Here are some tips where market research can help you build a stronger business.
1. Improve your branding
Many companies do not have good control over their brands. They ask themselves: How do customers see us? How does our brand compare to our competition?
You can use market research to improve your branding by exploring topics such as:
- Brand Awareness—Are customers familiar and familiar with your brand?
- Competitive Comparison—How do customers view your company compared to the competition?
- Personalization—What traits and characteristics do customers associate with your brand?
You can also conduct customer surveys to gather feedback on marketing materials such as logos, brochures, and websites. Brand research is done by interviewing consumers or conducting focus groups. In this way, you can dig deeper into different topics and get feedback from participants. The results help grow brand awareness and marketing activities.
2. Understand your customers better
Entrepreneurs sometimes need better information about their market size, their target customers, and how to reach them. We recently completed a survey for a client who has created a new kitchen product and wanted an insight into its target market. I wanted to know a few things about the average customer of this new product.
- How old are they?
- Are they male or female?
- What is her marital status?
- Have kids?
- Where do they live?
- What is their level of education?
- What kind of social media do they use?
We designed a questionnaire for 1000 users across Canada who can answer online. This type of consumer survey helps us understand the image of the target audience so that we can improve the position of the target brand. By focusing your efforts on the right target market, you will see faster results, better efficiency, and better overall performance from your marketing campaign.
3. Measure the effectiveness of your marketing
Many entrepreneurs want to do a great job of promoting their company’s ads and sales. Market research can help inform the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. We can create surveys to collect customer feedback on the look and feel of your marketing messages. We can measure customer awareness and response to specific marketing campaigns and activities.
Collecting this type of data will help you design a marketing tool that will help you maximize your marketing budget that will reach and delight your audience.
4. Identify new opportunities
Market research helps you identify new market opportunities available for your business.. This can help you identify geographic areas for expansion and/or test market readiness for your new products or services.
For example, you might want to open a new retail store and find the right location. Or you plan to change your distribution channel and find out how the decision will affect your messenger base.
To answer these questions, we were able to analyze existing data from government publications, Statistics Canada data, and/or industry-specific reports. These resources provide information in the following areas:
- Market size
- Demographics
- Market Segment Insights
- Business Dynamics
- Major business suppliers
- Main competitors
General business data such as the number of companies and their geographic distribution
Obtaining this type of market data is an important step in helping to “new market size” reliably determine optimal business strategy and action.
5. Get insights into product features
If you are launching a new product or improving an existing one, you will want to know if you have the right features and packaging. The research will provide information that your company can use to refine your products before incurring costly production costs.
When we design research for a new product, we collect customer feedback on a concept and/or prototype. Our company also are here to collect information about customer response to the product and its features, including appearance, design, usability, colors, packaging, and other variables.
We can also ask how customers buy this product to gather statistics for a distribution plan. We can also solicit responses to marketing messages, creative content, and promotional ideas planned for product launches.
Usually, we start with qualitative research (interviews or focus groups), because this conversation format allows us to gather rich and in-depth customer feedback. If possible, we will provide customers with a prototype or a sample of the product to be touched and used.
After that, we will confirm the research results with a comprehensive survey with a similar audience, but with a larger sample set (ie over 100 consumers). Through this, we obtain rich data to make informed decisions to complete the concept and/or design of the product.
