and maybe you would have been able to write a different future because of that.
To Discover Business Growth Opportunities
Business growth opportunities are disguised in trends. If we identify a trend at the right time, we can become huge. For example, Zoom had a great business opportunity during the pandemic, which other companies like Skype failed to exploit, making Zoom the clear winner.
This is an area where this easiest guide for market research can vastly help.
In current times, we have access to so much data. Having said that, data analysis can uncover so many hidden patterns about customer behavior and how they interact with various products.
When we master customer behavior and are able to offer them exactly what they want, we can achieve the biggest business opportunities.
To Improve Your Decision-Making
Let’s never underestimate the power of effective decision-making. If you have read my first book, “17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail”, you would remember the stories of many big brands who failed because their decision-making was faulty.
Making the right decision at the right time is what sets a successful entrepreneur apart from others.
Good decision-making is based on access to the correct information at the right time.
If you know that the product you’re planning to launch was rejected by 50% of the test audience, then you won’t make the decision to still launch it. You would first figure out what can be improved to make the product more appealing to the market. But if you don’t have any information, then you’re going to take a blind guess and will just launch the product, wasting time and money in marketing and advertising, when actually the problem was with the product itself.
When Should You Research?
There is no perfect time for research. And I will definitely not recommend waiting until your business starts shaking. Let this easiest guide for market research be a permanent, ongoing part of your business strategy. I would strongly recommend doing it every month. The more you research, the more powerful your business becomes.
Also, why would you want something to go wrong before you start investing in market research? You don’t have to wait until you have a heart attack to understand the importance of a healthy lifestyle.
Why don’t you take precautionary measures and avoid any problem as much as you can? How does that sound?
The smart decision will be to never stop researching. Keep learning more and more about your customers, your competitors, your brand, your target market, and business opportunities. If you do that, you will be surprised to find answers even before you ask. And these answers are going to define your business growth.
How Are You Planning to Use the Results?
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” –Ernest Hemingway
A market research project starts when you have the answers to the following questions:
- Why are you researching?
- What are you going to do with the results?
You have to decide how you’re going to use the results because if you don’t know that, you will find yourself easily lost and distracted in this entire process.
I have seen many entrepreneurs conducting market research to uncover the answers they have been seeking for so long, and when the answers are found, they completely forget the purpose behind looking in the first place. Ultimately, they continue doing what they were doing earlier and the market research results are forgotten forever.
Not paying attention to your market research results is not just a waste of your market research efforts but also a loss of an opportunity to make your business more profitable.
When you send out a feedback form to your customers and they share their opinions with you, don’t just ignore them. It’s time for you to make a decision based on what your customers have just shared with you.
Another common thing I have noticed is how lightly we take Google and other reviews. Sometimes, if you check Google reviews of a company, you will find many people talking about the same issue, and still, the company never took action to address that.
Let’s try to change that and use our market research results to provide a better experience to our customers.
Understanding what to do with the outcome of this easiest guide for the market research project will be dependent on the answers to the following questions:
What’s Your Objective?
Why you’re researching and what your objective from this research is can be two separate things. For example, you can research because you want to figure out why the sales are going down. The objective can be to use those results to increase your sales by 10% in the next six months. Or you can research who else can be included in your target market. The objective can be to run an ad campaign to target that new audience.
Having an objective for any project is highly important as we are living in a world full of data—some useful but mostly useless. To save ourselves from getting lost in this sea of data and ending up directionless, it becomes vital for every business owner to not just set up their market research objectives but also to stick to those.
Before we move further, try to brainstorm the answers to the following questions:
What Kind of Information Do You Want?
For identifying the objective of your market research project, it is highly advisable that you should zero in on the exact information you want to collect and from who.
Do you want to target a specific subset of your target audience or do you want to target your entire target market? For example, you can know how many of your customers in the age group of 20-30 are happy with your services, or you can learn how many of your customers who are living in New York are your repeated customers.
How Are You Going to Measure That Information?
Now, when you have decided what kind of information you want to get from this easiest guide to market research, it’s time to decide how that information can be measured. It’s very important that you try to be realistic here as not all information can be measured.
Even if what you want to measure can’t be exactly measured with the help of market research, it doesn’t mean you should drop that project because market research is the only tool that can give you any information.
In a scenario like this, either you can measure other related metrics or you can do qualitative research, which can unveil various good insights.
If you are going to use the results of this easiest guide for market research to make a big business decision, then it’s a good idea to do quantitative research rather than qualitative. The more numbers you know through market research, the more you will be able to cut down your business risk.
What Should Those Numbers Be?
If you have done any similar research in the past, then you should use it to form a base for your future objectives. It can help you in the comparative analysis as well.
If your previous research showed that customer perceptions about your brand were positive, then after this research, if you don’t see something similar, you know something you did in that timeframe has affected your customer’s perceptions.
If the perceptions have turned negative, then you have to investigate what went wrong and how it can be fixed.
How to Define Your Market Research Objectives
Here are some tips for defining realistic and useful market research objectives:
Make It Clear & Concise
The biggest advice I can give for setting up your market research objectives is to be very clear and concise.
If anything is not clear, it will open itself up to various interpretations by your team members, which won’t always match. As a result, your IT team might see the objectives very differently than your sales team. So, ensure that you make everything as clear as you can. It will help your team stay focused.
Make Sure It Fits into Your Marketing Strategy
Your market research objectives need to fit into your marketing strategy. If your objectives are not supporting your marketing strategy, then it’s going to be a waste of your resources.
You don’t want to learn about what fruit juices people like if you’re launching a burger.
Make sure that your research is aimed at your target audience. In addition, the results of your research project should help you make a decision that will help you grow your business.
Keep it Specific & Narrow
Two things happen when your objectives are too broad—you don’t achieve the right results and you lose a lot of your resources. You want to avoid both of those.
“How do your customers feel about you?” is a broad objective.
You can make it specific by bringing your focus on: “After our product launch in the month of July, we want to know how many people have started using our product.”
If your objectives are too broad, they can dilute your project and this easiest guide for market research can not help much.
Use Only One Objective
One market research project should have only one objective. More than one objective can affect the effectiveness of your research.
You can’t do one research to measure brand awareness as well as your brand image. Those two are very different objectives and will require two different kinds of research.
For example, why your customers buy your product is one thing and why they don’t buy from you more than once is a different one.
Leave No Space for Guesses
Never start your research with any guesses. I have worked with a Brooklyn-based entrepreneur who confidently claimed that his target audience is 18-40-year-old women, but the research revealed that the audience is 40-60 years old.
So, never guess anything. You will make bad business decisions if you do that. If you don’t have data on something, start a research project on that topic.
Who is Responsible for Decision Making?
One way to use this easiest guide for market research is to be a decision-maker. Discovering a cure for a disease is one thing, but making that cure available to everyone so it can actually be used to eradicate the problem is another thing.
Just finding answers is not enough.
You have to use those answers to change your old mindset, old ways of doing things, and to bring a change in you.
That’s why, when you start your market research project, think about who is going to be responsible for putting all the insights that have been gained into action.
If the project is about launching a new product, then the research results should be shared with the head of the product team. This way, the product team will be able to use the insights to design a better product. If the research is done for brand awareness and the results don’t show any rosy picture, then maybe you want to share those results with your marketing head who can include more brand awareness strategies in her marketing plan.
So, get ready. Decide your objectives and make somebody responsible to implement the results for the growth of the business.
What’s Your Market Research Plan?
“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” ―Eleanor Roosevelt
Nothing is ever complete in business without proper planning. Maybe in your personal life, you can go on an unplanned trip and rejoice later for it is the best trip of all time but it might not prove the same for your business. You won’t hear anyone making a comment like, “I ran that commercial on TV without any planning and it was the most effective one.”
Most of the time, you will see a damaged reputation and loss of resources after any unplanned business activity.
It can also be analyzed that even an unplanned trip has a lot of planning hidden in it. You start with an unsaid plan of where you want to go depending on the constraints of money and time you have. If your manager approved only a day or two of leave, maybe you would go someplace nearby. Then, you think of alternatives to consider if the first option doesn’t work out for everyone. When you reach your destination, you figure out where and how to look for a hotel and what kind of room to choose. In your mind, you have planned out this trip. It’s just not verbalized to be called a properly planned trip but it still is one.
Now, let’s talk about how you can plan your market research through this easiest guide.
Who, What, Where, Why, and How?
Before you start anything, you need to know why you’re doing it. Then, you have to clearly convey that to your team so they also become partners in your vision.
Further, you need to analyze what kind of market research you want to do. Do you want to do qualitative or quantitative research? Do you want to do focus groups or conduct one-on-one interviews?
Developing a Market Research Plan
A market research plan should include all the essential information about your current research project. In addition, remember to keep your plan short and include only the most important information there.
According to the easiest guide, a market research plan is divided into eight important sections:
Overview
This section of your market research plan should outline the problem you’re facing and trying to solve through this project. Share as much important data as you have about this problem.
Also, describe the context and challenges surrounding it.
Objectives
This is the most important part of your document as it describes the purpose of your project. Defining a good project is dependent on how well you can define your needs. The better you specify your requirements, the better the results of a project are going to be.
Start by thinking about what issues you want to address and what you plan to achieve by solving those issues.
Add as much information as you can gather about what you’re planning to derive from this market research.
Deliverables
Deliverables are what you want to get out of this project. If you want numbers, what kind of numbers do you want? For example, do you need to know your market share? Customer churn rate? Customer satisfaction rate?
If you want information, what kind of information are you looking for? Do you want to know your customers’ sentiments about your brand? Or what are the two reasons why they prefer your competitor over you?
Target Audience
This describes the ideal target audience that you want to research, irrespective of its size. Don’t get confused by the size of the audience here as this doesn’t describe who you should study but who you want to study.
For example, I want to study the vegan market in New York City, and for that, I am going to conduct interviews with 20 carefully chosen vegan New Yorkers. Vegans in New York represent my ideal target market, but those chosen 20 New Yorkers represent my sample.
You can segment your ideal audience based on demographics, psychographics, or any other criteria that suit the research.
Sample Plan
This part describes the sample for your research. As it’s not feasible to research everyone in your target audience, you focus on a group of people that can represent most of the others in your market. For this, you wisely identify and obtain a sample and make sure that no group from your target market is left unrepresented.
If your target market comprises all the genders in the age group of 30-50, then, you want to have two women in the age group of 30-40 and 40-50, two men in the age group of 30-40 and 40-50, and two people from the LGBTQ community in the age group of 30-40 and 40-50 to participate in the research. This is just a rough example, you might have to segment your audience on more than just demographics.
The sample includes who are you planning to study and how many participants will be there for this study as you can’t study everyone. You will be required to further divide them into various groups.
In addition, a sample plan is dependent on the type of research you’re going to do. If you’re doing interviews, the sample size might be very small, but if you are doing online surveys, the sample size can be considerably bigger.
Research Methods
This section discusses what types of research methods and research tools you are planning to use for your research. It should also include how you’re planning to capture data from a particular method, in case you plan to go ahead with that.
Timeline
This section should describe the length of your project is going to be. Defining the time frame helps in finishing the project on time. Keep some gaps for unexpected delays.
You can use a Gantt chart for this.
Budget
This part of the market research plan of this easiest guide will include the breakdown of various costs. Let’s say you are planning to do a focus group study, then this section should include the cost of the office where you will conduct this study, the fees of the meditator, compensation for the participants, refreshments for the participants, cost for data analysis, and various other things.
A well-planned budget will save you from any kind of unexpected surprises.
How to Plan Your Sample
“When everyone is included, everyone wins.” –Jesse Jackson
Next step in this easiest guide of market research is sampling. A sampling plan is all about how you’re planning to gather data for your market research. It is going to include a sample of all those people who can represent your target audience and can also be easily studied.
Your sample should be representative of your target market. So far, we were in the planning phase, but with this step, we are entering the implementation phase.
What is the Purpose of a Sampling Plan?
Let’s say that your target market has at least one million people. Now, can you interview these one million people or conduct a focus group study with them? You can (because I don’t believe in ‘can’t’) but let’s be honest, it’s not realistic. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life just conducting one research and I doubt it will end even then.
So, to make it more feasible and realistic, this easiest guide for market research has the concept of designing a sampling plan. As a part of this, you’re going to select a few people who are going to best represent your entire target market.
There are various ways of deciding who should be included in your sample and who shouldn’t. You can segment your market according to demographics, psychographics, a combination of these two, or something else. In the end, it is all going to depend on your current marketing plan from this easiest guide for market research.
Let’s say you want to segment your audience based on demographics. Then, you can segment them based on their gender, age, socioeconomic status, marital status, education, life stage, etc. When I conducted a research study for one of my clients, I decided to segment the audience based on their age, interests, and personality type.
Are There Any Rules for Sampling?
I won’t call these rules but I will say these are the best practices to get better results. Some of these best practices are:
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- Your sample should be able to ideally represent your target market.
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- Your sample should include every category. If you’re segmenting based on gender and your target audience is made up of all the genders, then make sure that people from all the genders form a part of your study. This way, you will get more accurate results.
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- Not to mention, a sample should always be aligned with your marketing plan, your long-term strategy, and your business vision.
- Sampling is directly dependent on your goal. If your goal is to increase your product quality, then you want to research those customers who have been using your products for quite some time. If you want to improve your first impression as a brand, then you can focus on those customers who are new to your brand.
What Should be Your Sample Size?
Now, the time comes to decide the size of your sample. There is no perfect number that I can tell you here. But I can tell you all the factors that you should consider while deciding your sample size. These are:
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- Try not to have a very small sample size. Because if your sample size is very small, you will end up excluding a lot of people from your studies who should form a part of it. Not just that, but it will also increase the chances of your errors.
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- The sample size is also going to depend on how well you can divide your target market into various groups. Make sure you take everything into consideration while forming your groups.
For example, you can divide on the basis of age or age plus income range or age plus income range plus gender. The more segmentation you do, the more groups will be formed and your sample size will increase in response to that.
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- Your current marketing plan, strategy, and research objective are also going to play an important role in defining your sample size. If you’re planning to expand the reach of your product to teenagers, then your sample size doesn’t need to have other age groups even though they form a part of your target market.
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- Time is going to affect your sample size as well. If you have more time at hand, you can make your sample size bigger. But if you have very limited time and you have to finish your research within that time, then you will be required to make many adjustments according to that.
What are the Types of Sampling Techniques Available?
There are many ways available for selecting people for your sample who are going to participate in your research. There are two main ways of doing this. These are:
Probability Sampling
In this case, we will set up some criteria and select members for the study on the basis of that. Every person will have an equal opportunity to become a part of this study.
Here are the various probability sampling methods that you can use:
Simple Random Sampling
If you want to save time and resources, this is the sampling method for you. In this, members for the research are selected randomly. As it’s random, everyone from your target market has an equal chance to be selected for this.
Cluster Sampling
In this sampling, you are going to divide your entire audience based on some factors like demographics. These groups will be called clusters and all these clusters, when combined together, will represent your entire target market. You can plan your clusters based on location, age, education, work, or something else.
Systematic Sampling
Systematic sampling is like random sampling, except the members are not chosen totally randomly. You can choose members at regular intervals here. You start this method by selecting a starting point and then selecting people for your sample based on a pattern decided by you.
For example, you can select every 10th house in Williamsburg for your research or interview every 5th customer entering your restaurant.
Stratified Random Sampling
For this, you divide your population into various mutually exclusive groups. These groups are not overlapping but, in combination, can represent your entire target market.
For example, you can create groups based on annual income lower than $50,000, $50,000-$100,000, $100,000-$200,000, $200,000-$500,000, and above $500,000.
Non-probability Sampling
This is a random selection method where the selection criteria are not fixed. Everyone doesn’t have an equal opportunity to be chosen for the research as many times as the sample will be decided based on the convenience.
Convenience Sampling
As the name suggests, convenience sampling is based on selecting those people who are easily available to volunteer for your research. For example, selecting those who are passing by your office or selecting New York because your office is there and going to different cities will involve a bigger budget.
Chances of errors are generally higher in this kind of sampling. It’s good for small businesses as they have limited budgets and also any kind of research is better than no research. But bigger brands should avoid this form of research as it can increase their risks of making the wrong decisions.
Judgment or Purposive Sampling
Here, you use your judgment to select the audience. For example, if you are planning to study whether people are going to like the software that you have designed for university students or not, then you can just pick all those who are in the university at the moment.
Snowball Sampling
This method is used when the subjects are not easily accessible. For example, if you are trying to conduct research on a very sensitive method, then getting participants for this research might not be an easy task.
For example, if you are researching homelessness, then there is not going to be a list of people you can contact. So, you will find whoever is available and conduct your studies this way.
Quota Sampling
Selection of the participants is based on pre-set criteria. For example, selecting 20 adult men and 20 adult women to study the effect of the news.
As I finish educating you about sampling, I am sure that all of your sampling doubts will have been cleared and now you can work on designing your own sample and move your research to the next phase, which is going to be about how to collect data from your sample.
How to Collect Data
“Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.” –Bernard Baruch
The next step in this easiest guide for market research, Now, you’re ready to collect data for your business. But before you do that, you have to understand the various techniques used for it and then decide which one to choose for your market research project. Budget and time are going to play an important role in your decision.
The Art of Collecting Data
You have to spend a lot of time with your customers and competitors to know what’s going on in their lives because you don’t want to be the last one to know that your customers’ needs have changed and now they want to break up with your brand. To be one step ahead of them, always anticipating what they would like. This is going to keep your relationship strong.
The most important thing you have to remember is to always move forward, irrespective of any unexpected obstacles coming your way. You have to make sure that every step is moving you closer towards your research goals.
Think of it as walking. Just move one step in front of another, not to the left or the right, otherwise, you will end up in a completely different direction or in an endless unproductive loop.
As you don’t have limited customers that you can just stalk on their social media accounts and learn more of their needs, that’s why understanding this easiest guide’s market research techniques has become so crucial. Whichever market research technique can help you achieve your goals by reaching the most customers within the constraints of your budget and time is the one suitable for you.
There are so many ways of collecting data. You have to figure out which one will best suit your current requirements.
There are various ways of categorizing these data collection methods. The first way is to divide them into three categories: exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory.
Exploratory Market Research
Exploratory market research is generally preferred in the early stages of a project when you are more interested in exploring a subject. You can also use this method of market research to figure out the feasibility of a project or whether a subject is worth conducting more detailed research or not.
This method of research is also very useful when you’re trying to study those topics, where not enough information has been collected in the past and you are trying to figure out what will be the best tool to collect more information on the same topic.
Descriptive Market Research
When you want to learn something in detail, you do descriptive research. For example, how does homelessness affect children? This is not the kind of research where you can do casual small research. You need to go to the roots of the issue and understand it.
Furthermore, if you’re conducting a study on how some people turn into psychopaths, you need to explore more than just their break-up stories. You need to go a step further and learn about their childhood, social life, the circumstances in which they grew up, and a lot more. If you have seen the TV show “The Sinner,” you will know what I’m talking about.
This method of research proves very useful for non-profit organizations and social workers.
Explanatory/Causal Market Research
Explanatory market research aims to answer the question “why?” Your research showed that people love orange juice more than pineapple juice in New York, explanatory research is going to help you understand why they prefer one over the other.
You use this method of data collection when you want to learn the cause and effect of your study topic. For example, why are some kids so addicted to TikTok while others are to Instagram? Does peer pressure play a role in this? Do their personalities influence their actions?
This was just one way of dividing various data collection methods. Another way is to split it into a quantitative method of data collection and a qualitative method.
Quantitative Market Research
Quantitative market research deals with collecting and analyzing numerical data to describe or predict the variables of your interest.
For example, how much the demand for vegan food is going to rise in the next five years? This is the kind of question that will involve quantitative rather than qualitative methods of data collection. It generally involves the use of statistics
Qualitative Market Research
Qualitative research is about collecting and understanding non-numerical data. It’s about how humans think, perceive, or give meaning to a thing based on various stimuli. Its focus remains on understanding human behavior. For example, if you want to understand why some people prefer makeup while others don’t, you have to conduct qualitative research.
This method of research is interpretive in nature, so different researchers can interpret the same thing differently. How your customers are going to respond to your research will depend on how they perceive their social realities. For example, interviews and focus groups.
Where to Look for Data
“He who would search for pearls must dive below.” –John Dryden
Before you start your research, you need to know where to look for that data.
For your personal as well as professional projects, you will find yourself surrounded by two sources of information—internal and external. Internal source of information is when you make use of the information that you already have. On the other hand, an external source of information is when you have to look for that desired information outside your own realm.
Internal Sources of Information
Internal sources of information are those sources that you can find within your own organization. It includes your profit and loss statement, reports from your sales team, the data from your Google analytics, social media, search ads, etc.
External Sources of Information
Sometimes, when we need detailed information to solve a business problem, we need to gather data from external sources. As the name suggests, external sources lie outside our organization and we don’t have easy access to those as we have to our own internal documents.
These external sources are further divided into primary and secondary sources.
Understanding Primary Data
Whenever we collect data from the original source ourselves, the data gained in the process is known as the primary data. This data doesn’t come in the form of published market reports or articles that you can get from market research companies.
On the one hand, this is going to be a very slow and expensive process. On the other hand, the data is going to be more accurate, reliable, and recent.
This is a direct data collection. In this form of data collection, you’re not relying on old data like market reports but are trying to gather the most recent data.
How to Conduct Primary Research
Surveys
Surveys are a very common way of collecting data. You must have filled out at least one survey in your lifetime. These are the forms that are designed to understand your needs, seek your suggestion for product improvement, or get your feedback for a service. Surveys can be done for various other purposes. The list is endless.
Census surveys are used by the government to collect information about the residents of a country.
When you want to study a larger group of people, surveys become a good option. They provide limited information but when you’re figuring out how your product is working or can be improved, surveys can provide you the right information from a big set of your consumers.
In the digital world, we have gained access to various online survey tools. Online surveys are replacing the old form of pen and paper surveys because of their ease and convenience.
It is amazing that now you don’t have to stand outside a store and stop people to fill out your survey. Now, you can easily send these surveys to a big audience in the shortest amount of time with the help of emails, social media, or your website.
A good survey design is very important for the success of your project. Make sure that you include a mix of open-ended as well as closed questions in it. In addition, the flow should be planned in a way that makes answering the questions effortlessly, and also encourages honest answers.
Focus Groups
Imagine focus groups as a discussion with your friends. When your boyfriend has done something weird and you don’t know how to react, you share the story with your friends and ask for their advice. Then, based on that, you decide your next action.
Focus groups for business projects are kind of the same. In this, you are going to collect data from a group of your customers or potential customers rather than your friends.
Focus groups are a way of collecting data from a small group of people. To increase the efficiency of your project, you don’t want to go above twelve people in a group study. You can bring together various people from different sets.
In addition, you’ll need a moderator to stimulate the group to get greater insights.
Interviews
Interviews are a one-on-one data gathering process. Remember when you go out with your girlfriend and ask her why she wouldn’t start exercising if she wants to lose weight or why she wouldn’t join Tinder if she wants to date, you are engaging in a one-on-one interview to gain more information.
Interviews generally involve a smaller group but still help you in collecting detailed information on a subject of your choice.
Before launching a new product, interviews become necessary to understand how your ideal consumer thinks and if your product will be able to satisfy their needs.
Furthermore, interviews can also be done over the phone or online.
Interviews are a qualitative form of collecting data. The reason it generates good responses is that it’s way more personal than other forms of data gathering techniques.
In addition, the questions are mainly open-ended but the quality of it depends heavily on the interviewer. So, if you don’t have much information about how to interview participants for a market research project, it’s better to team up with a marketing agency.
Customer Observation
Remember how you observe your family and friends to understand their needs. You pay attention when your friend doesn’t order dairy products, next time you make sure to go to a restaurant where there are some good vegan options. This is the process of understanding a subject by observing it.
In this, you’re taking notes from your surroundings to gain insights about specific people and events. The best part about this easiest guide for market research is that it is fairly unbiased.
Data Analysis
In this method of data collection, you collect data from trustworthy sources like market reports. Then, you analyze those to find some patterns or trends that can prove useful to your business.
For example, getting P&L statements of various companies so you can analyze whether or not you want to invest your money in their stocks.
Understanding Secondary Data
This research is conducted using data that has been previously collected by others. That’s why it’s also known as desk research as you can do it from the comfort of your desk.
According to the easiest guide to market research, for conducting this, you need to gather reports which are made public, can be downloaded from various websites, or can be accessed from public libraries and are related to your project.
How to Conduct Secondary Research
Data from the Internet
Many research organizations are regularly studying the market and publishing their results in the form of various reports and case studies. You can study these reports to get an understanding of your issue.
Let’s say you want to do research on the importance of going digital for a business. For research like this, you can just do secondary research by browsing the internet to find already analyzed data on this topic.
Government and Other Agencies
Writing this easiest guide for market research we found that Government organizations are also regularly sharing a lot of data, which can be used for market research. US Census Bureau and Small Business Development Centers publish a lot of useful reports that can be used by startups and small businesses for conducting their market research at a cheaper cost.
Not just government organizations, you can even collect data from public libraries, educational institutions, and various other commercial information centers.
Periodicals & Newspapers
Business magazines and newspapers are very frequently publishing data that can prove very useful for market research. You can access the physical or the online versions of these reports.
Newspapers provide enough information for doing your preliminary research on a topic. Later, you can add some other methods of research to get more information on the same topic.
How to Put Your Data to Action
At this stage, you know why we created this easiest guide for market research and what kinds of techniques are employed in it. But the job is not finished when you are done collecting the data. The most crucial part of your project is going to start now.
All the data you have collected with help of this easiest guide for market research is of no use if you don’t know how to gain insights from it, how to make profitable decisions with the help of this, and how to put your data into action.
There are four parts of any market research project:
- Data collection
- Data analysis
- Insights gathering
- Decision making
If you have religiously followed Chapters 2 to 6, then you have got access to the data you were looking for. But there are still three more steps to go. In this chapter, we are going to focus mainly on that.
The Process of Data Analysis
Once you have collected the data, you have to start refining it. Refining a data set implies getting rid of unnecessary, duplicate, or misleading data. If you don’t do that, you can see results that are not actually true, thus hurting your decision-making.
For example, when you do a survey, you generally don’t count the extreme answers as they can present you with an incorrect picture. For example, a survey form with everything marked as a 10 or 9, or 1 or 0 on a scale of 1 to 10.
As said before, according to the easiest guide for market research, when the data is refined, you can move on to the next step of data analysis. If the data set is not too large, then you can study the data yourself. You can use Excel to get some basic analytical knowledge from your data.
On the other hand, if you have lots and lots of data, then you need to work with a data analytical team. They generally analyze data using advanced statistical methods. Chances of errors become considerably low with them.
Gaining Insights from your Data
Once you have analyzed data, you have to mine that data to find insights from it. At this point, you can involve your marketing or product team to work with the data analysis team.
They will gather valuable insights like the demand of your product has gone down by 1%, even though the market grew by 5%, or the customers are not very happy with the new upgrade of your app and it has decreased the in-app engagement by 17%.
Try to look for patterns everywhere as patterns help in finding correlations and these correlations can lead to drawing conclusions.
Using Insights to Make Decisions
Now, according to this easiest guide, your market research project is of no use if you are not going to use the results of it in your decision-making process.
If the data reveals that your customers are unhappy with your product, then not making a decision to improve your product is a waste of your resources and time spent on learning this.
Always try to connect your decision-making to some sort of data. If you don’t have data, start a market research project and gain data on that topic. Don’t make any decision just on the basis of your “intuition.”
The Power of Data-Driven Decision Making
We can’t just rely on “intuition” or “a gut feeling” to make our business decisions. Most business decisions involve a huge risk, and as smart business owners, our goal should always be to minimize these risks.
The best way to improve your decision-making and decrease your business risk is to use data to guide your decisions.
I am not saying your “gut feeling” is completely wrong, but when it is combined with data, it brings better results.
Data-driven decision making is going to help you:
-
- Make better and improved decisions
- Take proactive measures
- Reduce risks and save costs
- Make accurate, timely, and relevant decisions
The truth is that every business answer that you’re looking for is out there—covered and surrounded by many layers of unnecessary data.
You can go for a trial and error method to find that valuable piece of information. The only problem is that it might take many lifetimes to hit the right spot. Not to talk about the waste of resources it is going to bring for a business.
Or you can take help from this easiest guide for market research techniques. You don’t have to hit in the dark anymore. This is going to tell you exactly where to dig to find that treasure. It’s fast, economical, and extremely helpful for the long-term growth of a business.
The purpose of this easiest guide for market research was to prepare you to work on your own market research project and give the right direction to your business.
Remember, it’s better to learn about your business when you still have the time, resources, and capabilities to revive it. No good has ever come from making a decision too late.
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