Basics of Market Research: The Key Business Strategys

By Guest Author | market research | August 20, 2019

Whether your business is a startup or is in the expansion phase, if your business strategy is backed by meaningful market research, success is more likely.

By Bhavika Sharma

And reliable market research not just helps your business grow in numbers but also enables you to establish brand loyalty within your consumer base. With the right research strategy in place, you can take advantage of great business potential opportunities without leaving less room for errors. Read on to know why.

Know Your Customer Better

The chances of brand loyalty increase if you know your customers and their expectations. And the direct outcome is business growth.

Example: In a study done by Lego, a famous toy company, it was found that only 9% of the primary users were girls. To combat this, they sent out researchers to study the playing habits of 3500 girls. Then, in 2012 they came out with a new line of toys called “Friends”. Lego changed the packaging and the figurines were now bigger to accommodate accessories like hair-brushes and purses. With the use of customer research software, you can discover decision-making triggers and drive your efforts in the right direction.

Understand Your Competition

By using online survey tools, you can determine the strengths and weaknesses of your competition. Competitive analysis, when combined with customer research, helps you spot the market gap. It enables you to understand what your customers require and how your competitor is meeting their requirements. Here are a few other brilliant benefits:

  • Target customers better
  • Track economic climate
  • Set competitive prices
  • Acquire new customers
  • Learn from your competitors’ mistakes

Reduce the Chances of Failure

A strong market research helps you predict if your customers would be interested in a new product or service. Through market analysis, you can determine which concept or service your audience resonates the most with. Here’s what risk analysis can help you with:

  • Save time and money by identifying a potentially unsuccessful product or service
  • Forecast potential market fluctuations

Stay Innovative

Earlier, innovation was the result of ‘ideas-first’ approach where alternative solutions were created, and the consumers were expected to adapt to the change. But due to the low success rate, the procedure was changed to ‘need-first’ which immediately made sense and improved the success rate. Consumer needs and expectations keep changing, and market research helps you continue evolving at the same pace. It enables you to stay relevant and secure longevity by understanding the need of consumers. In essence, market research helps you offer what your customers want before your competitors do.

Improve Marketing Efforts

The perfect way to boost your market strategy is to identify and know your target audience. Market research and analysis saves you from the risk of significant losses since the execution of a marketing strategy can use hundreds and thousands from your business. Here’s what it helps you find:

  • The demographics of your target audience
  • The day and time when they are most active
  • The platform they are the most active on

Grow Business

If you have concrete feedback about your service and business, you will be able to make changes to your business plan to ensure growth. Here’s how:

  • Make better decisions on starting, increasing or reducing the business activity
  • Improved communication with the customer leads to enhanced customer satisfaction
  • Measuring business success and comparing it with the expected success curve helps you take corrective actions
  • Minimize risks by knowing customers’ exact demands

There are plenty of reasons to conduct market research. So, document your requirements and expectations and look for market research software that can get you started.

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Bhavika Sharma is a survey designer at SurveySparrow, where she designs surveys that work by making them more conversational and engaging. When she isn’t designing killer surveys,she loves to travel, searching for adventure and meeting new people.