Marketing research can be tricky, especially if you don’t have experience with it. Because of this, it’s helpful to have a streamlined process that ensures you don’t miss any critical aspects of your audience or marketing plan as you go through the research phase of your business launch strategy.
According to strategyn.com/jobs-to-be-done/, people buy products and services to get jobs done. When doing market research for your product or service, take some time to think about what career is being done by the person buying from you. To help you get started on that front, we put together this list of the five steps to an effective marketing research process.
1. Discovery
To start the research process, do market research and define your target audience. If you already have a product or service, identify who would be interested in it by looking at the demographics of your current customers. Identify their needs and wants to ensure that what you’re providing is valuable for them.
2. Data Collection
Once you’ve identified who should be targeted with your product or service, begin collecting data about those people using surveys or focus groups. The more information you collect, the easier it’ll be to develop an effective marketing plan.
Data can come from external sources, such as social media and consumer reports, and internal sources, like customer satisfaction surveys. Find out as much as possible about your target audience before investing any time or money into developing a campaign.
3. Research Analysis
Once you’ve collected enough data, analyze it to find trends and patterns. The data you gather should provide insight into what’s working and not working, which channels are most popular among consumers, and whether any segmentation changes need to occur.
Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be able to design campaigns tailored to specific segments of consumers instead of creating one extensive campaign for everyone. Using data gathered during the research process, develop personas based on different types of consumers.
4. Decision Making
After you’ve completed your research and analysis, you should have enough information to decide what type of campaign will work best for your product or service. Next, consider how different marketing channels drive sales and develop an overall strategy. The general plan you create will guide your marketing campaign and allow you to target specific demographics with other tactics, like content marketing or influencer marketing.
5. Action Plan Development
You’ll apply everything learned from the previous four steps to create a well-rounded plan for promoting your product or service. For example, you’ll want to determine what platform will be used for promotion (both online and offline), then develop ads tailored specifically for each channel to see which are most effective at driving conversions.
Next, figure out how the campaign fits larger company goals, such as increasing traffic or brand awareness. And lastly, assess your budget and decide where you can cut costs without sacrificing quality.
Conclusion
Marketing research is an essential step in the process of launching a new product. It will help you to decide if your product idea has potential and if it’s worth investing your time and money into.
Market research will also help you define the best marketing strategy for your product. The steps in this guide will show you how to complete a basic marketing research project. So that when it comes time to put together your marketing plan, you have all the necessary information.
