Market Research. Do I need to invest in it? Why do I need this? What can this answer for me? What will I get for ROI? How do I know if I need it?
Unlike marketing or advertising, market research is a very specialized and specialized service provided by a small number of firms in local and regional markets.
Since many small and medium-sized businesses make little use of it, it’s hard to determine when you should and shouldn’t be investing in market research.
Well, research company is here to save you.
Do I really need to invest in market research?
This is a question that Philomath Research hears a lot. And to be honest, market research is really hard to sell to businesses that don’t understand its value.
However, let us try to use a simpler example by comparing market research to advertising.
If you ask a small business owner if they need to do any advertising, they will undoubtedly say “yes”.
Then, if you asked them what type of advertising would be of most interest to their company, they would probably say things like:
· Digital advertising
· Television commercials
· Radio spot
· Billboards
Almost every business decision maker understands marketing and advertising and knows they need to do it.
Let’s try it with market research.
If you ask a small business owner whether they need to use market research, many people will be unsure. If you asked them what market research is, the answers could vary from customer satisfaction to focus groups.
In many cases, there is likely to be some misunderstanding about how and why each method should be used.
The number of market research methods is endless. However, most people do not understand how to conduct quantitative or qualitative studies depending on their business objectives.
Key Measures: To truly understand market research methods, one must have a basic knowledge of the process. Since there are many ways, a company should decide how they want to use market research before making an investment.
Sign #1: You are launching a new product or service.
This can be one of the most common and easy to understand drivers for using market research.
One of the main benefits of market research is to provide facts and evidence to shed light on the unknown.
Additionally, online surveys are a great way to test concepts and product launches to understand the appeal and potential penetration through trial marketing.
You can also test the fair value for a product through techniques such as the Van Westendorp pricing model.
Offering loans requires proof of concept and demand to investors and finance companies, and you have one of the most popular reasons to commission market research.
Launching a new product or service is a sure sign that you need to invest in market research.
The Key Takeaway: If your company is launching a new service or product, doing market research is the first step. With this step, you will know what potential consumers like and dislike about the product.
Sign #2: Your ad isn’t providing you the return you need.
Do you keep putting dollar after dollar in your ad and see no return?
Are your digital marketing campaigns and television commercials making the phone ring or filling your inbox with requests?
Many companies and advertising agencies conduct market research to learn more about this process.
Advertising research typically includes:
Message test
Creative test
Customer personality development
To market successfully, you need to better understand the profiles of your customers and where they spend their time, capture their attention, and deliver the right message to them. Recent studies show that companies can make up to 25% more profits by keeping only 5% of their customer base.
Poorly performing ad? Or do you need a marketing upgrade for your product or service? If you are not getting the required return from your advertising dollars, it is a sign that you should invest in market research.
The Key Takeaway: If you notice that your marketing or advertising strategy isn’t bringing in money and attention, consider investing in market research. It can perfect ad design, messaging, layout, channels and more.
Sign #3: You don’t know why you’re losing customers.
Are you constantly losing customers? Are they running to a new competitor in your area, but you don’t know why? This is usually a sign of bigger problems with your customer experience (CX).
Maybe it’s your poor customer service, your long lines, or your soaring prices.
You’ll feel your gut feelings, but you’ll never really know until you survey your customers to find out. You might find that longer lines make a positive impact on your brand because it creates an impression of quality and demand.
Voice of Customer (VoC) email surveys will give you the answers you need to start improving. It will provide you with objective data directly from your customers.
A popular market research investment, the VOC survey gives employers an inside look at what is and isn’t working for their clients.
The Key Takeaway: Losing customers and not knowing why? Market research firms can conduct surveys for you to answer. They will help you gain valuable benchmark data to base your future insights on.
Sign #4: Your employees aren’t performing as well as you need.
With a close focus on customers as part of your market research, don’t forget about your employees. Not sure what motivates them, what’s important to them, or how to best manage their teams? It is perfect for employee survey.
Voice of Employee (VoE) surveys, or simply “employee surveys,” are a great way to gauge your culture and understand what drives your employees to perform well. The translation is higher employee engagement which translates to stronger customer engagement.
Internal problems? It’s time to get some more information through market research. Think about it—happy employees equal quality work output, which more than likely equals more business.
Statistics show that organizations that have enthusiastic employees can see a 21% increase in profit.
Measure and benchmark your employee satisfaction against other peers in your industry and against the nationwide average with the Voice of Employees (VoE) survey.
The Key Takeaway: Employee surveys are a vital tool for a company’s success. By running these surveys, employers can gain insight into effective strategies that will ultimately improve job satisfaction and retention.
Sign #5: Your customer support receives too many customers complaint calls.
Is your customer service team overwhelmed with complaint calls? Are customers constantly calling about wrong orders, long shipping times and poor online ordering systems?
These are just a few more signs of a less-than-optimal CX. Poor customer satisfaction leads to poor customer retention.
But market research can help! There are many options for you to measure these transactions.
Here, you can use website surveys to better understand the points of pain and frustration on your website.
How do website surveys work? Ease. They are designed to easily integrate into your site to collect instant feedback from users.
There are three major types of website surveys:
· Embedded survey on site. Embedded surveys are provided in HTML code. This code will then be persistently present in a website. Simply put, it means that the survey will always be there for the people who want to give feedback.
· In-screen pop-up survey. Hence the name, these surveys pop up on your site as a little box and are made up of 2 or 3 questions. However, some companies will not use this type of survey because of the negative connotations associated with pop-ups.
· Pop-up invitation survey. Pop-up invitation surveys are like the fraternity twin of in-screen pop-up surveys. The main difference is that instead of asking a question in a pop-up, users will see an invitation detail to take the survey on a separate landing page.
You can also send a short 2- to 3-minute customer satisfaction survey after the call is completed with customer service, to understand how the representative handled the experience and what could be improved.
If your customer service department is constantly trying to put out the fire, some proactive (or reactive) market research will help you assess which issues are most common.
It will also help the call center representative identify actionable strategies to incorporate into your training.
The Key Takeaway: Customer satisfaction is a feature for market research facilities. Through a variety of tips, including web surveys, you will be able to find out where your consumers stand through market research investments.
Sign #6: You need to understand what, how and where to grow your business.
stuck in a rut? Trying to find new markets or new areas to grow your business in, but you’re not sure where to start? You will find answers within the market research industry.
Assessments can be made to grade geographic areas to determine which developments make the most financial sense.
This type of market research can be both qualitative and quantitative, so the recommendations are comprehensive. A robust market research report will include not only an executive summary, but also recommendations to help with strategy for operations, marketing and growth.
A clear win, and a clear indication that market research is what you are looking for.
Key Measures: When companies invest in market research, they receive an assessment full of useful details about spending capabilities and which markets offer the best potential for success.
Sign #7: Your competitors are doing it.
If your friend jumps off the bridge, will you follow him? In this case, you might want to at least think about it.
Companies using market research create a competitive edge in their market. In most cases, the one who knows the customer best wins.
With the help of market research, competitors also know:
· Target audiences
· How to market them
· When to put them on the market
With customer experience being a true difference in all industries, relationships are important.
Reaching customers, listening to their feedback and taking action seems so easy, yet it is rarely done. This is your chance to gain a competitive edge.
Don’t hold back – if you see your competitors jumping on the market research train, you need to start thinking about ways to keep pace on the front of the CX battle.
If your competitors are using customer satisfaction surveys, focus groups, or other forms of market research they are gaining a strategic advantage over your company.
The Key Takeaway: Keep an eye on the competition seriously. By doing this, you will (hopefully) be able to stay on top of your game while still beating them.
Sign #8: Your content marketing has gone stale.
Market research creates a whole new advantage for content marketing.
Sales and market research can be friends. For years, they were told to sleep in separate beds and not talk to each other because sales were seen as “persuasion”, while market research was seen as “fair”.
Although both can be married together through content marketing research.
This includes conducting industry studies and competitive studies where market research is completed through third parties to ensure credibility.
After the design and fieldwork of the content survey is completed, the data is released to the marketing and content marketing team so that infographics, compare cards, and social nuggets can be created and marketed.
If you have run out of ideas for blogs, content, PR and marketing materials, it’s a sign that you need market research to refresh your strategy. Read more in our post on how to beat writer’s block.
A single public relations survey can create an endless mountain of repurposed content for your company.
A custom PR survey is a form of quantitative research and can promote your brand in a big way. These surveys are designed to capture the public’s attention through catchy words and readability. Through these polls, companies can contact the public about potential ideas.
PR surveys are generally run online for the ease of both the user and the customer.
Maybe it goes without saying, but you want to do this type of market research survey with a company that knows what they are doing.
The good news- At Philomath Research, we just get to know exactly what we’re getting into. We know how important a good title is and what it can do for your brand.
The key takeaway: Has the material dried thoroughly? Another benefit of market research investing is that you can enjoy a ton of information through PR and content surveys.
Sign #9: You need an objective approach.
In the end, this may be the simplest reason to turn to market research.
This objective point can be for an individual or a management team. It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture if you’re immersed in a project or your company from day to day.
Sometimes it helps to take a step back and bring in a third party to do some strategic planning and market research.
This may include interviews with your company management team and stakeholders or even conducting online focus groups. The delivery is an objective report and insight of the market research firm.
Sometimes a simple study like this is enough to get the answer you need. If you’ve been wondering about the perspectives of others on key topics or issues in your company, it may be time to reach out to a market research firm.
The Key Takeaway: Let the pros do what they do. Hiring a market research team will take the stress out of gaining insight into the inner workings of your company. Through this type of strategic planning, you may find that your company can benefit from a focus group.
Contact our market research company
Philomath Research is a full-service market research company. Our team works with clients across the country to execute qualitative and quantitative market research studies based on their objectives, target audience, timeline, budget, and more.
Interested in talking more about market research and getting a quote from our team? Contact Philomath Research at www.philomathreserch.com today!
