Uncovering market opportunities
Market research is your treasure map for finding hidden market gems. It helps you identify untapped customer segments, emerging trends, or niche markets that others have overlooked. It’s like having a radar that detects opportunities that others don’t see. By taking advantage of these golden chances, you can outshine your competitors and become the “cool guy” in the market.

Understanding the secret desires of your customers
Market research dives deep into the minds of your customers, revealing their preferences, habits, and pain points. It’s like reading their minds. Once you understand what your customers care about, you can create products and services that will capture their imagination and make them love your brand.

But wait, there’s more! Market research reveals your customers’ hidden desires and frustrations with existing products. By intervening in time and fixing these pain points, you will become their hero and gain an army of loyal fans. Imagine a car-sharing company that found out through market research that long wait times were driving people crazy. By solving this problem and reducing wait times, they become knights in shining armor for their customers.

How to be a sneaky competitor spy
To beat your competitors, you need to know them like the back of your hand. Market research gives you the opportunity to learn about your competitors’ strategies, strengths, and weaknesses from the inside. It’s like having a spy network that feeds you juicy information. By understanding what your competitors are up to, you can create strategies that will outsmart them, differentiate you, and allow you to come out on top. There are several SEO tools that you can use to analyze your competitors.

Let’s imagine that you sell fashionable clothes. Market research shows that while your competitors are focused on fast fashion, there is a gap in the selection of eco-friendly clothing. By jumping on the sustainability bandwagon and offering eco-friendly clothing, you become an eco-warrior in the fashion world.

Dodge bullets and take calculated risks
Launching a new product or entering uncharted territory can be as scary as spiders (well, almost). Market research is your secret weapon for assessing market demand, identifying potential obstacles, and calculating risks. It’s like having a crystal ball that will tell you whether your daring adventure will end in fireworks or plants blown up in the air. Thanks to market research, you make informed decisions that will save you from costly mistakes.

Imagine you are a software company looking at a new industry. Market research will help you find out if there is a market for your software, who your competitors are, and what your customers really need. Armed with this knowledge, you can break into the market, tailor your product to their needs, and conquer the industry like a boss.

The post Sweet benefits of market research appeared first on Every Cowhere.

This is why a quality marketing analysis of a market starts with defining its objectives. Depending on what the purpose of the analysis will be, its subject matter is also established, for example:

• in order to analyze the capacity, conjuncture and give an assessment of current and future trends of the market, it is necessary to study its structure;
• subject analysis of goods/services will help to assess the market development and identify the market share of goods/services of the enterprise in the segment;
• finding new sources of sales will help analyze market segments for unoccupied niches;
• comprehensive study of the target segment will help to determine its attractiveness and make the right choice of the target market;
• customer research will help identify key market needs, analyze product demand, and determine the requirements of the target audience;
• economic market research can be conducted to understand the current pricing structure in the industry and to perform price positioning of competitors;
• competitors should be researched to understand the big picture, to identify the companies’ advantages and vulnerabilities, and to develop their own competitive advantages.

In addition, marketing market analysis can be done for different business areas. In this regard, it is important to understand how these areas differ from each other:

B2B , or business-to-business, is a type of commercial interaction characteristic of such spheres as engineering, advertising, staffing agencies, woodworking, and the chemical industry. In these spheres consumers are other companies. At the same time, the number of business customers of such markets is limited, but the average purchase budget is relatively high.

B2C , or “business for the end consumer” – we are talking about all kinds of production of consumer goods (food products, household chemicals, children’s goods, automotive products, car tires, goods for pets, home, repair and so on), shopping centers and store chains, other enterprises that produce goods or provide services to the population. Simply put, B2C markets involve the sale of goods and services to individuals for personal and family use. The average budget and volume of orders may be small, but there are many consumers in this sphere, and the target audience is as diverse as possible.

B2G , or “business to government”, is a type of marketing relationship between business and government. In other words, businesses sell, and government agencies buy (as, for example, in public procurement). The number of customers is limited.

C2C , or “consumer to consumer”, is a type of information and economic interaction, representing, for example, sales in social networks or through special services, some sales in social networks or Instagram, ads in the newspaper and so on. In this case, both the seller and the buyer are individuals. What is important, the sale can be carried out not only through the Internet, but also offline. The peculiarity of the business of C2C markets is the participation of third parties – owners of trading platforms. This sphere is characterized by a large number of consumers and low purchase budgets.

It is obvious that for each sphere a different sales model is applied. This means that the market research will be aimed at finding answers to different questions: for example, how to interest a large number of consumers or how to interest a particular customer, how to find additional outlets and many others.

The post Market analysis: objectives and types appeared first on Every Cowhere.

1. Define the market research problem
   This is where every research project begins. You will also find that market research in general follows the model of the scientific method. First, you need to define exactly what you are researching.

Do you have a question about your business that you want to answer? Maybe you see an opportunity in the market. Or have you noticed something curious in the use of your product and you have a hypothesis you want to test? State this in the first step of your market research process.

2. Choose a sample and research method
   We’ve already covered the basic types and methods of market research. You should already have a good idea of the differences between primary and secondary research, and which methods will best suit your needs.

As for the sampling of your research, this refers to the portion of the total data source in question that you will use. For example, if you want to survey your customers, the sample would be the selected customers you decide to include in your survey.

3. Collect the data
   Once you have decided on the problem, method, and sample, all you have left to do is collect the data. This is the step where you send out your surveys, conduct interviews, or ask industry analysts for information.

A little advice: choose your market research tool carefully. Its choice will significantly affect the amount of data analysis work you have to do. Google Forms, for example, automatically builds graphs from quantifiable data (and for free).

4. Analyze the data
   Now that you have your data collected, the next step is to look for patterns, trends, concepts, or frequently repeated words – it all depends on whether your method was qualitative or quantitative (or both).

A simple study done on a small sample will be relatively easy to analyze, even automatically, as in the aforementioned Google Forms. Sometimes you will need to use expensive and difficult to learn software such as Tableau, NVivo, PowerBI or SPSS. You can also use Python or R to analyze the data (if you have an analyst or data scientist, you’re in luck).

5. Interpret the results and present conclusions
   It’s not enough to simply analyze data. You need to organize your data in a communicative, actionable way that decision makers can understand. It is good practice to include all information in your report, describing the research process, results, conclusions and recommended actions.

The post How to do market research in 5 basic steps appeared first on Every Cowhere.

The data you’ve already collected within your company is an invaluable secondary source of research data. The longer you’ve been in business, the more data you accumulate.

The best thing about your internal data is that it has been put into practice in real market conditions, so you just need to find patterns and draw conclusions.

Here are some internal data sources you can use:

• Website data (e.g. Google Analytics)
• CRM data
• Performance data from past campaigns
• Internal interviews with employees

Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions and are great for exploratory qualitative research.

In unstructured interviews, you build an informal, free-flowing conversation around a set set of topics.

In structured interviews, you write a detailed and rigorous interview protocol that lists all the questions you want to ask and cannot be distracted from.

You can also opt for the “middle option” – semi-structured interviews that revolve around predetermined topics or questions, but allow for open discussion.

Tip: always remain neutral and open-minded, even during unstructured interviews. It is also a good idea to conduct a mock interview to quickly identify some weaknesses in your protocol.

Recording the interview can influence responses, so use it wisely.

Focus Groups

Focus groups are interactive discussions between 5-10 people with common characteristics led by a moderator. They are used to find out what a particular group thinks about a particular problem, or to get feedback on a product.

You may know that Steve Jobs hated focus groups. He is on record as saying:

Creating products from focus groups is really hard. People often don’t know what they want until you show it to them.
If you’re trying to create a progressive product like the iPhone, that statement probably has some validity. But most of us don’t claim that level of ambition. We just want to know whether or not customers will like the proposed new feature. This is where focus groups are very useful.

Surveys

Surveys involve polling your audience. They are usually conducted online to survey customer satisfaction and loyalty and are one of the most popular and cost-effective market research methods.

Here are some of the proven uses of online surveys:

• Demand for a product feature
• Feedback on user satisfaction
• Quantitative analysis of the occurrence of certain problems
• Identifying barriers to purchase
• Identifying reasons to purchase or abandon a service
• Creation of a customer profile during product customization (and for marketing automation)
• Opinion on a recent change

An interesting example of market research using surveys is crowdsourcing. This is what Ahrefs does to understand what features to build, how important they are, and what customers expect from them.

The unique thing about crowdsourcing is that it allows users to add their own ideas and vote on or comment on existing ideas rather than answering pre-set questions, so this method leaves less chance for marketing myopia. You improve your business and users get a better product – everyone wins.

The post Overview of market research methods appeared first on Every Cowhere.

Primary research

Whenever research is conducted by you or on your behalf and you need to create data to solve a specific problem, it is called primary market research.

Examples: Focus groups, interviews, surveys (more on these later in the article).

Key benefits: This research is specifically tailored to your brand, products or services and you can control the quality of the data.

Secondary research

When you use pre-existing data, such as that collected by other companies and organizations, you are conducting secondary market research.

Examples: Third-party sources such as articles, white papers, reports, industry statistics, previously collected internal data.

Key benefits: You get a macro view of your market because secondary research includes other market participants and likely utilizes a larger data set than your primary sources.

Primary research or secondary research

Primary and secondary market research are different, but by no means opposites. In fact, it is recommended that you use both types.

While primary sources will give you a market overview focused on your business, secondary research will tell you how other businesses are doing and how your findings compare to a larger sample size.

The post Types of market research appeared first on Every Cowhere.

The key thing in the above definition is “program of actions”. Entering the market with a product is like starting a new game. Since you are new to the game, you don’t know the rules and you don’t know who you are playing against.

This is where market research comes to the rescue. Market research allows you to know the rules of the marketing game by understanding your target audience. It also allows you to understand who your opponent is by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors.

Research is what marketers do to plan their actions and outperform their competitors. It’s also what marketers use to determine the strengths and weaknesses of their own marketing strategy.

But is market research an absolute business prophecy? Unfortunately no. Even market research companies recognize this – here’s a quote from one of them:

(…) it cannot be claimed that market research is an exact science, as it would be unrealistic and unreasonable to expect market researchers to predict the exact demand for a new concept, given that there are many variables that can affect demand beyond the competence of market researchers.
This is why market research, while important, is “only” part of marketing and “only” an experiment. It’s up to you to decide if and when you will run the experiment and when to end it.

For example, Crystal Pepsi seemed very promising in the market research phase but failed when it entered the market (the same thing happened with New Coke). Xerox’s idea of a commercial copier was not liked by the research analysts. Xerox did it anyway, and the rest doesn’t matter anymore.

When to do market research?

Paul N. Hauge and Peter Jackson, in their book Do Your Own Market Research, point out three specific situations when market research is actually useful:

Setting goals. Knowing things like market size or a description of potential customers can help you set sales goals.
Problem solving. Low sales? Poor profitability? Market research can help you understand whether your problems are internal, such as a poor-quality product, or external, such as aggressive competition.
Supporting company growth. Understanding how and why consumers choose products will help you decide which products to launch.

Another answer to the “when” question is the importance of the decision you need to make. The more important the marketing problem you are solving, the more market research you will need.

For example, launching a new car on the market is a big deal, right? So maybe Ford could have avoided losing $350 million dollars on the Ford Edsel if they had done their research right. I mean, with the right methods, it’s not hard to predict that consumers will find a car too expensive and ugly.

Market research doesn’t always have to be a massive and complex project. The relatively new trend of flexible market research allows you to research the market on a regular and cost-effective basis. With this approach, you use small, iterative and evolutionary methods to respond to rapidly changing circumstances and adapt to unknown market territories.

Additionally, if you are working in a startup environment, especially if you are developing an innovative product, you may be interested in customer development. In this methodology, market research is the most “agile” and is closely linked to the product development process.

The post What is the role of market research in marketing strategy? appeared first on Every Cowhere.