You know that "market research" is essential before launching a new product or service, or to understand industry trends and competitiveness. However, when tasked with this work, the market can seem vast and overwhelming, making it hard to know where to start.
To help with this, we’ve compiled everything you need to know about market research! From its basic concept to the process and timing, you’ll get a comprehensive understanding all in one go. This is part one of the series, covering the fundamentals before we dive into the practical tips.
Basics of Market Research
Market research involves systematically collecting and analyzing information about customer needs and preferences within your industry. Market research provides key insights into customer and market trends, which inform business decisions.
✅Importance of Market Research
Launching a product/service based on subjective intuition without understanding competitiveness and needs can lead to failure. The gap between what customers expect and what we provide (experience gap) grows. Through market research, you can understand customer behavior and demand, reducing the risk of failure by closing this experience gap.
✅How Does Market Research Relate to Marketers?
Just making a product doesn’t guarantee sales. We need to actively communicate and let customers know about a smart product that solves their problems. Market research helps identify the characteristics of your target customers and the best messages and methods to reach them. Understanding your target audience and competitor trends through market research reduces mistakes, efficiently uses the marketing budget, and attracts more customers.
Why Just Following Marketing Trends Isn’t Enough
Have you ever caught yourself thinking, "can't I just follow marketing trends which reflects the results of market research anyway?”
To keep a firm grasp on what’s making the market buzz, many marketers keep an eye on social media channels daily, read marketing newsletters, and check multiple platforms that curate Some buy and read trend analysis reports to keep up with rapidly changing consumer interests and plan viral marketing campaigns. While trend analysis is important for reading the market’s overall direction and widening the awareness and interest stages of the marketing funnel, simply applying big data trends uniformly in today’s hyper-personalized, micro-trend society can be ineffective.
Misunderstanding our own customers can lead to biased views when looking at actual customer data, skewing marketing plans from the start and wasting resources. Therefore, it's crucial to focus on understanding our customers’ needs and behaviors before following trends, which is possible through market research.
Key Moments for Market Research:
There’s no set time or season for market research; it varies based on industry situations and your brand’s roadmap. Creating and executing a market research cycle tailored to your brand and aligned with internal schedules can provide more fitting insights.
Market research is essential not just before developing a product/service but also when it's already in the market, to boost brand loyalty. This helps develop the product/service based on insights about the market and customers, and stops it from becoming obsolete or ‘out’ too fast.
For Segmenting Customers
Effective business growth and marketing efficiency come from targeting precise customer segments, which starts with collecting customer data through market research.
For Analyzing Competitors
Understanding competitors and their perception by customers is crucial for product development/improvement. Market research helps identify our brand’s strengths and weaknesses relative to competitors, enabling more effective competition.
For Developing a Product/Service
Thoroughly understanding potential customers through market research helps design and develop products that reflect their needs, increasing the chances of success and reducing post-launch risks.
For Renewing a Product/Service
Regularly examining how specific customer segments use, perceive, and feel about our product helps it grow healthily as a truly customer-centric product.
For Testing Ads and Marketing Messages
With limited campaign budgets, it’s crucial to attract customers effectively. Relying on intuition can fail to elicit responses from customers. Conducting pre-tests via market research predicts customer reactions to our brand communication, allowing better planning and adjustments.
