If there's one thing you should do before starting a business, it is market research. Whether you're running a small or medium-sized business, finding out what your target clients want as well as their buying behavior is vital if you're going to run a successful business.
Market research helps you to be clear on who your target clients are. The purpose of this article is to mainly introduce the value of market research and how you can do market research online, how to do market research for a new product, and how to do market research as a startup.
How to Do Market Research
Market research is an important tool for gathering information about your business's target audience and customers to determine how successful your product or service would be among these people. As the world changes, buyers and consumers are becoming smarter and more demanding.
This is due to changes in the environment, taste, location, and exposure to various trends. Market research is crucial if you want to satisfy your clients and also expand your business. The findings are invaluable for business owners who engage in market research.
As consumers become more tech-savvy, they begin to expect companies to provide products or services that relate to the current trend. Through market research, a business can have access to a heap of information that can help the business stay ahead of the competition. Read on as we discuss the common methods and steps to do market research.
Overview: Common Methods to Do Market Research
There are lots of ways to go about market research but this article will discuss the best five methods that will yield desirable results. They are:
i. Surveys and Mall Intercepts
When collating information, you have to ask yourself several questions involving the "how", "when", "why", etc. A survey is an easy and inexpensive way of asking short, open questions to consumers about your business.
This method has proved to be the most commonly used market research technique. If you run a mall, surveys can be implemented as a mall intercept, where consumers are individually interviewed on their experience about your company's products and services. Through this method, you can gather a lot of quantitative information quickly and accurately.
ii. Observation Studies
This is a clever way to know how consumers interact with your products. It is an alternative to focus groups only that it is less expensive. Observation studies don't require your customer to share his/her experience with your product directly, rather, you (or an intelligent person from your company) watch and observe the consumer's behavior when they interact with products in your stores.
Although you can gain great insight into a consumer's preferences, however, you cannot accurately predict them. Thus, an observation study is no replacement for other forms of market research. This is why experts advise that business owners combine observation studies with other methods of market research.
iii. Trend Research
Things change as we progress in life. Trend research helps you to stay updated on what is currently happening in your niche and the world at large. Trend research often results in identifying an opportunity that your company can explore. When there are new methods of doing things, your consumers expect you to have implemented those strategies else, they'll look elsewhere.
iv. Focus Groups
Focus groups consist of a selected (based on a company's target market) group of participants and a trained moderator. The moderator begins a conversation by asking the group series of questions about what the company offers. There are many flaws to this method; for example, it is expensive, the moderator personality may influence the result, a forceful participant may influence the group, can lead to errors and inaccuracy of results. Regardless, if done properly, focus groups can generate good market research results.
v. Interviews
This is quite similar to surveys only that interviews involve a one-on-one conversation with members of your target market. Interviews allow your consumer the opportunity to express his or her thoughts about your products and services. It can be conducted via face-to-face or video conferencing. An in-depth interview will yield fruitful results as it can help you capture information about what your target market and customers like.
How to Do Market Research as a Startup
As a starter who wants to sell products or offer services, it makes sense to do market research. The reason being that; you don't know who your target audiences are and you can't guess them, either. The beginning of your market research should be developing buyer personas.
Buyer personas are a marketing tool that helps business owners to learn about their actual customers in the industry. Simply, a buyer persona is fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. Standard business persona consists of the following key characteristics:
· Age
· Gender
· Location
· Job title(s)
· Job description
· Family size
· Income
· Major challenge
In our previous article, we have written a detailed guideline on how you can create and use buyers' personas. We also have free templates and other helpful resources that can help you optimize the content in your buyer persona.
How to Do Market Research for a New Product
The most effective way to do this without relying on assumptions is through market research. Market research requires you to present the new product through the eyes of the consumer. This way, you will discover if there is a demand for your product or service or not. Surveys, focus groups, market reports, who your competitors are, how valuable is your product, are a few pieces of research that will provide valuable information on how to sell your new product online.
The Ultimate Tip: Benefit from SaleYee's Big Data Product Research
Product research is ongoing and time-consuming, you might need experts to help if you are determined to succeed. As for online retailers, the easiest way is to get the "best of" lists online and study the products carefully. Here's how SaleYee Dropshipping Platform can help.
SaleYee.com integrates supply chain resources to offer over 30,000 profitable SKUs to dropship on various sales platforms, including Amazon, eBay, Wish, Walmart, Shopify, etc. Based on big data collection and analysis, insights on "Monthly Best Sellers" and "Platform Top Sellers" are offered for online retailers to easily find the best dropshipping products. Moreover, the latest trending products can be found in "New Arrivals."
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How to Do Market Research Online
The Internet provides an opportunity for businesses and consumers to become more informed about their purchase decisions. Just as you're busy with your research, consumers are also doing the same.
Since the internet is where you can find your customers at any time of the day, online market research has proven to be very effective and productive in knowing the minds of a target audience. The following methods can be used to do market research online.
i. Online Surveys
An online survey is ideal for those who own an online store. It can be delivered as a popup or an on-screen questionnaire when people visit your website.
ii. Search Engine
You can simply use search engines to find the industry terms that describe your company. You might find different resources that will help you know more about your potential audience.
iii. Via Social Media
Many businesses record a high number of abandoned carts. There are numerous reasons why customers abandon carts. If you can reach out to those folks via social media, you can politely ask them why they love your product but decided not to buy your products. Chances are over 50% of them will give you reasons why they ended up not buying from you.
Conclusion
Market research can help any business to attract keep existing customers and new customers happy and satisfied. It also allows you to quickly adapt to the ever-changing demands of consumers. When done right, market research will lead you to provide the market intelligence or sales campaigns needed to maximize profits, ensure customer satisfaction, and stay competitive.
