Market Research for Your Business Success

Starting your business can be difficult. Running a successful business can also be difficult. For both stages, market research is crucial!

Knowing how to market effectively first starts with understanding what you should be marketing. How do you know what to emphasise in your marketing campaign?

Through market research!

 

What is Market Research?

We’ve put together a guide for the market research below. Remember, markets change constantly as new competitors enter the market and technologies change. You should be conducting market research frequently so you are sure to respond promptly to market changes.

So, what exactly should you be researching?

 

Customers

Use both existing and your own market research to make sure that you understand your customers needs and desires. Researching your customer will guide your product and/or service development as well as your marketing strategy!

Here are some key questions to ask:

• Who are your customers?
  • Age, income, gender, interests, education, career, family type.
• Where are your customers geographically?
  • Big cities? small towns? clustered in one country? Spread internationally?
• How are you going to reach your customers?
  • Social media? websites? Bing? Google? retail stores? flyers?
    • Check out our blog post on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to see if Bing or Google Ads is right for your business!
• How large is your potential customer market?
  • Are you going to be selling to a mass market? A niche market?
• Does your product appeal to your target customers?
  • The answer to this question should be a big yes! If it’s not you might need to re-evaluate your business idea.
• What is the price elasticity of your customers?
  • Are your customers sensitive to price changes? If you increase your price will a high percentage of your customer base not continue to purchase your product?

Competitors

Know who you are up against in your industry! This will help you know what niche you can appeal to in your market and pinpoint what you can do to stand out. Find a competitive advantage and your unique value proposition by researching your competitors. Understand who they are targeting.

Ask yourself these questions when looking for competitors:

• Who are your main competitors?
• Who do your competitors target?
  • What does their ideal customer look like?
  • Age, gender, location, socioeconomic status, career, family type.
• What market share do they already serve?
• Where are your competitors based?
  • Geographically? Online stores? Physical stores?
• How do you compare to your competitors?
  • Price? Quality? Shipping? Customer service?
• Do you or could you have a competitive advantage over your competitors?
  • Try to figure out what your competitive advantage will be.
  • Why should customers buy from you and not your competitors?

Marketing Strategies

Learning from your competitors marketing strategies successes and failures is crucial! As is looking broader to see what campaigns have been effective for your target audience. Market research on marketing strategies will guide your own strategy and ensure that it is successful.

Try doing research to answer these questions:

• What marketing strategies are in use in your industry?
• Which strategies have been most effective in your industry?
• What marketing strategies do your customers respond to best?
• So, what is your marketing strategy going to be?
  • Platforms, budget, demographics, goals, etc.

When it comes to analysing what your competitors are doing with their marketing efforts, SEMrush is a great tool. You can get detailed answers on

• SEM ads: total monetary spend of your competitors on search engine marketing.
• Keywords: the keywords competitors are paying to rank highly for, as well as organic keywords they appear as a top result for.
• Marketing spend: your competitors budget for marketing
• Competitors with the highest click through rate on ads

We’ve been lucky enough to get our DIY subscribers a free 7 day trial with SEMrush. If you want to learn about their tools and give them a go for your market research click here.

Implementation

Coming up with a clear marketing strategy before you start your business is crucial. Planning pays off big time and will result in more effective campaigns and minimising fiscal waste. Plan your marketing strategy now!

You may need to adapt your strategy. as you go along. Perhaps what you think will be effective won’t be in practice. Remember, A/B test everything so you can learn what works best for your audience and results in the most conversions!