Marketing research is a powerful tool that is commonly used in businesses to understand customers, research competitors, and make decisions based on the research. Decisions about marketing are seldom successful when based on guesswork.
You should turn to marketing research to identify your customers, forecast market trends and develop risk-mitigating strategies. It isn’t just about gathering data, but leveraging insights to establish strategies that lead to growth.
Marketing research is made with key components that fit together to offer you the best results as per expectations. In this article, we have discussed the top five parts of marketing research that every business should know.
Identification Of The Issues
To start your marketing research, you first have to identify the problem very clearly. Without knowing the exact problem, you will lack direction for your research. You have to focus on questions like why sales are not increasing, why customers are not happy, how the competitor is capturing customers, etc..
The main goal should be research with a clear and actionable target. As an example, a clothing brand that wants to know why its younger customers are shifting to another brand should focus on its research on that track.
In case you have no idea how it works, then hiring a market research company in your area can help you in many ways. They have all the needed expertise and experience to help grow your business with outstanding marketing research.
Designing The Roadmap
Once you find out the problem, your next step should be a roadmap for your research plan. To design your roadmap, you have to figure out what kind of data you will need and how you will collect it. It can be qualitative, having opinions, behaviors, or it can be quantitative, having numbers and statistics.
Also, identify the sample size, tools, and budget in this step. You have to make your research well-organized to prevent wasted effort and make your data accurate.
Collection Of The Data
After planning the roadmap, you have to collect the data, which consumes most of the time in research. There are two main sources from which you can collect the data:
- Primary Data: You can collect the information straight from surveys, experiments, and interviews
- Secondary Data: In this, you can collect existing information from reports, government data, industry research, and company records.
Like a company is operating a customer satisfaction survey, which is primary data, and also a survey of the industry food trend report, which is secondary data. This shows that the balance of both sources is important to identify the real problem.
Analysis Of The Data
After collecting the data, you have to organize, clea,n and study it to find out its patterns and vision. It is important to analyze it so that you can use it accurately in your research. You can use statistical tools, graphs, and software to make the data simple and accurate.
For example, a company finds out that 60% of its customers choose online shopping over physical stores. So this analysis will help them to invest more in online platforms. With the help of analysis, you can make your raw data useful for marketing research.
Implementation of Marketing Starergy
The last step is to prepare a guide for marketing research to implement. The guide should be clear, brief, and made according to the audience, such as investors, managers, and marketing teams. Commonly, it includes charts, reviews, and practical guidance.
For example, if your marketing research shows that customers prefer eco-friendly packaging, then the company will focus on the packaging. This is why a marketing research guide is important to make your research actionable.
Now, you know how to do market research, so follow these tips to grow your business in South Africa or other parts of the world.
