Market research is one of the pre-steps to launching your brand. During this stage, you study your proposed market niche, your competitors, the state of the market, reasons why consumers will buy your product and how some factors influence their buying behaviour.
What is market research?
Market research is the process of gathering information about your business’s buyers personas, target audience, and customers. This helps you determine how viable and successful your product or service will perform or is doing among your target audience.
Your market research results give you an idea of what to expect when you launch your brand. However, before you conduct market research, it is important to know the types and the results you need from them. Market research has two types: Primary and secondary. The primary research directly studies your customers while the secondary research studies information others have gathered about customers. The main aspects your secondary research will fall into include:
- Public sources – this includes government agencies; National Bureau of Statistics.
- Commercial sources – research agencies like Gartner are useful in this case.
- Internal sources – This is the market data your organization already has.
With market research, you can answer the following questions:
- Who are your customers? Their age, occupation, income, buying behaviour and personality.
- What do they buy now? This answers their buying habits, how much they like to buy, their current favourite suppliers and their marketing tactics.
- Why do they buy? This deals with your products and their uses.
- What will make them buy from you? Your target audience already has their suppliers.
Market research studies why a consumer will want to buy your product, their buying motivations and their current buying prices.
To answer the above questions, your market research must be conducted wisely without wasting your limited budget. Follow these steps to carry out effective market research:
- Determine what you need to know about your market
Focused market research will yield valuable survey results. Creating a list of questions before each research project will guide your research direction. With this list, you can narrow the research process to only the important areas which makes it more effective.
Knowing your market basics through a digital market research activity can increase your annual turnover by over a quarter. Whatever business niche you plan to try out, you will need to know:
- Is there a demand for your product or service?
- What would people be willing to pay for it?
- Can you make it for them or provide it to them at that price?
- Is your price competitive?
- Prioritize the results of your first step
One thing you need to know is that you can’t carry out all-inclusive research on your first step. You have to concentrate on the information that will give you the fastest results. After the successful first step, go back to your business plan, identify outstanding questions and carry out secondary research.
- Review less-expensive research alternatives
As a new business, you surely should not have to spend all your capital on market research. Consider other less-expensive alternatives that can help you develop customer surveys. Some of these less-expensive research methods include:
- Ask yourself certain questions
- Directly interview your potential customers
- Set up online surveys
- Leverage marketing professors and students
- Join online communities
Effective market research allows you to discover the target market and also get feedback and opinions from consumers about their interest in your product or service. Consider the methods listed above and carry out your successful business plan.
