We are finally entering spring and you might be thinking that now is a good time to start a fresh new sales campaign, to reignite some past relationships, dust off existing ones and you never know, you may even find some brand spanking new ones along the way! Surely now, you have been in business for a while and know about your target audience’s wants and needs. Now you can go ahead and start to put your grand marketing plan together, or can you? That is why we would like to talk about benefits of market research.
Over a number of years you are likely to have a lot of data coming in from different sources, but that means absolutely nothing if you don’t look at it properly. By analysing and researching your market, you get one step ahead. You have an advantage against your competitors.
What most people forget is, market research is not an activity to be conducted only when you first start up a business. It is an ongoing cycle, or at least it should be, if you are really going to benefit from it.
The information you find can guide your most important strategic business decisions and usually, if done properly, the findings and conclusions you reach have a value that exceeds the cost of the research itself.
Therefore we have pulled together our top 10 benefits of market research:
1. Market research guides your communication
Once you have your research results, you can formulate the most effective way to communicate to your customers and potential customers, you will know what they like/don’t like to hear/see/do.
2. Helps you to identify opportunities in the marketplace
Research can make it obvious that a new product you have planned may not be what your market wants or needs. You are then able to make modifications on what you are going to offer to suit your audience.
3. Minimise risks
Through market research, you may find all the information you need to decide whether to take action or not. For example, you may find that the particular location where you wanted to open a shop already has a saturated market in your line of business.
4. You can measure your reputation
It’s always worth knowing how you measure up against your competitors and then you can take action.
5. Uncover and identify potential problems
You can get consumers’ reactions to a new product or service whilst it is still being developed. This should enlighten any further development so it suits its intended market.
6. Plan ahead
Research can estimate the likely sales of a new product/service which then allows you to allocate the advertising expenditure required to achieve and maximise your profits.
7. Identify and establish trends
If you treat market research as an ongoing exercise that you do periodically, you’ll find that you have a lot of data to be able to analyse your customers and establish any particular trends.
8. Establish your market positioning
Information from market research helps you benchmark and monitor your progress, knowing your position in the market can help you to make decisions and take action.
9. Define what your promise is
Every brand needs to make a promise. If you think of the most known brands, they all make a promise to you and you usually know what it is by just looking at their logo. It can be security, a fast and tasty meal or the assurance of top technology. It needs to be simple and market research can help you define what your brand’s promise is.
10. Market research can find that compromise
Your team all have their own individual perceptions and gut feelings. These should not be ignored, but by going straight to the target audience, you will gain thoughts and opinions from people who may be less biased or less emotionally attached to a new development or service. It helps gain a new angle, hopefully a compromise in just how you are going to go about a new launch, a new brand or a brand repositioning.
Market research is an invaluable tool that, if you haven’t benefited from the results of working with a good research agency, may seem expensive and slow. However, if you had the choice of speaking to a good sample of your customers over being left in the dark going purely with your assumptions, what would you choose?
Get in touch to find out more about benefits of market research and how Aspect MR can help you and your business, or call 0161 831 7171
Thanks for pointing out that one benefit of market research is that a business owner will know their reputation compared to their competition and take action. This is important for new business owners because, in some ways, they will also know what they are doing wrong or what they can improve on. I’ll take note of this when I start my own business.
It’s great that you pointed out how essential market research is for businesses since this will help us determine the most effective way to communicate with our customers and potential ones by identifying what they like to see. I’m opening a beach resort soon, so I want to get some marketing done to help attract customers into checking out our services. I’ll be sure to bear this in mind while I look for a marketing service to hire for help soon.
It was interesting when you said that doing market research would enable business owners to effectively communicate with their customers. With this in mind, I would assume that companies would benefit from partnering up with a market research project management team. I could imagine how a marketing team could help a business to reach its sales goals in the most effective way.
Thank you for explaining the benefits of market research. I love how you said that market research helps you to measure the reputation of your business. I would think that it would be beneficial to hire a market research consulting company to help you do it effectively.
I like that market research can help you to identify what the current trends are and how you can catch the attention of potential customers. I’ve been considering hiring some type of competitive analysis for my business. It sounds like a great way to get one step ahead of your competitors.