researching the target market and competition:
A strong market research process can help you to learn about your audience, understand their needs and position your products and services to serve them better. With these insights, you can improve your marketing strategies and rise above your competitors who do not understand the market or target audience.
What is Market Research? Market research involves gathering information about your industry, customers, and competitors so that you can make informed decisions. Small business owners use the data they collect when they create a business market plan. Bigger companies may engage a mobile app developer’s research firm in New York so as to collect customer and industry information when introducing a new product for instance. Market research is considered an essential component when you conduct a market analysis. It can be useful when starting a new business, creating buyer personas, gauging customer satisfaction, or evaluating the competitive forces in an industry. There are four types of market research –
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. Primary Research – Primary market research is also known as first-party data. This is data you collect about your customers, potential customers, or business on your own. This data is gathered via online surveys or customer interviews. This data is owned and managed at your end.
Secondary Research – Secondary market research refers to the existing data you can use so as to inform your research. This may include the data from second and third-party sources.
. Qualitative Research – Qualitative research refers to the collection of data with no measurable quantity. This data is descriptive and focuses on understanding the behavior, motivations, and other human qualities. When you research buyer attitudes, you are conducting qualitative research.
. Quantitative Research – Quantitative research, on the other hand, is concerned with collecting the numbers for statistical analysis. Data such as industry sales, US census figures, an even number of social media followers, or website visitors are considered ad quantitative.
How to Do Market Research?
During the market research process, marketers need to collect data and analyze their audience and target audience. The following steps in the marketing research will help you to fully understand your audiences and their needs –
. Identify the purpose
The first step in how to do market research is articulating what you want to find out. This purpose may be to understand the issues, problems, and concerns of your target audience. It may be to support the creation of buyer personas or it could be to measure the attitude toward a product or changing forces in a market.
. Plan your research methods
Once you have concrete the question you want to address, the next step is to choose your method of conducting the research and analysis. Data collection is one of the most important parts of market research.
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Conducting your market research
Researching the target market and competition
If you have never done market research before, then you need to keep an open mind to find what works best for your unique market and discovery goals. In order to conduct your market research, you need to stand out with the options below –
. Send out surveys so as to understand the customer sentiment
. See what website visitors are doing on your business site
. Learn about your website demographics
. See your audience’s interests
. Run experiments and A/B tests to analyze customer behavior
. Research top competitor search terms
Conduct market analysis
Before you can use your market research, you need to analyze it first. This is where you can put the data you collected into a format that is useful for decision-making. This type of analysis you will conduct depends on the information you collect. If you are studying buyer attitudes, for example, qualitative data analysis techniques will be necessary.
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Take action
The final step in conducting the market research is taking the action based on what you learn. You need to consider trends in data and identify the customer habits and desires to find ways to adjust your offerings and market positioning. For example, consider the research about millennials.
Information about your target audience, competitors, and industry will help you to get to know about the market and identify trends that will help you to shape your marketing tactics and brand positioning.
