According to dictionary.com, market research refers to the action or activity of gathering information about consumers’ needs and preferences. In every business, market research plays a very pivotal role in ensuring such businesses achieve results and profit. This is because virtually all businesses have a customer that is meant to be satisfied. Such business would practically not exist if there wasn’t a customer who needed (or wanted) such good or service being provided by the business. Market research thus cannot be overlooked if any business is looking to make any serious sales.
As a business owner (or not), you might be faced with the problem of how to carry out effective market research so as to attain whatever targets you might have set out for both yourself and your business.
In the paragraphs below, I have outlined some very key steps you could follow to effectively carry out market research.
Set sales goals – You have to begin by asking yourself a very important question: what are you trying to accomplish? Examples: Increase monthly recurring revenue, Increase sales or increase the number of qualified leads. Whatever your desire might be, you have to consider it as a goal that has to be achieved. It also helps to attach timelines to these goals so you could have an idea of how far you have come and also get a perspective on how much work you have to put in at various time intervals.
Determine your marketing strategy – It is very ideal to have a multi-prong approach when starting. You would need to establish a method to track your efforts/activities. This would enable you to have an idea of the success or failure of your strategy. Next, you would have to initiate the next steps of prospecting, lead qualification, acquisition, Lead Nurturing, and Sales Reports and Analytics. All these contain metric systems with which to measure your entire research campaign and effectively ascertain the success or failure.
Review results – Observe your successes and look at opportunities for improvement Increase activities that generate success, reduce or eliminate activities that produced minimal or no results. Review the number of resources going towards your efforts and adjust accordingly. Examples: the amount of time spent on efforts, tools (if any) used and associated costs Incorporate new strategies with current successful strategies and repeat process until goals are achieved.
After carrying out your market research, you might then have to zero in on your identified consumer market. Some steps to take in doing this are as follows:
Find out if the prospect blogs and if they do read their blog to find out their interests.
Identify their social media profiles. Check out their posts to learn about them.
Additionally, use your research to enhance your website and content. Create compelling content on your website, blogs, and emails.
Think from the customer’s perspective.
Develop a clear call to action that’s easy for the prospect to do. The website design should be easy to navigate, simple to understand, with mobile optimization
At the end of the day, market research boils down to simply seeking for ways to better serve the customer with your product or service. It is thus a means to seek to know your customer properly so you don’t get caught providing a service or product that no one (especially your consumer market) wants. Proper market research would lead to the production of products that match the customer’s exact needs and invariably increase in sales and profit.