Every effective marketing plan is built on solid market research. It’s the only way to have a deep understanding of your market, clients, and rivals. Every market research operation, in general, can be classified into one of four broad types of market research.
We’re breaking down the four forms of market research to help you focus your efforts and make sure you have all the data and information you need to successfully implement your marketing initiatives.
What is Market Research?
To make wise decisions, market research means learning as much as you can about your market, consumers, and rivals. When they write a business strategy, small business entrepreneurs use the information they have gathered. Larger businesses might hire a market research agency to gather consumer and industry data when launching a new product, for instance.
The market analysis must include market research as a necessary step. When beginning a new firm, developing buyer personas, determining customer happiness, or assessing the competitive forces in an industry, might be helpful.
Market research: Why Is It Important?
Market research is essential since it reveals the advantages and disadvantages of your marketing plan. While it’s crucial for businesses to rely on their own marketing instincts, long-term success requires an analytical grasp of what customers want and what your rivals are doing.
To better understand the size and scope of your sector, market research may help you find quantitative data such as size and demographics, as well as qualitative research data such as psychographic.
Finding competition in your sector is another advantage of market research. Are you competing against small firms or large businesses? and other similar inquiries will help you better understand your competitive environment. How similar or dissimilar are your target audiences to theirs? Does your business have the necessary brand recognition to compete?
The most crucial benefit of market research is that it helps you understand your target customer. To understand customer preferences better, you must conduct market research. The information you uncover may enable your business to better serve the particular demographic you are aiming for and may even pave the way for the development of new goods they may be interested in buying in the future. Because it enables you to fully comprehend what your customers’ needs and wants are, market research is the driving force behind their purchases.
What are the 4 Different Types of Market Research?
You’ll most certainly encounter four primary types of market research. They are primary research, secondary research, qualitative research and quantitative research.
You can get data and information about your market using each of these tools in a different method.
1. Primary Research
First-party data or information is referred to as primary research. First-party data or information is what you have independently gathered; you are not citing the work of any other sources. Primary market research examples include:
- Focus groups
- Interviews
- Polls
- Surveys
With data and information directly from your customers, this kind of market research can help boost your marketing plan. Due to the fact that it is specific to your consumer group, it is undoubtedly the most valuable sort of market research. This enables you to learn the truth about the company’s strengths and limitations in order to comprehend the whole client experience.
Online surveys and polls are good examples of primary research since they are a wonderful method to obtain a lot of replies from your client base. Perhaps there is a concern you have about your good or service and would love some input. Why not simply ask your customers, then? Your survey or poll can be shared on a social media platform or included in an email newsletter that you send to subscribers. This kind of widespread response will enable you to learn what your target audience is thinking and find any common problems or positive aspects.
2. Secondary Research
Data or information from a second or third party is referred to as secondary research. Data from second and third parties are gathered from what is currently available on the market. You don’t conduct the research; rather, other companies or organizations do. Secondary market research examples include:
- Articles
- eBooks
- Infographics
- Videos
- White papers
You can have a deeper grasp of your sector as a whole with the aid of this kind of market research. You’ll be able to learn more about how competitors conduct business, significant industry data, and other insightful information that you can utilize to develop an all-around more knowledgeable marketing plan.
The greatest approach to gain a sense of the data and information that already exist in your sector and among your competitors is through secondary research. Finding such data and information helps you understand your competition from a marketing viewpoint as well as potential areas for improvement. It’s possible that a rival has produced a fantastic post that is receiving a lot of organic search traffic or social shares, and you have the chance to create a counterargument that has the potential to be equally well-liked. This opposing viewpoint demonstrates your understanding of your competitor’s content as well as your willingness to contribute an original viewpoint to the larger discussion on the subject.
3. Qualitative Research
Data that cannot be measured are gathered through qualitative inquiry.
Both primary and secondary research can be qualitative. To learn how your target market feels about your goods or services, you can conduct primary market research using techniques like surveys, polls, and interviews. The objective is to comprehend their mentality. You can ponder such open-ended inquiries as:
- What prompted you to purchase our good or service?
- How do you think our good or service compares to that of the competitiors?
- What aspects of our product or service do you enjoy, and why?
- What aspects of our product or service do you believe could be improved, and why?
Only via this kind of market research can we learn what consumers are thinking and why they choose to trust your brand above others. You can ask customers specific questions about your product or service when you do customer research. You can develop more effective marketing plans by using the answers to these questions to consider all of your customers’ perceptions of your goods and services.
Utilizing qualitative research during a product launch is a terrific method to use it. The objective is to gather as much customer input as you can regarding your new product. You can determine whether it has met or fallen short of client expectations using qualitative research. If it does fall short, investigate more to determine which aspects don’t live up to client expectations. Is there a quality problem? price range? Better goods being offered by rivals? You can gain this crucial understanding of how people feel about your product or service through qualitative research.
You may determine if your product has met or fallen short of client expectations using qualitative research.
4. Quantitative Research
Having the data to support your marketing strategy is crucial when conducting this kind of market research. The statistics are empirical facts, not interpretations. Examples of quantitative market research include:
- Website rank
- Bounce rate
- Pageviews
- Share of voice
- Number of users on social media
- Engagement on social media
- Subscribers
This information can be used as a benchmark to determine where you should focus more of your marketing resources. You can modify your marketing plan to match your findings after you are aware of where you are in the market in terms of particular metrics, such as pageviews or subscribers.
Quantitative research provides a clear benefit over some of the other methods of market research discussed in this article in that you can utilize analytics systems to monitor your progress. For instance, you can enter a website and check the amount of engagement its content receives on Twitter and Reddit using Alexa’s Content Exploration feature. After that, you may compare these stats side by side with those of other websites in your sector.
Final Words: Regularly review your market research
Keep in mind that the dynamics of your market might shift quickly and frequently without much notice. Because of this, it’s crucial to ensure that you routinely undertake market research. You’ll be able to develop more effective marketing tactics as a result of being current with your market, clients, and competitors at all times applying different types of market research.