Being able to recognize how your business is doing and where you stand in the eyes of a consumer can help your business grow. No matter what your brand is, Market Research is crucial. Without Market Research it will feel like you are blindly promoting your brand, product or service. But with it, you can identify key demographics, learn more about your buyers and implement tactics with more accuracy and success. Before we dive into a few market research tactics, lets first gain a better understanding of the forms of research. There is Primary and there is Secondary forms. Primary Research is research done by you or your business. All data in Primary Research comes from your sources. Secondary Research is research that is not done by you but is from an existing study. Secondary Research is typically free and is almost always cheaper than. However Primary Research is more accurate and since you’re the one doing the research, the studies you are doing can be more easily adapted to find the information you need. Now what are some Market Research tactics that can help your business succeed?

Surveys

The most common form of market research comes from surveys. However, surveys come in many shapes and forms. There are telephone surveys, online surveys, postal surveys and more. Each survey form has a unique ability to garner feedback. Postal Surveys are often considered outdated due to the technology that is available today. Postal surveys allow businesses to target certain people at their homes and accurately. Unfortunately, these types of surveys often have a low response rate and even when a response is delivered it is often with a slow response time. Telephone surveys offer immediate response times and higher response rates. The questions in telephone surveys can be open or close ended. Having a good mix of both can help give you unique perspectives as well as accurate information. The one downfall of telephone surveys is that often people are hesitant to field calls from unknown numbers and thus responses to your questions may be short or incomplete. Online surveys tend to be one of the best ways to generate market information. What sets online surveys apart from telephone and postal surveys is that it provides the people being surveyed the best of both worlds. Like a postal survey the person being surveyed doesn’t have to talk to anyone else, they can provide information all on their own and on their own time. Then, like telephone surveys, they often have a higher response rate and a higher response time.

Focus Groups

Focus groups are primary research that is garnered from small group of individuals in a particular market. Focus groups are great for finding out consumers or target consumers preferences. This form of market research encourages open discussion as opposed to short answer or close ended questions. What makes focus groups great is that you can pick any demographic and have them give you in person feedback on your brand, product or service. The shortfall of focus groups is they are typically small groups of people, so you should be careful when applying the information attained from a small group of people to a larger demographic. Performing multiple focus groups can help ensure your information is accurate.

Observations

Observations are great for shopper and retail marketing. Watching how people act can allow you to get a better understanding of purchase behavior. Observations should always be coupled with another form of research such as surveys or focus groups since they can often leave many questions unanswered.

Test Marketing

A unique way to get feedback on a product is through test marketing. Test marketing is when you release your product to a smaller market before releasing it to the public. This form of research can allow you to get product feedback on an experimental product or help a start-up find out if it has any issues that need to be assessed before a full release is rolled out. There are many market research tactics that aren’t listed in this article. Instead of discussing each and every form of market research, Amplimark invites you to contact us to discuss ways we can help your business grow with market research that will directly correlate to your business objectives.