5 Ways to Improve your Business through Market Research

Successful entrepreneurs make use of market research to monitor trends, make better business decisions and maintain their competitive edge. Whether you are starting your business or are looking to expand it, these studies are vital to understand your target markets and increase sales.

Here are some aspects in which market research can help you build a stronger business.

1. Enhance your brand image

Many entrepreneurs do not have a clear idea of their brand. They wonder, “How do customers see us? How does our brand compare to our competitors? “

Focused Group Doing Marketing Research

You can rely on market research to improve your brand image by exploring the following points:

Knowledge of your brand – how customers know your business?
Comparisons with your competitors – How do customers see your business compared to your competitors?
Personification – What are the characteristics and qualities that customers associate with your business?

You can also survey your customers for feedback on your marketing content (logos, brochures, websites, etc.). Some of the trademark studies usually leads by interviewing clients or organizing focus groups.

This will explore various topics to get feedback from participants. The results will help you better position your brand and improve your marketing assets.

2. Better understand your customers

Entrepreneurs sometimes need to get more specific information on the size of their market, their target customers and how best to approach them. We recently conducted a study for a client who is selling product for the kitchen and wanted clarification of its target market. Here is some information that we wanted to get out of the potential consumers of the new product.

Age
Sex
Family situation
children
Location
Level of education
social networks used

We designed an online questionnaire which was submitted in 1000 consumers across Nigeria. This type of consumer research helps us identify the target audience profile to position the brand strategically.

By focusing your efforts on the right target market, you will get results faster, you will increase your efficiency and your marketing campaigns will generally yield better results.

3. Evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing

Many entrepreneurs want to better promote their business and generate more sales. Market research can help you by providing information on the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

We can create surveys to get customer feedback on the format of your marketing messages. We can also measure the visibility of certain campaigns and marketing activities and the reactions they provoke in customers.

The use of this type of data can really help to maximize the impact of your marketing budget, allowing you to design marketing strategies that reach and challenge your audience.

4. Find new opportunities

Market research can help you identify new opportunities for your business. They can help you identify the geographic areas for growth and / or whether the market is ready for your products or services.

For example, you want to open a new store and need to find the ideal location. Or you planning to change distribution channel and should assess the impact of this decision on your customers.

To help you, we can analyze the data from government publications, country Statistics and / or certain sectoral reports. These sources provide a variety of information:

Market size
Demographic data
Statistics on market share
Industry dynamics
Industry’s leading vendors
Main competitors
General industry data such as the number of companies and their geographical distribution

Obtaining this type of data is a necessary first step to assess a new market and determine business strategy and activities preferred.

5. Get a better understanding of the features of your product

If you develop a new product or looking to improve an existing product, you need to know if you have selected the characteristics and appropriate packaging. Market research can provide you with information that will help you develop your products before incurring high production costs.

When we perform a study on a new product, we collect customer feedback on a concept and / or a particular prototype. We also compile data on consumer response to the product and its characteristics: presentation, design, usability, color, packaging, etc.

We can also look at how consumers could purchase this product, in order to design an appropriate distribution plan. We can also probe their reactions to marketing messages, creative content and promotional ideas planned for the launch.

We normally start with a qualitative research (interviews or focus groups), because this formula-based dialogue allows us to gather valuable input and detailed on the part of consumers. Wherever possible, we provide them with a prototype or a product sample, so they can see it up close and use it.

We then validate the information of our research by conducting a thorough survey of a similar age but larger (for example, more than 100 consumers). We obtain the relevant data to make informed decisions about improvements to the concept and / or product design.

Send us your feedback

Have you ever used market research in the past? Have they helped to make business decisions? Send us your comments below.