When designing or marketing a new product, business owners across all industries will experience difficulty making decisions with certainty. Without a clear understanding of your customer’s motivations, intentions, desires and problems, creating a product that targets their needs becomes challenging.
Market research refers to the process of gathering and analysing data from your target market. A target market is the group of customers who are most likely to purchase your product. Marketers can determine a product’s core priorities by gathering opinions, reactions, and behaviours.
Market research aims to develop a product, service, or marketing campaign. By satisfying the requirements of your target audience, your product will become more attractive, leading to increased lead completion and success. Effective market research also helps businesses to identify new target audiences, refine their existing ones and measure the perception of their business.
For many businesses, market research is the missing puzzle piece. This article will explain why market research is vital for your business and our five favourite tools for effective market research.
Market research seeks perspective from your typical customers about their needs and desires. These details will enable you to refine a product or service to satisfy their particular requirements and attract them to make a purchase.
Marketers can utilise detailed and practical market research to obtain insightful information. It enables businesses to locate where customers make typical purchases, what influences their purchase decisions, how competitors encourage them to complete a purchase, and whether there is a demand for a unique solution.
Data collection methods such as questionnaires and interviews are subject to subsequent data analysis, which will reveal personalised insights depending on your goals. Effectively putting this information into action will determine a business’s success.
It is possible to implement various data collection methods within market research. Each technique offers its own advantages and has unique analysis methods. Before revealing our top five tools and explaining why they are each uniquely helpful, it is vital to understand the differences between the two core types of market research.
In primary market research, your source of information is the consumer. Engaging directly with the consumer allows businesses to gather raw insights into their purchasing behaviours and opinions.
For businesses looking to find specific answers to their questions, primary market research offers flexibility and control over the direction of the investigation. Depending on the research objective, businesses can perform focus groups, surveys, and interviews to gather information and influence subsequent business actions.
Secondary market research utilises previously published data. It may be sourced from government agencies, industry publications, or articles published by competitors.
The information can be obtained much more quickly than primary research but lacks precision. One of the disadvantages of secondary research is that each business has independent research objectives in mind whilst interpreting raw data. Once published, businesses performing secondary research may struggle to extrapolate meaningful results for their unique goals as the data was collected for another purpose.
If market research is a brand new concept to you, or you’re looking for a way to refresh your strategy, plenty of market tools will support you in your individual goals.
We’ve listed our five favourite online tools that provide businesses with the resources they need to flourish.
Market researchers searching for a one-stop shop for curated data insights will enjoy the easy-to-use data insights provided by Google. Think with Google is a free digital marketing toolbox that offers access to a range of Google’s market research tools. These include Find My Audience, Market Finder, Google Trends, and Customer Insights. Unlike Google Analytics’ real-time approach to consumer analysis, this library of figures provides focused insights into the current market and your target audience.
Effective market research should focus on identifying and satisfying the needs of your target audience. A marketing persona is a fictional representation of your target audience. It may include representational demographics, interests, career and personal values. This information helps to create a clear depiction of a typical customer, allowing you to tailor your product or service to their needs.
Make my Persona is a persona generator tool that enables businesses to assemble a visual representation of their buyer persona. Hubspot’s free template software offers a visually engaging and effective model of a customer’s goals and challenges. The persona profiles can then be shared across the company so that each team member can coordinate their actions in line with your target market.
Getting your customer’s feedback and opinion on an advertisement or product is one of the core components of an adaptive marketing strategy. Taking on board constructive feedback with the intent to make future enhancements will allow your company to grow beyond stagnant competitors.
To access the opinions of your target market with minimal fuss, Survey Monkey offers a quick and hassle-free tool for generating online surveys. With seventeen question formats and the ability to design the visual appearance of your survey, you can adapt the tool to suit any product or industry.
Increase your response rates and gain in-depth insight into your customer’s thought process with well-constructed and presented surveys from Survey Monkey.
For marketers looking for the most convenient way to conduct their market research, Qualtrics offers an all-in-one tool that ticks every box. From primary data collection to in-depth analysis, this toolbox intelligently guides you through the customer experience to pinpoint customer pain points and desires.
Qualtrics’ standout feature is their survey builder. Users can drag and drop features into their survey with just a few simple clicks to create a questionnaire that asks all the right questions. Qualtrics also helps to simplify data analysis by recommending statistical tests and translating the results into actionable insights.
This tool takes time and patience to conquer. But once you do, survey building and data analysis are like a walk in the park.
Hotjar is an innovative tool, offering a unique primary data collection method. Using first-party tracking cookies within your website, Hotjar will record your visitors’ sessions as they travel across your website. This data is then presented in a visual format via heatmaps and session recordings.
The purpose behind Hotjar is to identify where your customers identify with components of your website and where they are less interested. Locate which features excite customers and which paths are followed more frequently or clicked most often. Businesses are educated by this data, allowing them to make meaningful changes to their website. After making changes, the tool also allows you to monitor the changes and observe how they affect customer engagement and conversions in real-time.
Beyond the tools mentioned above, there are a variety of other resources that can also prove to be insightful for a range of market research goals.
YouGov is a British public opinion polling organisation that publishes the results of a wide variety of surveys and market research on its website. When gathering insights from your industry quickly, YouGov provides access to consumer opinions, white papers and custom research solutions.
For business owners or marketers not yet familiar with the concept of market research, getting started can seem intimidating. Fortunately, there is a wealth of knowledge to lead you through the process. Beyond this article, resources such as Smart Insights or Social Media Examiner publish digital marketing content for actionable targets that can be implemented within your market research.
For secondary market research, Statista is a gold mine. The platform is known for performing and publishing consumer research on more than 80,000 topics. The statistics presented within this comprehensive database enable marketers to support their research, identify trends in the market, understand consumer interactions and grow their business.
Market research is a vital component of any product strategy. Businesses looking to improve a product, introduce a new solution to the market, or revamp their marketing strategy must consider the needs and opinions of their target market.
We have revealed the five tools that add value to any market research strategy. Resources such as Think with Google offer a wealth of data analysis tools marketers can translate into actionable targets. Make My Persona visualises a typical customer’s needs, which can be incorporated into product design or marketing materials. Survey Monkey’s bespoke survey builder gathers insights directly from the customer. Qualtrics enhances the market research process with intuitive data analysis tools. Finally, Hotjar creates awareness of hotspots and weak points, presenting clear visual instructions for making improvements across your website.
Contact Pinnacle Internet Marketing today for further information about the market research process or digital marketing services that generate long-term results.
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