"If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always got."
This saying might sound reassuring if you've enjoyed sustained success, but it carries a hidden threat. Sticking to the status quo can lead to stagnation, leaving you vulnerable to competitors and forgotten by your target audience.
Consider Kodak. Once a dominant force in photography, they clung to traditional methods as digital photography emerged. Their failure to adapt led to a decline and eventual fading from public consciousness.
Now contrast that with Fujifilm, a key Kodak competitor. They embraced change, applying their film expertise to new technologies. This proactive approach ensured their continued success in the modern market.
The same principle applies to market research. Relying on outdated methods, speaking to the same limited audience, and conducting tedious surveys can leave you trailing behind.
How do you determine the right market research approach? It starts with understanding your specific information needs and business objectives.
This blog post explores the different types of market research you can employ to tackle business issues and challenges. We'll also offer valuable insights into when to utilize each strategy effectively.
1. Brand Research
Brand research is crucial for creating and managing your company's brand or identity. Your brand encompasses the images, narratives, and characteristics that people associate with your company.
When to Use It
Brand research is valuable at every stage of your business, from initial launch to new product releases and rebranding efforts. Consider these seven key areas:
- Brand Advocacy: How willing are your customers to recommend your brand to others?
- Brand Awareness: Is your target market familiar with your brand and do they perceive you as a viable option?
- Brand Loyalty: Are you successfully retaining existing customers?
- Brand Penetration: What proportion of your target market currently uses your brand?
- Brand Perception: What are the prevailing opinions regarding your company's identity and distinguishing attributes?
- Brand Positioning: How can you best differentiate your brand in the minds of consumers and articulate its value proposition effectively?
- Brand Value: How much more are consumers willing to pay for your brand experience compared to alternatives?
How to Do It
Researchers use a variety of market research techniques to assess both your strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your competitors. This typically involves conducting both qualitative and quantitative research to gain a comprehensive view of the marketplace. Focus groups and interviews can be invaluable for understanding the emotions and associations people have with particular brands.
Market research surveys are helpful for identifying features and benefits that set you apart from the competition. The key is to translate these differentiating factors into compelling language that resonates with your target audience.
2. Campaign Effectiveness
This research evaluates whether your advertising messages are reaching the intended audience and achieving the desired outcomes. Successful campaign effectiveness research helps to increase sales and reduce customer acquisition costs.
When to Use It
People are bombarded with thousands of advertising messages every day, making attention a scarce resource. Use campaign effectiveness research to ensure your advertising budget is being spent wisely.
How to Do It
The approach to campaign effectiveness research will depend on the stage of the campaign. Ideally, you should integrate research across all phases! Quantitative research can reveal how your target market perceives your advertising and identify weaknesses that need addressing.
3. Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis allows you to assess your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, providing you with vital information to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.
When to Use It
No business operates in isolation. Competitive analysis is a fundamental component of any comprehensive business and marketing plan. It’s useful if you're launching your business, entering a new market, or conducting a general health check.
How to Do It
A researcher selects a few key competitors and analyzes aspects like their marketing strategy, customer perception, revenue, and sales volume.
Secondary sources, such as articles, advertisements, and industry reports, offer valuable competitive information. However, primary research, including mystery shopping and focus groups, can uncover invaluable insights into customer service and current consumer opinions.
4. Consumer Insights
Consumer insights research digs deeper than basic customer demographics and behaviors. It seeks to understand why customers behave in certain ways, allowing you to leverage these insights to achieve your business goals.
When to Use It
A deep understanding of your customer base is essential for creating a strategic marketing plan. This research helps you anticipate customer needs, inspire innovation, personalize marketing efforts, and overcome business challenges.
How to Do It
Consumer insights research should be specific to your business, focusing on understanding your target audience and existing customers. Researchers may use a range of methods, such as interviews, ethnography, surveys, social media monitoring, and customer journey mapping.
Key characteristics to understand include:
- Purchase habits
- Interests, hobbies, and passions
- Personal and professional information
- Media and advertising consumption habits
5. Customer Satisfaction Research
Customer satisfaction research measures customer experiences with your products or services, focusing on whether their expectations are met, exceeded, or not fulfilled.
When to Use It
Customer satisfaction is a key indicator of customer retention and overall business success. This type of research should help you understand what customers appreciate, dislike, and believe needs improvement. Focus areas could include product quality and design, delivery speed and timeliness, staff reliability, knowledge, and friendliness, as well as market pricing and value for money.
How to Do It
There are various methods for measuring customer satisfaction, most commonly surveys. An NPS (Net Promoter Score) or Voice of the Customer survey can measure customer loyalty. The Customer Effort Score (CES) measures customer satisfaction with customer service or problem resolution. CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) surveys measure customer satisfaction using rating scales. These can be conducted at different points in the customer journey for more granular insights.
6. Customer Segmentation Research
Customer segmentation research aims to divide markets or customers into smaller groups or personas with shared characteristics to enable targeted marketing. By understanding each segment's behavior, you can determine their influence on revenue.
When to Use It
Customer segmentation is ideal when you’re ready to offer more individualized customer experiences. Since not all customers are the same, understanding specific personas makes it easier to focus on delivering personalized marketing, building customer loyalty, pricing products effectively, and forecasting how new products and services will perform in each segment.
How to Do It
Market researchers segment customers based on these four categories:
- Demographics: Age, gender, family status, education, income, occupation
- Geography: Location, climate, urban/rural
- Psychographics: Socioeconomic status, lifestyle, personality traits, generation, interests
- Behavior: Brand affinity, consumption habits, spending habits
Researchers identify existing customers and gather data through methods like surveys, database analysis, website analytics, interviews, and focus groups to collect as much information as possible.
7. Product Development
Market research for product development utilizes customer knowledge to inform the entire process of creating or improving a product, service, or app.
When to Use It
Innovation is challenging. Studies show a high failure rate for new products. Conducting market research helps minimize the risks. There are three stages in which you can use market research.
- Conception: Market research uncovers unmet market needs and customer challenges, enabling you to identify opportunities.
- Formation: Market research turns your idea into a testable concept, informing pricing, advertising, packaging, and value proposition.
- Introduction: Gauge customer attitudes toward the product and adapt messaging accordingly as it rolls out.
Keep improving the product or identifying new markets for it.
How to Do It
Product development research utilizes various market research methods, depending on the goals. A researcher could present focus groups with product concepts, conduct interviews, or perform user testing.
8. Usability Testing
Usability testing helps you understand how customers use your products in real-time, whether those products are physical or digital.
When to Use It
Usability testing helps to detect problems in early prototypes or beta versions before launch. It is less expensive to test a product beforehand than to recall a flawed product or lose sales due to poor functionality.
How to Do It
There are several types of usability tests:
- Journey testing involves observing a customer's experience on an app or website.
- Eye-tracking studies monitor where people's eyes are drawn on websites, apps, or in stores.
- Learnability studies quantify the learning curve to identify problems after repeated tasks.
- Click tracking follows website activity to evaluate linking structures.
- Checklist testing involves assigning users tasks and having them review their experiences.
Combining Market Research
To conduct effective market research, consider the business challenge or question you’re trying to address, and then select appropriate tools and methods like betterfeedback.ai
From there, the world of useful data and actionable insights will open to you.