Introduction
Knowledge is power and market research is a way of gaining that knowledge for your business. Market research has an incredibly large scope and there are many different ways to use it. In this blog, we explore 3 reasons why you should use market research for your business; to market better decision, to understand your market and to connect with your customer.
3 reasons why market research is important
Make Better Decisions
Those who conduct Market Research on a regular basis or when they wish to validate an idea/concept, are making decisions based on data and not just on their gut feeling. Market research minimises investment risk. By spending money on market research, you are validating your ideas before you commit to them and invest. Think of it as an insurance policy for new ideas within your business. Additionally, market research can identify the potential threats and opportunities of a new idea that you may have missed - it’s human nature to think of an idea from our own point of view or allowing assumptions to find it’s way into your ideas. By conducting market research, it allows you to expand on the idea or to adjust it in order to avoid the worst outcomes. As mentioned in a previous blog, market research can also attract investors to your plan and makes your pitch just that much easier. Objective evidence-based research is far easier to trust than someone’s hunch and you can create a lot of confidence by verifying your ideas before launch.
Understand your market
Market research helps to discover your and your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses. This comparison is important and market research can provide an accurate view of your business. You can identify where your competitors are weak or why customers choose them over you. Crucially, market research should highlight your own weaknesses and problem areas, which allows you to learn, adapt and stay ahead of the competition. Having a clear idea of your market also means that you can set achievable targets for business growth, sales, and latest product developments.
Another benefit to market research is that it helps to spot emerging trends and new customer behaviours. By keeping a pulse on the industry, you can innovate quickly and provide what customers want first whether it is from a product or marketing perspective. Often, being the first is one of the most important factors for getting ahead in business and regular market research can make sure you are always aware of what is coming in the future. It can also help in tracking the customer sentiment and their opinions on current affairs or trends that are occurring and understanding where they want brands to stand with regards to certain issues or trends. By validating your thoughts and speaking directly to customers/target market to confirm/deny this thoughts can help save time and money spent on such endevours. Here at Bounce, we have the capability to help you specifically target an audience, whether that be Coffee Drinkers or those who have visited a certain store in the last month, we can capture this information for you.
Connect with your customers
There are so many important reasons to keep your customers at the centre of all that you do in business and the same goes for research. Market research is often the best determinant for who and where your customers are, and which customers are most likely to do business with you. Creating a successful product means solving a problem that your customer has and that means you need to understand the customer’s needs, wants and behaviours. Market research is invaluable in this regard because as opposed to solely relying on the opinions of customers who use your business, you can interact with customers who want to do business with you and use the opportunity to learn why. Market research could even help you discover a new customer base and area to expand your business.
Market research is also an insightful tool to your marketing team. With limited budgets, you need to make sure your marketing money is being spent wisely, with your best ads appearing in front of consumers who will most likely purchase. To get the most out of your advertising, you need to know the best advertising channel that your customers use, the exact demographics you want to target and the branding that will attract the most customers.
If you know your customers are mostly people who use Snapchat, it doesn’t make sense to spend money on placing flyers or physical advertisements. It also doesn’t make sense to buy ads on social media sites such as LinkedIn without knowing that your customers also use those sites too. However, if you were targeting college students, it may make sense to place posters on university campuses. This is an exact of choosing your channels wisely.
As for knowing your demographics, this is important since online advertising has a high degree of targeting. If your customers are rural farmers, you can specifically target non-urban locations and even set it so that you are targeting people who have an interest in farming. Market research can help narrow down your target market and reduce your ad spending and to make sure that not only you are talking to the right people but that you are going to be in the right place at the right time.
Conclusion
Understanding and connecting with your customers/target audience is ultimately going to help you make better business decisions and help ensure that your efforts are not going to be wasted on targeting those who will never have an interest in your brand/product. Here at Bounce, we believe in using market research to validate your assumptions to make better decisions.
