what is a market research strategy

How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide

Learn how to do market research with this step-by-step guide, complete with templates, tools and real-world examples.

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What are your customers’ needs? How does your product compare to the competition? What are the emerging trends and opportunities in your industry? If these questions keep you up at night, it’s time to conduct market research.

Market research plays a pivotal role in your ability to stay competitive and relevant, helping you anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and industry dynamics. It involves gathering these insights using a wide range of techniques, from surveys and interviews to data analysis and observational studies.

In this guide, we’ll explore why market research is crucial, the various types of market research, the methods used in data collection, and how to effectively conduct market research to drive informed decision-making and success.

What is market research?

Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a specific market or industry. The purpose of market research is to offer valuable insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, and anticipate shifts in market trends and the competitive landscape. This information helps you make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies for your business, and maximize your chances of long-term growth.

Why is market research important? 

By understanding the significance of market research, you can make sure you’re asking the right questions and using the process to your advantage. Some of the benefits of market research include:

• Informed decision-making: Market research provides you with the data and insights you need to make smart decisions for your business. It helps you identify opportunities, assess risks and tailor your strategies to meet the demands of the market. Without market research, decisions are often based on assumptions or guesswork, leading to costly mistakes.
• Customer-centric approach: A cornerstone of market research involves developing a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences. This gives you valuable insights into your target audience, helping you develop products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers.
• Competitive advantage: By conducting market research, you’ll gain a competitive edge. You’ll be able to identify gaps in the market, analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses, and position your business strategically. This enables you to create unique value propositions, differentiate yourself from competitors, and seize opportunities that others may overlook.
• Risk mitigation: Market research helps you anticipate market shifts and potential challenges. By identifying threats early, you can proactively adjust their strategies to mitigate risks and respond effectively to changing circumstances. This proactive approach is particularly valuable in volatile industries.
• Resource optimization: Conducting market research allows organizations to allocate their time, money and resources more efficiently. It ensures that investments are made in areas with the highest potential return on investment, reducing wasted resources and improving overall business performance.
• Adaptation to market trends: Markets evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements, cultural shifts and changing consumer attitudes. Market research ensures that you stay ahead of these trends and adapt your offerings accordingly so you can avoid becoming obsolete. 

As you can see, market research empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, cater to customer needs, outperform competitors, mitigate risks, optimize resources and stay agile in a dynamic marketplace. These benefits make it a huge industry; the global market research services market is expected to grow from $76.37 billion in 2021 to $108.57 billion in 2026 . Now, let’s dig into the different types of market research that can help you achieve these benefits.

Types of market research 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Exploratory research
• Descriptive research
• Causal research
• Cross-sectional research
• Longitudinal research

Despite its advantages, 23% of organizations don’t have a clear market research strategy. Part of developing a strategy involves choosing the right type of market research for your business goals. The most commonly used approaches include:

1. Qualitative research

Qualitative research focuses on understanding the underlying motivations, attitudes and perceptions of individuals or groups. It is typically conducted through techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis — methods we’ll discuss further in the sections below. Qualitative research provides rich, nuanced insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies and brand positioning.

2. Quantitative research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, involves the collection and analysis of numerical data, often through surveys, experiments and structured questionnaires. This approach allows for statistical analysis and the measurement of trends, making it suitable for large-scale market studies and hypothesis testing. While it’s worthwhile using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, most businesses prioritize the latter because it is scientific, measurable and easily replicated across different experiments.

3. Exploratory research

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative research or a mix of both, exploratory research is often the first step. Its primary goal is to help you understand a market or problem so you can gain insights and identify potential issues or opportunities. This type of market research is less structured and is typically conducted through open-ended interviews, focus groups or secondary data analysis. Exploratory research is valuable when entering new markets or exploring new product ideas.

4. Descriptive research

As its name implies, descriptive research seeks to describe a market, population or phenomenon in detail. It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research. 

5. Causal research

Causal research aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It investigates whether changes in one variable result in changes in another. Experimental designs, A/B testing and regression analysis are common causal research methods. This sheds light on how specific marketing strategies or product changes impact consumer behavior.

6. Cross-sectional research

Cross-sectional market research involves collecting data from a sample of the population at a single point in time. It is used to analyze differences, relationships or trends among various groups within a population. Cross-sectional studies are helpful for market segmentation, identifying target audiences and assessing market trends at a specific moment.

7. Longitudinal research

Longitudinal research, in contrast to cross-sectional research, collects data from the same subjects over an extended period. This allows for the analysis of trends, changes and developments over time. Longitudinal studies are useful for tracking long-term developments in consumer preferences, brand loyalty and market dynamics.

Each type of market research has its strengths and weaknesses, and the method you choose depends on your specific research goals and the depth of understanding you’re aiming to achieve. In the following sections, we’ll delve into primary and secondary research approaches and specific research methods.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market research of all types can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: primary research and secondary research. By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can better determine the most appropriate research method for your specific goals.

Primary market research 

Primary research involves the collection of original data straight from the source. Typically, this involves communicating directly with your target audience — through surveys, interviews, focus groups and more — to gather information. Here are some key attributes of primary market research:

• Customized data: Primary research provides data that is tailored to your research needs. You design a custom research study and gather information specific to your goals.
• Up-to-date insights: Because primary research involves communicating with customers, the data you collect reflects the most current market conditions and consumer behaviors.
• Time-consuming and resource-intensive: Despite its advantages, primary research can be labor-intensive and costly, especially when dealing with large sample sizes or complex study designs. Whether you hire a market research consultant, agency or use an in-house team, primary research studies consume a large amount of resources and time.

Secondary market research 

Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing data that has already been compiled by third-party sources, such as online research tools, databases, news sites, industry reports and academic studies.

Here are the main characteristics of secondary market research:

• Cost-effective: Secondary research is generally more cost-effective than primary research since it doesn’t require building a research plan from scratch. You and your team can look at databases, websites and publications on an ongoing basis, without needing to design a custom experiment or hire a consultant. 
• Leverages multiple sources: Data tools and software extract data from multiple places across the web, and then consolidate that information within a single platform. This means you’ll get a greater amount of data and a wider scope from secondary research.
• Quick to access: You can access a wide range of information rapidly — often in seconds — if you’re using online research tools and databases. Because of this, you can act on insights sooner, rather than taking the time to develop an experiment. 

So, when should you use primary vs. secondary research? In practice, many market research projects incorporate both primary and secondary research to take advantage of the strengths of each approach.

One rule of thumb is to focus on secondary research to obtain background information, market trends or industry benchmarks. It is especially valuable for conducting preliminary research, competitor analysis, or when time and budget constraints are tight. Then, if you still have knowledge gaps or need to answer specific questions unique to your business model, use primary research to create a custom experiment. 

Market research methods

• Surveys and questionnaires
• Focus groups
• Observational research
• Online research tools
• Experiments
• Content analysis
• Ethnographic research

How do primary and secondary research approaches translate into specific research methods? Let’s take a look at the different ways you can gather data: 

1. Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular methods for collecting structured data from a large number of respondents. They involve a set of predetermined questions that participants answer. Surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online tools, telephone interviews and in-person or online questionnaires. They are useful for gathering quantitative data and assessing customer demographics, opinions, preferences and needs. On average, customer surveys have a 33% response rate , so keep that in mind as you consider your sample size.

2. Interviews

Interviews are in-depth conversations with individuals or groups to gather qualitative insights. They can be structured (with predefined questions) or unstructured (with open-ended discussions). Interviews are valuable for exploring complex topics, uncovering motivations and obtaining detailed feedback. 

3. Focus groups

The most common primary research methods are in-depth webcam interviews and focus groups. Focus groups are a small gathering of participants who discuss a specific topic or product under the guidance of a moderator. These discussions are valuable for primary market research because they reveal insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and emotions. Focus groups are especially useful for idea generation, concept testing and understanding group dynamics within your target audience.

4. Observational research

Observational research involves observing and recording participant behavior in a natural setting. This method is particularly valuable when studying consumer behavior in physical spaces, such as retail stores or public places. In some types of observational research, participants are aware you’re watching them; in other cases, you discreetly watch consumers without their knowledge, as they use your product. Either way, observational research provides firsthand insights into how people interact with products or environments.

5. Online research tools

You and your team can do your own secondary market research using online tools. These tools include data prospecting platforms and databases, as well as online surveys, social media listening, web analytics and sentiment analysis platforms. They help you gather data from online sources, monitor industry trends, track competitors, understand consumer preferences and keep tabs on online behavior. We’ll talk more about choosing the right market research tools in the sections that follow.

6. Experiments

Market research experiments are controlled tests of variables to determine causal relationships. While experiments are often associated with scientific research, they are also used in market research to assess the impact of specific marketing strategies, product features, or pricing and packaging changes.

7. Content analysis

Content analysis involves the systematic examination of textual, visual or audio content to identify patterns, themes and trends. It’s commonly applied to customer reviews, social media posts and other forms of online content to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments.

8. Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research immerses researchers into the daily lives of consumers to understand their behavior and culture. This method is particularly valuable when studying niche markets or exploring the cultural context of consumer choices.

How to do market research

• Set clear objectives
• Identify your target audience
• Choose your research methods
• Use the right market research tools
• Collect data
• Analyze data 
• Interpret your findings
• Identify opportunities and challenges
• Make informed business decisions
• Monitor and adapt

Now that you have gained insights into the various market research methods at your disposal, let’s delve into the practical aspects of how to conduct market research effectively. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview, from defining objectives to monitoring market shifts.

1. Set clear objectives

When you set clear and specific goals, you’re essentially creating a compass to guide your research questions and methodology. Start by precisely defining what you want to achieve. Are you launching a new product and want to understand its viability in the market? Are you evaluating customer satisfaction with a product redesign? 

Start by creating SMART goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Not only will this clarify your research focus from the outset, but it will also help you track progress and benchmark your success throughout the process. 

You should also consult with key stakeholders and team members to ensure alignment on your research objectives before diving into data collecting. This will help you gain diverse perspectives and insights that will shape your research approach.

2. Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience to determine who should be included in your research. Begin by creating detailed buyer personas or stakeholder profiles. Consider demographic factors like age, gender, income and location, but also delve into psychographics, such as interests, values and pain points.

The more specific your target audience, the more accurate and actionable your research will be. Additionally, segment your audience if your research objectives involve studying different groups, such as current customers and potential leads.

If you already have existing customers, you can also hold conversations with them to better understand your target market. From there, you can refine your buyer personas and tailor your research methods accordingly.

3. Choose your research methods

Selecting the right research methods is crucial for gathering high-quality data. Start by considering the nature of your research objectives. If you’re exploring consumer preferences, surveys and interviews can provide valuable insights. For in-depth understanding, focus groups or observational research might be suitable. Consider using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a well-rounded perspective. 

You’ll also need to consider your budget. Think about what you can realistically achieve using the time and resources available to you. If you have a fairly generous budget, you may want to try a mix of primary and secondary research approaches. If you’re doing market research for a startup , on the other hand, chances are your budget is somewhat limited. If that’s the case, try addressing your goals with secondary research tools before investing time and effort in a primary research study. 

4. Use the right market research tools

Whether you’re conducting primary or secondary research, you’ll need to choose the right tools. These can help you do anything from sending surveys to customers to monitoring trends and analyzing data. Here are some examples of popular market research tools:

• Market research software: Crunchbase is a platform that provides best-in-class company data, making it valuable for market research on growing companies and industries. You can use Crunchbase to access trusted, first-party funding data, revenue data, news and firmographics, enabling you to monitor industry trends and understand customer needs.

• Survey and questionnaire tools: SurveyMonkey is a widely used online survey platform that allows you to create, distribute and analyze surveys. Google Forms is a free tool that lets you create surveys and collect responses through Google Drive.
• Data analysis software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are useful for conducting statistical analyses. SPSS is a powerful statistical analysis software used for data processing, analysis and reporting.
• Social listening tools: Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics platform that helps you monitor social media conversations, track sentiment and analyze trends. Mention is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and keywords across various online sources.
• Data visualization platforms: Tableau is a data visualization tool that helps you create interactive and shareable dashboards and reports. Power BI by Microsoft is a business analytics tool for creating interactive visualizations and reports.

5. Collect data

There’s an infinite amount of data you could be collecting using these tools, so you’ll need to be intentional about going after the data that aligns with your research goals. Implement your chosen research methods, whether it’s distributing surveys, conducting interviews or pulling from secondary research platforms. Pay close attention to data quality and accuracy, and stick to a standardized process to streamline data capture and reduce errors. 

6. Analyze data

Once data is collected, you’ll need to analyze it systematically. Use statistical software or analysis tools to identify patterns, trends and correlations. For qualitative data, employ thematic analysis to extract common themes and insights. Visualize your findings with charts, graphs and tables to make complex data more understandable.

If you’re not proficient in data analysis, consider outsourcing or collaborating with a data analyst who can assist in processing and interpreting your data accurately.

7. Interpret your findings

Interpreting your market research findings involves understanding what the data means in the context of your objectives. Are there significant trends that uncover the answers to your initial research questions? Consider the implications of your findings on your business strategy. It’s essential to move beyond raw data and extract actionable insights that inform decision-making.

Hold a cross-functional meeting or workshop with relevant team members to collectively interpret the findings. Different perspectives can lead to more comprehensive insights and innovative solutions.

8. Identify opportunities and challenges

Use your research findings to identify potential growth opportunities and challenges within your market. What segments of your audience are underserved or overlooked? Are there emerging trends you can capitalize on? Conversely, what obstacles or competitors could hinder your progress?

Lay out this information in a clear and organized way by conducting a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Jot down notes for each of these areas to provide a structured overview of gaps and hurdles in the market.

9. Make informed business decisions

Market research is only valuable if it leads to informed decisions for your company. Based on your insights, devise actionable strategies and initiatives that align with your research objectives. Whether it’s refining your product, targeting new customer segments or adjusting pricing, ensure your decisions are rooted in the data.

At this point, it’s also crucial to keep your team aligned and accountable. Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the recommendations derived from your research. 

10. Monitor and adapt

Market research isn’t a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. Continuously monitor market conditions, customer behaviors and industry trends. Set up mechanisms to collect real-time data and feedback. As you gather new information, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Regularly revisiting your research ensures your business remains agile and reflects changing market dynamics and consumer preferences.

Online market research sources

As you go through the steps above, you’ll want to turn to trusted, reputable sources to gather your data. Here’s a list to get you started:

• Crunchbase: As mentioned above, Crunchbase is an online platform with an extensive dataset, allowing you to access in-depth insights on market trends, consumer behavior and competitive analysis. You can also customize your search options to tailor your research to specific industries, geographic regions or customer personas.

• Academic databases: Academic databases, such as ProQuest and JSTOR , are treasure troves of scholarly research papers, studies and academic journals. They offer in-depth analyses of various subjects, including market trends, consumer preferences and industry-specific insights. Researchers can access a wealth of peer-reviewed publications to gain a deeper understanding of their research topics.
• Government and NGO databases: Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions frequently maintain databases containing valuable economic, demographic and industry-related data. These sources offer credible statistics and reports on a wide range of topics, making them essential for market researchers. Examples include the U.S. Census Bureau , the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Pew Research Center .
• Industry reports: Industry reports and market studies are comprehensive documents prepared by research firms, industry associations and consulting companies. They provide in-depth insights into specific markets, including market size, trends, competitive analysis and consumer behavior. You can find this information by looking at relevant industry association databases; examples include the American Marketing Association and the National Retail Federation .
• Social media and online communities: Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter (X) , forums such as Reddit and Quora , and review platforms such as G2 can provide real-time insights into consumer sentiment, opinions and trends. 

Market research examples

At this point, you have market research tools and data sources — but how do you act on the data you gather? Let’s go over some real-world examples that illustrate the practical application of market research across various industries. These examples showcase how market research can lead to smart decision-making and successful business decisions.

Example 1: Apple’s iPhone launch

Apple ’s iconic iPhone launch in 2007 serves as a prime example of market research driving product innovation in tech. Before the iPhone’s release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. The result was a revolutionary product that disrupted the market and redefined the smartphone industry.

Example 2: McDonald’s global expansion

McDonald’s successful global expansion strategy demonstrates the importance of market research when expanding into new territories. Before entering a new market, McDonald’s conducts thorough research to understand local tastes, preferences and cultural nuances. This research informs menu customization, marketing strategies and store design. For instance, in India, McDonald’s offers a menu tailored to local preferences, including vegetarian options. This market-specific approach has enabled McDonald’s to adapt and thrive in diverse global markets.

Example 3: Organic and sustainable farming

The shift toward organic and sustainable farming practices in the food industry is driven by market research that indicates increased consumer demand for healthier and environmentally friendly food options. As a result, food producers and retailers invest in sustainable sourcing and organic product lines — such as with these sustainable seafood startups — to align with this shift in consumer values. 

The bottom line? Market research has multiple use cases and is a critical practice for any industry. Whether it’s launching groundbreaking products, entering new markets or responding to changing consumer preferences, you can use market research to shape successful strategies and outcomes.

Market research templates

You finally have a strong understanding of how to do market research and apply it in the real world. Before we wrap up, here are some market research templates that you can use as a starting point for your projects:

• Smartsheet competitive analysis templates : These spreadsheets can serve as a framework for gathering information about the competitive landscape and obtaining valuable lessons to apply to your business strategy.
• SurveyMonkey product survey template : Customize the questions on this survey based on what you want to learn from your target customers.
• HubSpot templates : HubSpot offers a wide range of free templates you can use for market research, business planning and more.
• SCORE templates : SCORE is a nonprofit organization that provides templates for business plans, market analysis and financial projections.
• SBA.gov : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers templates for every aspect of your business, including market research, and is particularly valuable for new startups. 

Strengthen your business with market research

When conducted effectively, market research is like a guiding star. Equipped with the right tools and techniques, you can uncover valuable insights, stay competitive, foster innovation and navigate the complexities of your industry.

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed the definition of market research, different research methods, and how to conduct it effectively. We’ve also explored various types of market research and shared practical insights and templates for getting started. 

Now, it’s time to start the research process. Trust in data, listen to the market and make informed decisions that guide your company toward lasting success.

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Market research is a cornerstone of all successful, strategic businesses. It can also be daunting for entrepreneurs looking to launch a startup or start a side hustle . What is market research, anyway? And how do you…do it?

We’ll walk you through absolutely everything you need to know about the market research process so that by the end of this guide, you’ll be an expert in market research too. And what’s more important: you’ll have actionable steps you can take to start collecting your own market research.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is the organized process of gathering information about your target customers and market. Market research can help you better understand customer behavior and competitor strengths and weaknesses, as well as provide insight for the best strategies in launching new businesses and products. There are different ways to approach market research, including primary and secondary research and qualitative and quantitative research. The strongest approaches will include a combination of all four.

“Virtually every business can benefit from conducting some market research,” says Niles Koenigsberg of Real FiG Advertising + Marketing . “Market research can help you piece together your [business’s] strengths and weaknesses, along with your prospective opportunities, so that you can understand where your unique differentiators may lie.” Well-honed market research will help your brand stand out from the competition and help you see what you need to do to lead the market. It can also do so much more.

The Purposes of Market Research

Why do market research? It can help you…

• Pinpoint your target market, create buyer personas, and develop a more holistic understanding of your customer base and market.
• Understand current market conditions to evaluate risks and anticipate how your product or service will perform.
• Validate a concept prior to launch.
• Identify gaps in the market that your competitors have created or overlooked.
• Solve problems that have been left unresolved by the existing product/brand offerings.
• Identify opportunities and solutions for new products or services.
• Develop killer marketing strategies .

What Are the Benefits of Market Research?

Strong market research can help your business in many ways. It can…

• Strengthen your market position.
• Help you identify your strengths and weaknesses.
• Help you identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Minimize risk.
• Center your customers’ experience from the get-go.
• Help you create a dynamic strategy based on market conditions and customer needs/demands.

What Are the Basic Methods of Market Research?

The basic methods of market research include surveys, personal interviews, customer observation, and the review of secondary research. In addition to these basic methods, a forward-thinking market research approach incorporates data from the digital landscape like social media analysis, SEO research, gathering feedback via forums, and more. Throughout this guide, we will cover each of the methods commonly used in market research to give you a comprehensive overview.

Primary vs. Secondary Market Research

Primary and secondary are the two main types of market research you can do. The latter relies on research conducted by others. Primary research, on the other hand, refers to the fact-finding efforts you conduct on your own.

This approach is limited, however. It’s likely that the research objectives of these secondary data points differ from your own, and it can be difficult to confirm the veracity of their findings.

Primary Market Research

Primary research is more labor intensive, but it generally yields data that is exponentially more actionable. It can be conducted through interviews, surveys, online research, and your own data collection. Every new business should engage in primary market research prior to launch. It will help you validate that your idea has traction, and it will give you the information you need to help minimize financial risk.

You can hire an agency to conduct this research on your behalf. This brings the benefit of expertise, as you’ll likely work with a market research analyst. The downside is that hiring an agency can be expensive—too expensive for many burgeoning entrepreneurs. That brings us to the second approach. You can also do the market research yourself, which substantially reduces the financial burden of starting a new business .

Secondary Market Research

Secondary research includes resources like government databases and industry-specific data and publications. It can be beneficial to start your market research with secondary sources because it’s widely available and often free-to-access. This information will help you gain a broad overview of the market conditions for your new business.

Identify Your Goals and Your Audience

Before you begin conducting interviews or sending out surveys, you need to set your market research goals. At the end of your market research process, you want to have a clear idea of who your target market is—including demographic information like age, gender, and where they live—but you also want to start with a rough idea of who your audience might be and what you’re trying to achieve with market research.

You can pinpoint your objectives by asking yourself a series of guiding questions:

• What are you hoping to discover through your research?
• Who are you hoping to serve better because of your findings?
• What do you think your market is?
• Who are your competitors?
• Are you testing the reception of a new product category or do you want to see if your product or service solves the problem left by a current gap in the market?
• Are you just…testing the waters to get a sense of how people would react to a new brand?

Once you’ve narrowed down the “what” of your market research goals, you’re ready to move onto how you can best achieve them. Think of it like algebra. Many math problems start with “solve for x.” Once you know what you’re looking for, you can get to work trying to find it. It’s a heck of a lot easier to solve a problem when you know you’re looking for “x” than if you were to say “I’m gonna throw some numbers out there and see if I find a variable.”

How to Do Market Research

This guide outlines every component of a comprehensive market research effort. Take into consideration the goals you have established for your market research, as they will influence which of these elements you’ll want to include in your market research strategy.

Secondary Data

Secondary data allows you to utilize pre-existing data to garner a sense of market conditions and opportunities. You can rely on published market studies, white papers, and public competitive information to start your market research journey.

Secondary data, while useful, is limited and cannot substitute your own primary data. It’s best used for quantitative data that can provide background to your more specific inquiries.

Find Your Customers Online

Once you’ve identified your target market, you can use online gathering spaces and forums to gain insights and give yourself a competitive advantage. Rebecca McCusker of The Creative Content Shop recommends internet recon as a vital tool for gaining a sense of customer needs and sentiment. “Read their posts and comments on forums, YouTube video comments, Facebook group [comments], and even Amazon/Goodreads book comments to get in their heads and see what people are saying.”

If you’re interested in engaging with your target demographic online, there are some general rules you should follow. First, secure the consent of any group moderators to ensure that you are acting within the group guidelines. Failure to do so could result in your eviction from the group.

Not all comments have the same research value. “Focus on the comments and posts with the most comments and highest engagement,” says McCusker. These high-engagement posts can give you a sense of what is already connecting and gaining traction within the group.

Social media can also be a great avenue for finding interview subjects. “LinkedIn is very useful if your [target customer] has a very specific job or works in a very specific industry or sector. It’s amazing the amount of people that will be willing to help,” explains Miguel González, a marketing executive at Dealers League . “My advice here is BE BRAVE, go to LinkedIn, or even to people you know and ask them, do quick interviews and ask real people that belong to that market and segment and get your buyer persona information first hand.”

Market research interviews can provide direct feedback on your brand, product, or service and give you a better understanding of consumer pain points and interests.

When organizing your market research interviews, you want to pay special attention to the sample group you’re selecting, as it will directly impact the information you receive. According to Tanya Zhang, the co-founder of Nimble Made , you want to first determine whether you want to choose a representative sample—for example, interviewing people who match each of the buyer persona/customer profiles you’ve developed—or a random sample.

“A sampling of your usual persona styles, for example, can validate details that you’ve already established about your product, while a random sampling may [help you] discover a new way people may use your product,” Zhang says.

Market Surveys

Market surveys solicit customer inclinations regarding your potential product or service through a series of open-ended questions. This direct outreach to your target audience can provide information on your customers’ preferences, attitudes, buying potential, and more.

Every expert we asked voiced unanimous support for market surveys as a powerful tool for market research. With the advent of various survey tools with accessible pricing—or free use—it’s never been easier to assemble, disseminate, and gather market surveys. While it should also be noted that surveys shouldn’t replace customer interviews , they can be used to supplement customer interviews to give you feedback from a broader audience.

Who to Include in Market Surveys

• Current customers
• Past customers
• Your existing audience (such as social media/newsletter audiences)

Example Questions to Include in Market Surveys

While the exact questions will vary for each business, here are some common, helpful questions that you may want to consider for your market survey. Demographic Questions: the questions that help you understand, demographically, who your target customers are:

• “What is your age?”
• “Where do you live?”
• “What is your gender identity?”
• “What is your household income?”
• “What is your household size?”
• “What do you do for a living?”
• “What is your highest level of education?”

Product-Based Questions: Whether you’re seeking feedback for an existing brand or an entirely new one, these questions will help you get a sense of how people feel about your business, product, or service:

• “How well does/would our product/service meet your needs?”
• “How does our product/service compare to similar products/services that you use?”
• “How long have you been a customer?” or “What is the likelihood that you would be a customer of our brand?

Personal/Informative Questions: the deeper questions that help you understand how your audience thinks and what they care about.

• “What are your biggest challenges?”
• “What’s most important to you?”
• “What do you do for fun (hobbies, interests, activities)?”
• “Where do you seek new information when researching a new product?”
• “How do you like to make purchases?”
• “What is your preferred method for interacting with a brand?”

Survey Tools

Online survey tools make it easy to distribute surveys and collect responses. The best part is that there are many free tools available. If you’re making your own online survey, you may want to consider SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Google Forms, or Zoho Survey.

Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis is a breakdown of how your business stacks up against the competition. There are many different ways to conduct this analysis. One of the most popular methods is a SWOT analysis, which stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.” This type of analysis is helpful because it gives you a more robust understanding of why a customer might choose a competitor over your business. Seeing how you stack up against the competition can give you the direction you need to carve out your place as a market leader.

Social Media Analysis

Social media has fundamentally changed the market research landscape, making it easier than ever to engage with a wide swath of consumers. Follow your current or potential competitors on social media to see what they’re posting and how their audience is engaging with it. Social media can also give you a lower cost opportunity for testing different messaging and brand positioning.

SEO Analysis and Opportunities

SEO analysis can help you identify the digital competition for getting the word out about your brand, product, or service. You won’t want to overlook this valuable information. Search listening tools offer a novel approach to understanding the market and generating the content strategy that will drive business. Tools like Google Trends and Awario can streamline this process.

Ready to Kick Your Business Into High Gear?

Now that you’ve completed the guide to market research you know you’re ready to put on your researcher hat to give your business the best start. Still not sure how actually… launch the thing? Our free mini-course can run you through the essentials for starting your side hustle .

About Mary Kate Miller

Mary Kate Miller writes about small business, real estate, and finance. In addition to writing for Foundr, her work has been published by The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Bustle, and more. She lives in Chicago.

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How to do market research in 4 steps: a lean approach to marketing research

From pinpointing your target audience and assessing your competitive advantage, to ongoing product development and customer satisfaction efforts, market research is a practice your business can only benefit from.

Learn how to conduct quick and effective market research using a lean approach in this article full of strategies and practical examples. 

Last updated

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A comprehensive (and successful) business strategy is not complete without some form of market research—you can’t make informed and profitable business decisions without truly understanding your customer base and the current market trends that drive your business.

In this article, you’ll learn how to conduct quick, effective market research  using an approach called 'lean market research'. It’s easier than you might think, and it can be done at any stage in a product’s lifecycle.

How to conduct lean market research in 4 steps

What is market research, why is market research so valuable, advantages of lean market research, 4 common market research methods, 5 common market research questions, market research faqs.

We’ll jump right into our 4-step approach to lean market research. To show you how it’s done in the real world, each step includes a practical example from Smallpdf , a Swiss company that used lean market research to reduce their tool’s error rate by 75% and boost their Net Promoter Score® (NPS) by 1%.

Research your market the lean way...

From on-page surveys to user interviews, Hotjar has the tools to help you scope out your market and get to know your customers—without breaking the bank.

The following four steps and practical examples will give you a solid market research plan for understanding who your users are and what they want from a company like yours.

1. Create simple user personas

A user persona is a semi-fictional character based on psychographic and demographic data from people who use websites and products similar to your own. Start by defining broad user categories, then elaborate on them later to further segment your customer base and determine your ideal customer profile .

How to get the data: use on-page or emailed surveys and interviews to understand your users and what drives them to your business.

How to do it right: whatever survey or interview questions you ask, they should answer the following questions about the customer:

Who are they?

What is their main goal?

What is their main barrier to achieving this goal?

Pitfalls to avoid:

Don’t ask too many questions! Keep it to five or less, otherwise you’ll inundate them and they’ll stop answering thoughtfully.

Don’t worry too much about typical demographic questions like age or background. Instead, focus on the role these people play (as it relates to your product) and their goals.

How Smallpdf did it: Smallpdf ran an on-page survey for a couple of weeks and received 1,000 replies. They learned that many of their users were administrative assistants, students, and teachers.

Next, they used the survey results to create simple user personas like this one for admins:

Who are they? Administrative Assistants.

What is their main goal? Creating Word documents from a scanned, hard-copy document or a PDF where the source file was lost.

What is their main barrier to achieving it? Converting a scanned PDF doc to a Word file.

💡Pro tip: Smallpdf used Hotjar Surveys to run their user persona survey. Our survey tool helped them avoid the pitfalls of guesswork and find out who their users really are, in their own words. 

You can design a survey and start running it in minutes with our easy-to-use drag and drop builder. Customize your survey to fit your needs, from a sleek one-question pop-up survey to a fully branded questionnaire sent via email. 

We've also created 40+ free survey templates that you can start collecting data with, including a user persona survey like the one Smallpdf used.

2. Conduct observational research

Observational research involves taking notes while watching someone use your product (or a similar product).

Overt vs. covert observation

Overt observation involves asking customers if they’ll let you watch them use your product. This method is often used for user testing and it provides a great opportunity for collecting live product or customer feedback .

Covert observation means studying users ‘in the wild’ without them knowing. This method works well if you sell a type of product that people use regularly, and it offers the purest observational data because people often behave differently when they know they’re being watched. 

Tips to do it right:

Record an entry in your field notes, along with a timestamp, each time an action or event occurs.

Make note of the users' workflow, capturing the ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and ‘for whom’ of each action.

Don’t record identifiable video or audio data without consent. If recording people using your product is helpful for achieving your research goal, make sure all participants are informed and agree to the terms.

Don’t forget to explain why you’d like to observe them (for overt observation). People are more likely to cooperate if you tell them you want to improve the product.

💡Pro tip: while conducting field research out in the wild can wield rewarding results, you can also conduct observational research remotely. Hotjar Recordings is a tool that lets you capture anonymized user sessions of real people interacting with your website. 

Observe how customers navigate your pages and products to gain an inside look into their user behavior . This method is great for conducting exploratory research with the purpose of identifying more specific issues to investigate further, like pain points along the customer journey and opportunities for optimizing conversion .

With Hotjar Recordings you can observe real people using your site without capturing their sensitive information

How Smallpdf did it: here’s how Smallpdf observed two different user personas both covertly and overtly.

Observing students (covert): Kristina Wagner, Principle Product Manager at Smallpdf, went to cafes and libraries at two local universities and waited until she saw students doing PDF-related activities. Then she watched and took notes from a distance. One thing that struck her was the difference between how students self-reported their activities vs. how they behaved (i.e, the self-reporting bias). Students, she found, spent hours talking, listening to music, or simply staring at a blank screen rather than working. When she did find students who were working, she recorded the task they were performing and the software they were using (if she recognized it).

Observing administrative assistants (overt): Kristina sent emails to admins explaining that she’d like to observe them at work, and she asked those who agreed to try to batch their PDF work for her observation day. While watching admins work, she learned that they frequently needed to scan documents into PDF-format and then convert those PDFs into Word docs. By observing the challenges admins faced, Smallpdf knew which products to target for improvement.

“Data is really good for discovery and validation, but there is a bit in the middle where you have to go and find the human.”

3. Conduct individual interviews

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. They allow you to dig deep and explore their concerns, which can lead to all sorts of revelations.

Listen more, talk less. Be curious.

Act like a journalist, not a salesperson. Rather than trying to talk your company up, ask people about their lives, their needs, their frustrations, and how a product like yours could help.

Ask "why?" so you can dig deeper. Get into the specifics and learn about their past behavior.

Record the conversation. Focus on the conversation and avoid relying solely on notes by recording the interview. There are plenty of services that will transcribe recorded conversations for a good price (including Hotjar!).

Avoid asking leading questions , which reveal bias on your part and pushes respondents to answer in a certain direction (e.g. “Have you taken advantage of the amazing new features we just released?).

Don't ask loaded questions , which sneak in an assumption which, if untrue, would make it impossible to answer honestly. For example, we can’t ask you, “What did you find most useful about this article?” without asking whether you found the article useful in the first place.

Be cautious when asking opinions about the future (or predictions of future behavior). Studies suggest that people aren’t very good at predicting their future behavior. This is due to several cognitive biases, from the misguided exceptionalism bias (we’re good at guessing what others will do, but we somehow think we’re different), to the optimism bias (which makes us see things with rose-colored glasses), to the ‘illusion of control’ (which makes us forget the role of randomness in future events).

How Smallpdf did it: Kristina explored her teacher user persona by speaking with university professors at a local graduate school. She learned that the school was mostly paperless and rarely used PDFs, so for the sake of time, she moved on to the admins.

A bit of a letdown? Sure. But this story highlights an important lesson: sometimes you follow a lead and come up short, so you have to make adjustments on the fly. Lean market research is about getting solid, actionable insights quickly so you can tweak things and see what works.

💡Pro tip: to save even more time, conduct remote interviews using an online user research service like Hotjar Engage , which automates the entire interview process, from recruitment and scheduling to hosting and recording.

You can interview your own customers or connect with people from our diverse pool of 200,000+ participants from 130+ countries and 25 industries. And no need to fret about taking meticulous notes—Engage will automatically transcribe the interview for you.

4. Analyze the data (without drowning in it)

The following techniques will help you wrap your head around the market data you collect without losing yourself in it. Remember, the point of lean market research is to find quick, actionable insights.

A flow model is a diagram that tracks the flow of information within a system. By creating a simple visual representation of how users interact with your product and each other, you can better assess their needs.

You’ll notice that admins are at the center of Smallpdf’s flow model, which represents the flow of PDF-related documents throughout a school. This flow model shows the challenges that admins face as they work to satisfy their own internal and external customers.

Affinity diagram

An affinity diagram is a way of sorting large amounts of data into groups to better understand the big picture. For example, if you ask your users about their profession, you’ll notice some general themes start to form, even though the individual responses differ. Depending on your needs, you could group them by profession, or more generally by industry.

We wrote a guide about how to analyze open-ended questions to help you sort through and categorize large volumes of response data. You can also do this by hand by clipping up survey responses or interview notes and grouping them (which is what Kristina does).

“For an interview, you will have somewhere between 30 and 60 notes, and those notes are usually direct phrases. And when you literally cut them up into separate pieces of paper and group them, they should make sense by themselves.”

Pro tip: if you’re conducting an online survey with Hotjar, keep your team in the loop by sharing survey responses automatically via our Slack and Microsoft Team integrations. Reading answers as they come in lets you digest the data in pieces and can help prepare you for identifying common themes when it comes time for analysis.

Hotjar lets you easily share survey responses with your team

Customer journey map

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the way a typical prospect becomes a paying customer. It outlines their first interaction with your brand and every step in the sales cycle, from awareness to repurchase (and hopefully advocacy).

The above  customer journey map , created by our team at Hotjar, shows many ways a customer might engage with our tool. Your map will be based on your own data and business model.

📚 Read more: if you’re new to customer journey maps, we wrote this step-by-step guide to creating your first customer journey map in 2 and 1/2 days with free templates you can download and start using immediately.

Next steps: from research to results

So, how do you turn market research insights into tangible business results? Let’s look at the actions Smallpdf took after conducting their lean market research: first they implemented changes, then measured the impact.

Implement changes

Based on what Smallpdf learned about the challenges that one key user segment (admins) face when trying to convert PDFs into Word files, they improved their ‘PDF to Word’ conversion tool.

We won’t go into the details here because it involves a lot of technical jargon, but they made the entire process simpler and more straightforward for users. Plus, they made it so that their system recognized when you drop a PDF file into their ‘Word to PDF’ converter instead of the ‘PDF to Word’ converter, so users wouldn’t have to redo the task when they made that mistake. 

In other words: simple market segmentation for admins showed a business need that had to be accounted for, and customers are happier overall after Smallpdf implemented an informed change to their product.

Measure results

According to the Lean UX model, product and UX changes aren’t retained unless they achieve results.

Smallpdf’s changes produced:

A 75% reduction in error rate for the ‘PDF to Word’ converter

A 1% increase in NPS

Greater confidence in the team’s marketing efforts

"With all the changes said and done, we've cut our original error rate in four, which is huge. We increased our NPS by +1%, which isn't huge, but it means that of the users who received a file, they were still slightly happier than before, even if they didn't notice that anything special happened at all.”

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Market research (or marketing research) is any set of techniques used to gather information and better understand a company’s target market. This might include primary research on brand awareness and customer satisfaction or secondary market research on market size and competitive analysis. Businesses use this information to design better products, improve user experience, and craft a marketing strategy that attracts quality leads and improves conversion rates.

David Darmanin, one of Hotjar’s founders, launched two startups before Hotjar took off—but both companies crashed and burned. Each time, he and his team spent months trying to design an amazing new product and user experience, but they failed because they didn’t have a clear understanding of what the market demanded.

With Hotjar, they did things differently . Long story short, they conducted market research in the early stages to figure out what consumers really wanted, and the team made (and continues to make) constant improvements based on market and user research.

Without market research, it’s impossible to understand your users. Sure, you might have a general idea of who they are and what they need, but you have to dig deep if you want to win their loyalty.

Here’s why research matters:

Obsessing over your users is the only way to win. If you don’t care deeply about them, you’ll lose potential customers to someone who does.

Analytics gives you the ‘what’, while research gives you the ‘why’. Big data, user analytics , and dashboards can tell you what people do at scale, but only research can tell you what they’re thinking and why they do what they do. For example, analytics can tell you that customers leave when they reach your pricing page, but only research can explain why.

Research beats assumptions, trends, and so-called best practices. Have you ever watched your colleagues rally behind a terrible decision? Bad ideas are often the result of guesswork, emotional reasoning, death by best practices , and defaulting to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO). By listening to your users and focusing on their customer experience , you’re less likely to get pulled in the wrong direction.

Research keeps you from planning in a vacuum. Your team might be amazing, but you and your colleagues simply can’t experience your product the way your customers do. Customers might use your product in a way that surprises you, and product features that seem obvious to you might confuse them. Over-planning and refusing to test your assumptions is a waste of time, money, and effort because you’ll likely need to make changes once your untested business plan gets put into practice.

Lean User Experience (UX) design is a model for continuous improvement that relies on quick, efficient research to understand customer needs and test new product features.

Lean market research can help you become more...

Efficient: it gets you closer to your customers, faster.

Cost-effective: no need to hire an expensive marketing firm to get things started.

Competitive: quick, powerful insights can place your products on the cutting edge.

As a small business or sole proprietor, conducting lean market research is an attractive option when investing in a full-blown research project might seem out of scope or budget.

There are lots of different ways you could conduct market research and collect customer data, but you don’t have to limit yourself to just one research method. Four common types of market research techniques include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer observation.

Which method you use may vary based on your business type: ecommerce business owners have different goals from SaaS businesses, so it’s typically prudent to mix and match these methods based on your particular goals and what you need to know.

1. Surveys: the most commonly used

Surveys are a form of qualitative research that ask respondents a short series of open- or closed-ended questions, which can be delivered as an on-screen questionnaire or via email. When we asked 2,000 Customer Experience (CX) professionals about their company’s approach to research , surveys proved to be the most commonly used market research technique.

What makes online surveys so popular?  

They’re easy and inexpensive to conduct, and you can do a lot of data collection quickly. Plus, the data is pretty straightforward to analyze, even when you have to analyze open-ended questions whose answers might initially appear difficult to categorize.

We've built a number of survey templates ready and waiting for you. Grab a template and share with your customers in just a few clicks.

💡 Pro tip: you can also get started with Hotjar AI for Surveys to create a survey in mere seconds . Just enter your market research goal and watch as the AI generates a survey and populates it with relevant questions. 

Once you’re ready for data analysis, the AI will prepare an automated research report that succinctly summarizes key findings, quotes, and suggested next steps.

An example research report generated by Hotjar AI for Surveys

2. Interviews: the most insightful

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. Nothing beats a face-to-face interview for diving deep (and reading non-verbal cues), but if an in-person meeting isn’t possible, video conferencing is a solid second choice.

Regardless of how you conduct it, any type of in-depth interview will produce big benefits in understanding your target customers.

What makes interviews so insightful?

By speaking directly with an ideal customer, you’ll gain greater empathy for their experience , and you can follow insightful threads that can produce plenty of 'Aha!' moments.

3. Focus groups: the most unreliable

Focus groups bring together a carefully selected group of people who fit a company’s target market. A trained moderator leads a conversation surrounding the product, user experience, or marketing message to gain deeper insights.

What makes focus groups so unreliable?

If you’re new to market research, we wouldn’t recommend starting with focus groups. Doing it right is expensive , and if you cut corners, your research could fall victim to all kinds of errors. Dominance bias (when a forceful participant influences the group) and moderator style bias (when different moderator personalities bring about different results in the same study) are two of the many ways your focus group data could get skewed.

4. Observation: the most powerful

During a customer observation session, someone from the company takes notes while they watch an ideal user engage with their product (or a similar product from a competitor).

What makes observation so clever and powerful?

‘Fly-on-the-wall’ observation is a great alternative to focus groups. It’s not only less expensive, but you’ll see people interact with your product in a natural setting without influencing each other. The only downside is that you can’t get inside their heads, so observation still isn't a recommended replacement for customer surveys and interviews.

The following questions will help you get to know your users on a deeper level when you interview them. They’re general questions, of course, so don’t be afraid to make them your own.

1. Who are you and what do you do?

How you ask this question, and what you want to know, will vary depending on your business model (e.g. business-to-business marketing is usually more focused on someone’s profession than business-to-consumer marketing).

It’s a great question to start with, and it’ll help you understand what’s relevant about your user demographics (age, race, gender, profession, education, etc.), but it’s not the be-all-end-all of market research. The more specific questions come later.

2. What does your day look like?

This question helps you understand your users’ day-to-day life and the challenges they face. It will help you gain empathy for them, and you may stumble across something relevant to their buying habits.

3. Do you ever purchase [product/service type]?

This is a ‘yes or no’ question. A ‘yes’ will lead you to the next question.

4. What problem were you trying to solve or what goal were you trying to achieve?

This question strikes to the core of what someone’s trying to accomplish and why they might be willing to pay for your solution.

5. Take me back to the day when you first decided you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this goal.

This is the golden question, and it comes from Adele Revella, Founder and CEO of Buyer Persona Institute . It helps you get in the heads of your users and figure out what they were thinking the day they decided to spend money to solve a problem.

If you take your time with this question, digging deeper where it makes sense, you should be able to answer all the relevant information you need to understand their perspective.

“The only scripted question I want you to ask them is this one: take me back to the day when you first decided that you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this kind of a goal. Not to buy my product, that’s not the day. We want to go back to the day that when you thought it was urgent and compelling to go spend money to solve a particular problem or achieve a goal. Just tell me what happened.”

— Adele Revella , Founder/CEO at Buyer Persona Institute

Bonus question: is there anything else you’d like to tell me?

This question isn’t just a nice way to wrap it up—it might just give participants the opportunity they need to tell you something you really need to know.

That’s why Sarah Doody, author of UX Notebook , adds it to the end of her written surveys.

“I always have a last question, which is just open-ended: “Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” And sometimes, that’s where you get four paragraphs of amazing content that you would never have gotten if it was just a Net Promoter Score [survey] or something like that.”

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative research asks questions that can’t be reduced to a number, such as, “What is your job title?” or “What did you like most about your customer service experience?” 

Quantitative research asks questions that can be answered with a numeric value, such as, “What is your annual salary?” or “How was your customer service experience on a scale of 1-5?”

 → Read more about the differences between qualitative and quantitative user research .

How do I do my own market research?

You can do your own quick and effective market research by 

Surveying your customers

Building user personas

Studying your users through interviews and observation

Wrapping your head around your data with tools like flow models, affinity diagrams, and customer journey maps

What is the difference between market research and user research?

Market research takes a broad look at potential customers—what problems they’re trying to solve, their buying experience, and overall demand. User research, on the other hand, is more narrowly focused on the use (and usability ) of specific products.

What are the main criticisms of market research?

Many marketing professionals are critical of market research because it can be expensive and time-consuming. It’s often easier to convince your CEO or CMO to let you do lean market research rather than something more extensive because you can do it yourself. It also gives you quick answers so you can stay ahead of the competition.

Do I need a market research firm to get reliable data?

Absolutely not! In fact, we recommend that you start small and do it yourself in the beginning. By following a lean market research strategy, you can uncover some solid insights about your clients. Then you can make changes, test them out, and see whether the results are positive. This is an excellent strategy for making quick changes and remaining competitive.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld, and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

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How to do market research: The complete guide for your brand

Written by by Jacqueline Zote

Published on  April 13, 2023

Reading time  10 minutes

Blindly putting out content or products and hoping for the best is a thing of the past. Not only is it a waste of time and energy, but you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars in the process. Now you have a wealth of tools and data at your disposal, allowing you to develop data-driven marketing strategies . That’s where market research comes in, allowing you to uncover valuable insights to inform your business decisions.

Conducting market research not only helps you better understand how to sell to customers but also stand out from your competition. In this guide, we break down everything you need to know about market research and how doing your homework can help you grow your business.

Table of contents:

What is market research?

Why is market research important, types of market research, where to conduct market research.

• Steps for conducting market research
• Tools to use for market research

Market research is the process of gathering information surrounding your business opportunities. It identifies key information to better understand your audience. This includes insights related to customer personas and even trends shaping your industry.

Taking time out of your schedule to conduct research is crucial for your brand health. Here are some of the key benefits of market research:

Understand your customers’ motivations and pain points

Most marketers are out of touch with what their customers want. Moreover, these marketers are missing key information on what products their audience wants to buy.

Simply put, you can’t run a business if you don’t know what motivates your customers.

And spoiler alert: Your customers’ wants and needs change. Your customers’ behaviors today might be night and day from what they were a few years ago.

Market research holds the key to understanding your customers better. It helps you uncover their key pain points and motivations and understand how they shape their interests and behavior.

Figure out how to position your brand

Positioning is becoming increasingly important as more and more brands enter the marketplace. Market research enables you to spot opportunities to define yourself against your competitors.

Maybe you’re able to emphasize a lower price point. Perhaps your product has a feature that’s one of a kind. Finding those opportunities goes hand in hand with researching your market.

Maintain a strong pulse on your industry at large

Today’s marketing world evolves at a rate that’s difficult to keep up with.

Fresh products. Up-and-coming brands. New marketing tools. Consumers get bombarded with sales messages from all angles. This can be confusing and overwhelming.

By monitoring market trends, you can figure out the best tactics for reaching your target audience.

Not everyone conducts market research for the same reason. While some may want to understand their audience better, others may want to see how their competitors are doing. As such, there are different types of market research you can conduct depending on your goal.

Interview-based market research allows for one-on-one interactions. This helps the conversation to flow naturally, making it easier to add context. Whether this takes place in person or virtually, it enables you to gather more in-depth qualitative data.

Buyer persona research

Buyer persona research lets you take a closer look at the people who make up your target audience. You can discover the needs, challenges and pain points of each buyer persona to understand what they need from your business. This will then allow you to craft products or campaigns to resonate better with each persona.

Pricing research

In this type of research, brands compare similar products or services with a particular focus on pricing. They look at how much those products or services typically sell for so they can get more competitive with their pricing strategy.

Competitive analysis research

Competitor analysis gives you a realistic understanding of where you stand in the market and how your competitors are doing. You can use this analysis to find out what’s working in your industry and which competitors to watch out for. It even gives you an idea of how well those competitors are meeting consumer needs.

Depending on the competitor analysis tool you use, you can get as granular as you need with your research. For instance, Sprout Social lets you analyze your competitors’ social strategies. You can see what types of content they’re posting and even benchmark your growth against theirs.

Brand awareness research

Conducting brand awareness research allows you to assess your brand’s standing in the market. It tells you how well-known your brand is among your target audience and what they associate with it. This can help you gauge people’s sentiments toward your brand and whether you need to rebrand or reposition.

If you don’t know where to start with your research, you’re in the right place.

There’s no shortage of market research methods out there. In this section, we’ve highlighted research channels for small and big businesses alike.

Considering that Google sees a staggering 8.5 billion searches each day, there’s perhaps no better place to start.

A quick Google search is a potential goldmine for all sorts of questions to kick off your market research. Who’s ranking for keywords related to your industry? Which products and pieces of content are the hottest right now? Who’s running ads related to your business?

For example, Google Product Listing Ads can help highlight all of the above for B2C brands.

The same applies to B2B brands looking to keep tabs on who’s running industry-related ads and ranking for keyword terms too.

There’s no denying that email represents both an aggressive and effective marketing channel for marketers today. Case in point, 44% of online shoppers consider email as the most influential channel in their buying decisions.

Looking through industry and competitor emails is a brilliant way to learn more about your market. For example, what types of offers and deals are your competitors running? How often are they sending emails?

Email is also invaluable for gathering information directly from your customers. This survey message from Asana is a great example of how to pick your customers’ brains to figure out how you can improve your quality of service.

Industry journals, reports and blogs

Don’t neglect the importance of big-picture market research when it comes to tactics and marketing channels to explore. Look to marketing resources such as reports and blogs as well as industry journals

Keeping your ear to the ground on new trends and technologies is a smart move for any business. Sites such as Statista, Marketing Charts, AdWeek and Emarketer are treasure troves of up-to-date data and news for marketers.

And of course, there’s the  Sprout Insights blog . And invaluable resources like The Sprout Social Index™  can keep you updated on the latest social trends.

Social media

If you want to learn more about your target market, look no further than social media. Social offers a place to discover what your customers want to see in future products or which brands are killin’ it. In fact, social media is become more important for businesses than ever with the level of data available.

It represents a massive repository of real-time data and insights that are instantly accessible. Brand monitoring and social listening are effective ways to conduct social media research . You can even be more direct with your approach. Ask questions directly or even poll your audience to understand their needs and preferences.

The 5 steps for how to do market research

Now that we’ve covered the why and where, it’s time to get into the practical aspects of market research. Here are five essential steps on how to do market research effectively.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

First off, what are you researching about? What do you want to find out? Narrow down on a specific research topic so you can start with a clear idea of what to look for.

For example, you may want to learn more about how well your product features are satisfying the needs of existing users. This might potentially lead to feature updates and improvements. Or it might even result in new feature introductions.

Similarly, your research topic may be related to your product or service launch or customer experience. Or you may want to conduct research for an upcoming marketing campaign.

Step 2: Choose a buyer persona to engage

If you’re planning to focus your research on a specific type of audience, decide which buyer persona you want to engage. This persona group will serve as a representative sample of your target audience.

Engaging a specific group of audience lets you streamline your research efforts. As such, it can be a much more effective and organized approach than researching thousands (if not millions) of individuals.

You may be directing your research toward existing users of your product. To get even more granular, you may want to focus on users who have been familiar with the product for at least a year, for example.

Step 3: Start collecting data

The next step is one of the most critical as it involves collecting the data you need for your research. Before you begin, make sure you’ve chosen the right research methods that will uncover the type of data you need. This largely depends on your research topic and goals.

Remember that you don’t necessarily have to stick to one research method. You may use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. So for example, you could use interviews to supplement the data from your surveys. Or you may stick to insights from your social listening efforts.

To keep things consistent, let’s look at this in the context of the example from earlier. Perhaps you can send out a survey to your existing users asking them a bunch of questions. This might include questions like which features they use the most and how often they use them. You can get them to choose an answer from one to five and collect quantitative data.

Plus, for qualitative insights, you could even include a few open-ended questions with the option to write their answers. For instance, you might ask them if there’s any improvement they wish to see in your product.

Step 4: Analyze results

Once you have all the data you need, it’s time to analyze it keeping your research topic in mind. This involves trying to interpret the data to look for a wider meaning, particularly in relation to your research goal.

So let’s say a large percentage of responses were four or five in the satisfaction rating. This means your existing users are mostly satisfied with your current product features. On the other hand, if the responses were mostly ones and twos, you may look for opportunities to improve. The responses to your open-ended questions can give you further context as to why people are disappointed.

Step 5: Make decisions for your business

Now it’s time to take your findings and turn them into actionable insights for your business. In this final step, you need to decide how you want to move forward with your new market insight.

What did you find in your research that would require action? How can you put those findings to good use?

The market research tools you should be using

To wrap things up, let’s talk about the various tools available to conduct speedy, in-depth market research. These tools are essential for conducting market research faster and more efficiently.

Social listening and analytics

Social analytics tools like Sprout can help you keep track of engagement across social media. This goes beyond your own engagement data but also includes that of your competitors. Considering how quickly social media moves, using a third-party analytics tool is ideal. It allows you to make sense of your social data at a glance and ensure that you’re never missing out on important trends.

Email marketing research tools

Keeping track of brand emails is a good idea for any brand looking to stand out in its audience’s inbox.

Tools such as MailCharts ,  Really Good Emails  and  Milled  can show you how different brands run their email campaigns.

Meanwhile, tools like  Owletter  allow you to monitor metrics such as frequency and send-timing. These metrics can help you understand email marketing strategies among competing brands.

Content marketing research

If you’re looking to conduct research on content marketing, tools such as  BuzzSumo  can be of great help. This tool shows you the top-performing industry content based on keywords. Here you can see relevant industry sites and influencers as well as which brands in your industry are scoring the most buzz. It shows you exactly which pieces of content are ranking well in terms of engagements and shares and on which social networks.

SEO and keyword tracking

Monitoring industry keywords is a great way to uncover competitors. It can also help you discover opportunities to advertise your products via organic search. Tools such as  Ahrefs  provide a comprehensive keyword report to help you see how your search efforts stack up against the competition.

Competitor comparison template

For the sake of organizing your market research, consider creating a competitive matrix. The idea is to highlight how you stack up side-by-side against others in your market. Use a  social media competitive analysis template  to track your competitors’ social presence. That way, you can easily compare tactics, messaging and performance. Once you understand your strengths and weaknesses next to your competitors, you’ll find opportunities as well.

Customer persona creator

Finally, customer personas represent a place where all of your market research comes together. You’d need to create a profile of your ideal customer that you can easily refer to. Tools like  Xtensio  can help in outlining your customer motivations and demographics as you zero in on your target market.

Build a solid market research strategy

Having a deeper understanding of the market gives you leverage in a sea of competitors. Use the steps and market research tools we shared above to build an effective market research strategy.

But keep in mind that the accuracy of your research findings depends on the quality of data collected. Turn to Sprout’s social media analytics tools to uncover heaps of high-quality data across social networks.

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Market Research: The Definitive Guide (2023 Update)

• 2 years ago

Starting a business is a challenging endeavor that requires time, money, and continuous learning. In our blogs, we cover how to start a business with brief overviews. In our hub, we aim to provide you with everything you need to go through each step. Our first step is conducting market research.

Throughout the steps, we’ll provide insights from Paul Akers, the owner of FastCap, and a Lean Expert who has created hundreds of products for woodworkers and cabinet makers.

There are four basic steps to conducting market research:

• Understand “what is marketing research and which type is right for my business?
• Perform market research.
• Analyze the data.
• Use the research to make decisions.

We’ll start by exploring some of the concepts involved in market research analysis to help you perform it yourself.

Step 1: What is market research in business?

Market research is the process of gathering information about target customers to better understand their views about a product or service. The primary ways of classifying market research are:

• The method of the collection
• Common types of market research

Let’s look at each.

The method of collection

Market research normally uses six methods of collection when looking for answers:

Primary market research

Secondary market research.

• Qualitative research

Quantitative research

Exploratory research.

• Specific Research

Primary research is the original research conducted directly by an organization. It is used to find out what customers are interested in. It can be done through questionnaires, interviews, or videos. Primary market research is used for understanding the underlying needs and desires of consumers.

Primary market research helps us to understand the needs, wants, and behaviors of potential buyers. It is the basis for the buyers’ persona. It helps us to formulate marketing strategies that can be used to meet those needs and wants.

Secondary market research is a process of finding information about a product or service through other sources. This includes looking up other companies that are in the same market as your company and finding out what they are doing.

A company should conduct secondary market research to find out if the product or service has been done before, which will help them figure out how they can differentiate their product from competitors.

Secondary research can be used to gain information about competitors, pricing, distribution channels, etc. It also helps the company save time by not having to conduct primary research that has already been performed.

Researching competitors before you start your business is not only crucial for success but essential for survival in the business world where everyone is trying to get ahead.

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

One is focused on themes while the other is focused on information that can be processed numerically. Let’s look at each.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is focused on finding themes that run through interviews and surveys. This type of research is more focused on opinions and is more art than statistical analysis, but in some cases, you can turn this type of research into data that can use statistical analysis.

For instance, a question like the one below converts a qualitative data point into a quantitative data point, making it easier to compare how happy someone was with their food.

You might perform qualitative research along with market validation after you have created a prototype of a new product.

This research is focused on information that can be easily processed with statistical analysis software. For instance, median household income would be easy to statistically calculate if you gather the data for the target customers’ income. Market research analysts love this kind of data because it is easier to process.

Exploratory research is market research that looks for a better understanding. For instance, you may have come to this site doing exploratory research about how to do market research for a startup. After you’ve gained broader information about marketing research methods, you might move on to more specific research.

Specific research

Specific research is when market researchers are looking to answer a very specific question using market data. This research might include searching for a specific concept or item. For example, the lowest cost statistical software for a company that will have ten users of the software. You might also want to research the history of a business location before deciding to sign a lease because some shopping centers have high turnover.

To find the answer, you’ll probably want to go with Google Workspace because Forms, Sheets, and other useful business tools are included in the same package as your email. Google is the primary email provider for small and medium-sized businesses.

Market research may include a combination of primary and secondary data, quantitative and qualitative data, exploratory and specific research. Now that you understand the market research definition, let’s look at the common market research methods and what questions they are trying to answer.

Common types of market research methods

Most companies will perform 13 types of market research:

• Literature reviews

Focus Groups

Observation, customer utilization research.

• Buyer Persona Research

Market Segmentation Research

Pricing research, competitive analysis research, customer satisfaction and loyalty research, brand awareness research, campaign research.

In each of these, market researchers attempt to answer different questions. Let’s discuss each.

Literature Reviews

One of the leanest ways to do market research is a literature review. With your laptop or cell phone, you can easily find vast amounts of data about your market through sources like:

• Statista – Provides graphs that are easy to process for most economic subjects
• Competitors’ research – Your competitors have probably already done the research. Find it so you don’t have to duplicate the effort.
• Industry trade organizations – Companies
• Think with Google – Helps marketers gather information using Google’s extensive database of consumer behaviors
• Census Bureau – The U.S. Census Bureau is a government agency that collects data on a variety of subjects including a full count of the U.S. population every decade.

After you’ve gathered everything available through market research, it’s time to create some surveys.

Surveys are the most common type of market research because they are so easy to conduct and are low-cost. With software like Google Forms and Facebook, you can easily create a survey, distribute it, and analyze the data on your own.

When creating a survey, it is important to be aware of some best principles including:

• Use a variety of style questions: scaled, multiple-choice, and open-ended questions are typically used with success.
• Avoid biased questions that lead the survey participants to a preferred answer. They will harm the validity of your research.
• Be respectful of the participants’ time. Unless you are paying them, try to keep the survey to 10 questions or less. If you are paying them, $50-$100 per hour is typically what market research firms will pay for longer surveys.
• Make sure to gather demographic data and contact information for follow-up.
• Practice proper sampling methods. In most cases, you won’t need more than 1,000 survey participants, but you can use the table below to establish how many people to include in your survey.

You can normally gather the data you need through this method for under $5 per survey participant, making it one of the most effective and lean methods of gathering market research.

Another great tool is a market research interview. They follow the same principles of surveys but have the benefit of the ability to ask follow-up questions. Using these with select survey participants who gave meaningful input might be useful.

Interviews are much more labor and capital intensive than surveys, so only use them for follow-up questions for your target market.

Keep reading to learn about focus groups.

A focus group brings 5-10 people together to discuss a product or service with a moderator. These will typically run $4K-$10K per group, and they are not conducive to being conducted by novices because of the challenges involving focus groups dynamics.

If you are going to use this type of research, we’d suggest hiring a professional market research firm to assist you in the recruiting and managing of a focus group. If you are trying to run lean market research, you should skip focus groups entirely.

Keep reading to learn about observations as a market research tool.

Observation can be an extremely powerful market research tool. Using observation, you can learn how people actually interact with your product and service, but it doesn’t allow you to actually communicate with them.

Observation is particularly powerful for software products because tools like Google Analytics and Crazy Egg help you see how people interact with the software. This makes it easier to fix areas where customers stop interacting with the application.

You can perform market research through observation in different ways. The primary ways of conducting market research through observation are covert observation and overt observation.

Covert observation is collecting market research data without the participants’ knowledge. This type of data collection can be achieved through analytics software on the web or using security cameras in stores where people can test your product.

Overt observation is when the participants are aware of the marketing research and provide feedback to questions. When you conduct market research about a product or service this way you will get more information about potential customers’ opinions, but it may be influenced by their awareness that you are conducting market research.

Effective market research can gain actionable insights from both methods. Overt observation is better when you know who your potential customers are and you want to establish whether they like your business idea, while covert observation is helpful for establishing who naturally gravitates to a product or service.

You’ll want to take notes any time someone performs a desired or undesired action. If the participant is aware of the market research analysts, you’ll also want to ask them what influenced the decision.

Cautionary Tale: During the early stages of FastCap, Paul would gain actionable insights from conventions, but he stopped conducting research at such events because he found them costly to collect data. He also found that competitors would try to steal his ideas.

To truly make the most out of this tool, you’ll need to combine it with other research methods like surveys to gain user input after the observation.

Customer utilization research is focused on how your current customers use your products or services. Marketing professionals will normally use customer surveys to perform this exploratory research. The following questions are questions that an online survey might include:

• How often do you use our product or service?
• What do you like most about our product or service?
• With 1 being highly dissatisfied and 5 being highly satisfied how would you rank our product?
• What do you like least about our product or service?
• With 1 being highly dissatisfied and 5 being highly satisfied how would you rank our customer service?
• Have you tried any of the competitors’ products? If so, which ones? How does our product compare to theirs?
• What features would you like added to our product?
• With 1 being highly dissatisfied and 5 being highly satisfied how would you rank our pricing?

You can replace “product” with “services” in any of the questions above. In addition, it would make sense to include the name of the specific product or service they bought instead of the word product or service.

These questions will help you establish what real customers think of your products and services. This type of market research data provides insight into aspects including competitive advantage and creating buyer personas for potential clients based on the data collected.

FastCap has an interesting take on this type of market research. They actually offer tradesmen a 2-5% royalty for product suggestions that they decide to take to market.

Buyer Persona: Identify Your Target Market

A user persona is a character that represents your target market. A user persona will include aspects including:

• Demographics – age, gender, location, marital status, number of kids (if applicable to your product)
• Financial Information – Employment status, job title, household income, homeowner status
• Behaviors and Interests – Hobbies, products they like, buying habits, where they get information about products and services
• Market size and market trends

You can create similar personas for B2B businesses using stats like:

• Number of employees
• Age of company
• Titles of decision-makers
• Market size

If you are using analytic tools, they collect most of this information. You can add a form to check out or that opens when the user is leaving the site to ask questions about:

• Who are they? In FastCap’s case, they would be carpenters and cabinet makers.
• What are they trying to achieve? They don’t want exposed screw holes in their cabinets.
• What is the main obstacle? The products on the market are ugly, difficult to use, and expensive.

What if you find that your buyer persona is too broad to use to identify potential clients? We’ll discuss how to address that next

A small business might need to do market segmentation research if all their clients don’t fit neatly into a single user persona. For instance, FastCap would have at least three market segments that they might want to prepare marketing materials for:

• Distributors that will be selling their products to carpenters
• Tradespeople who will be using their products
• Coffee shops that buy caps for drinks so people don’t burn themselves (it’s an ancillary use for a FastCap that he decided to market to restaurants with To-Go cups)

As you can guess, each market segment would have characteristics that make them different, and you wouldn’t want to market to them all the same. You’d use market segmentation research to identify what those key characteristics are and create a user persona for each.

The term pricing research is refers to establishing a fair price. Pricing research should be done before you open a business or launch a new product because it can impact whether the business is worth starting.

To understand the benefits of pricing research I should discuss pricing strategies first. Businesses normally use either the value-added method or the cost of doing business.

The value-added method charges a price that is based on the value that is provided to a client. An example of this pricing is how Tesla prices solar roofs. They determine the price using the cost of a comparable roof plus the net present value of 30 years of energy in the target market.

The cost of doing business is calculated by adding up all your expenses (including taxes) and adding the amount of profit you want to make, then dividing by the number of units you want to sell.

Both of these pricing strategies have issues though. In the value-added method, how do you determine the value that is added? In the cost of doing business method, what is the maximum your target market can sustain? Both of these are answered by researching comparable products.

While there may not be something identical on the market, there is always something that serves a similar purpose. For instance, when portable MP3 players were created, the cost of the MP3 player plus downloading songs should have been compared to the cost of a portable CD player plus the cost of all the CDs.

Competitive analysis research is focused on developing a thorough understanding of the market and identifying how you want to differentiate yourself in a market of comparable competitors. This type of research will be included in a business plan . You’ll want to focus on aspects of the industry including:

• Identify competitors and the products they offer. This can be done through their websites.
• Analyze sales trends. You can use industry resources and company quarterly reports.
• Research how economic indicators impact the industry. For instance, consumer staples tend to do better during a recession, while consumer discretionary products tend to do better as an expansionary cycle matures.
• Understand the impact government agencies have on the industry.
• Has the industry reached market saturation? If 9 out of 10 people have already purchased the product you are selling, you are probably late to the game. Before you spend money in an industry that is at capacity, you should review the following bullet point.
• What is the job outlook for the industry? The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) creates an occupational outlook handbook for every industry. You want to be aware of the growth prospects. If both of the last two bullet points are going in the wrong direction stay clear.

The document you create from this research should be detail-oriented, contain lots of external links to prove sources, and show analytical skills that show an understanding of the industry. This research and the communication skills used to present it are often deciding factors when applying for loans.

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research are focused on building relationships that increase the lifetime value of your existing customers. With big data and rewards programs becoming more affordable, small business owners can now offer similar types of rewards to what people see at major chains.

You’ll want to use the market research process to establish the answer to questions like:

• Should I use a point system or a number-of-purchases reward system?
• How big of a reward should I offer for repeat customers?
• Should I offer referral bonuses? If so, how much is meaningful?
• What are my competitors doing?

To answer these questions, you’ll need to establish:

• How often your average customer buys your product or services. You can find this in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Alternatively, you can sort receipts by credit card if you don’t already have an app or loyalty program that people sign up for.
• If you have a CRM, establish what percent of customers interact with your business daily, weekly, monthly, or irregularly. Also, calculate the first two bullet points for each group to see if different promotions make sense.
• How much your average customer spends on each trip. Calculate revenue or number of receipts.

For example, you might target people differently by offering daily customers a free upgrade every $50 spent, while weekly customers you might want to offer every 5th visit they get a free product. In both scenarios, this can reward customer loyalty and encourage more spending in the future by slightly shifting their habits.

Let’s look at how to understand brand awareness.

Brand awareness research is focused on establishing what your target audience knows about your business, how they perceive it and giving you input on improving brand awareness.

Facebook has a feature for brands running ads that is really useful for establishing brand awareness called Brand Survey Tests . It is currently an experimental stage, but here’s how it works:

• Divides target market into two groups, one that is shown ads and one that is not shown ads.
• Collects data on both groups’ clicks, purchases, and other actions with your company
• Required: “Do you recall seeing an ad for [page name] online or on a mobile device in the last two days?”
• “Have you heard of [page name]?”
•  “How would you describe your overall opinion of [page name]?”
• “Are you familiar with [Page name]?”
• “Will you recommend [page name] to a friend?”
• Provides an analysis of what the market research process found.

This can be a great tool for understanding if people recognize your brand name .

Campaign research is focused on reviewing past business strategies to promote your products and services so that you can establish what worked, what didn’t, and why. In today’s marketing boom, people often forget the importance of including lessons learned when closing a project.

During this process, you’ll want to look at questions like:

• Did we reach enough people to be a representative sample? Typically, over 500 will be enough to count as a representative sample,
• What was the return on investment?
• Where did people drop out of the sales funnel?
• Did the campaign have a favorable reception?
• Should we try to duplicate the content in future campaigns?
• What should we avoid in future campaigns?

Now that you know about some of the types of market research techniques, keep reading to learn why market research is so important.

Why is market research important?

Because market research is the act of investigating consumer preferences as well as economic, social, and statistical data, it helps to better understand the customer and guides business decisions in the areas of:

• Customer insights – Market research can be used to gain insight into how customers behave, what they like and dislike about products, and what they think about different marketing strategies.
• Marketing strategy development – Market research can be used to develop a marketing strategy by identifying the needs of the market, target audience, and competitors in the industry.
• Product development – Market research is key for product development because it helps companies discover what customers want to buy or use next. It also helps companies see how their product will fare against other similar products on the market today or in the future.
• Product pricing considerations – Market research helps companies determine prices for their products by understanding expenses to continue production.

Now that you understand why market research matters so much to businesses, let’s take a look at how to conduct market research.

Step 2: Conduct market research

As you begin to get a handle on your goals and the questions you need to answer, it’s time to do the market research. At UpFlip, we are fans of Lean methodologies , so we figured we’d give you an introduction to lean market research.

• Put together the list of questions you are trying to answer based on the previous sections. Structure them in a way that answers can be analyzed easily.
• Seek out data that is already available and document the findings that impact you under each question.
• Establish the minimum number of online surveys or observations needed for a statistically accurate sample using our calculator.
• Find participants and gather data. When possible use software for collecting data.
• Proceed to analyze data.
• Implement business strategies.

Using these strategies will make it easier to do effective market research quicker and at a lower cost. No need for costly market research analysts.

If you’d like to learn more about how one of the United State’s most successful Lean practitioners approaches market research check out our interview with Paul below.

Keep reading to learn about analyzing the results

Step 3: Analyze the results

Market research analysts look for trends in data gathered from market research. The analysis involves both statistics and looking for patterns. To make it easier to analyze data, it is helpful to use software while gathering the data. If you don’t, you’ll have to input it into a spreadsheet manually.

The first step is to clean up data. This means fixing misspellings and other improper collection like zip codes where state names should be. Next, remove obvious deviations from the sample. (If someone says they buy your products 100 times per day, that’s probably not right.)

After that, you can do data analysis using functions like:

• Mean – sum divided by the number of surveys
• Median – (Number of surveys+1)/2
• Mode – Most common answer
• These can also use conditional statements such as “IF male and Under 45 mean”

With some forms of data, you might find visualization easier, so we are providing some market research examples of visualization of data. Let’s look at some common visualization methods.

The flow model is simply a visual representation of how interactions occur. Check out the behavioral flow for website visitors in Google Analytics. This model can be useful for establishing where issues occur and how processes work.

Affinity Diagram

An affinity diagram is used to group people, businesses, or other items together by a common feature. For instance, you might group by male and female, profession, or age. This can make it easier to tell whether one group tends to prefer your product or service more than another group does.

If you want to learn how to do this in Microsoft Excel, check out the video below.

Lucidcharts is another software you can use for affinity diagrams.

Customer Journey Map

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the path people take from being unaware of your product to becoming a paying customer, and eventually a potential advocate. Customer journeys are typically broken into five steps in the process:

• Awareness – The customer knows about the product
• Consideration – When the customer starts researching the product
• Purchase – The customer buys the product
• Retention –Keeping the customer happy, repeating purchases
• Advocacy – When the customer goes from being a satisfied customer to singing your praises to others.

The stages can vary for different groups of people, but awareness is typically a matter of advertising. This can be in the form of an online ad, a coming soon sign when preparing to open up a location, or even current customers (or influencers) advocating for your brand.

Consideration begins when the customer starts researching your company. This phase might  be:

• Short : Searching “gas stations near me” and immediately going to get gas
• Long : Spending hours researching the best shoe, best price, and best place to buy it.

The point of understanding a journey map is to be able to understand how many points of reference a person has before buying your product. Then you can use that to speed up the awareness and consideration phases while encouraging advocacy by your long-term customers.

Now that you understand “what is market research?” how to perform the market research, and how to analyze the research, there’s only one thing left…

Step 4: Use the info for decision making

The final and most important part of performing your own market research is converting the research into business practices to improve revenue. Depending on what you find in the research, this step may include:

• Adding new user personas and marketing campaigns
• Narrowing your target audience
• Discontinuing marketing campaigns
• Investing in software to increase customer loyalty or lifetime value
• Documenting the planned strategies for a business plan
• Rejecting the business idea completely

Thank you for reading!

Wherever the research leads you, UpFlip is here to help you run a better business. We use your feedback to create content that helps you build a better business. Which sections of this did you find beneficial and which would you like to learn more about?

Brandon Boushy

Brandon Boushy lives to improve people’s lives by helping them become successful entrepreneurs. His journey started nearly 30 years ago. He consistently excelled at everything he did, but preferred to make the rules rather than follow him. His exploration of self and knowledge has helped him to get an engineering degree, MBA, and countless certifications. When freelancing and rideshare came onto the scene, he recognized the opportunity to play by his own rules. Since 2017, he has helped businesses across all industries achieve more with his research, writing, and marketing strategies. Since 2021, he has been the Lead Writer for UpFlip where he has published over 170 articles on small business success.

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Market research definition

Market research – in-house or outsourced, market research in the age of data, when to use market research.

• Types of market research 

Different types of primary research

How to do market research (primary data), how to do secondary market research, communicating your market research findings, choose the right platform for your market research, try qualtrics for free, the ultimate guide to market research: how to conduct it like a pro.

27 min read Wondering how to do market research? Or even where to start learning about it? Use our ultimate guide to understand the basics and discover how you can use market research to help your business.

Market research is the practice of gathering information about the needs and preferences of your target audience – potential consumers of your product.

When you understand how your target consumer feels and behaves, you can then take steps to meet their needs and mitigate the risk of an experience gap – where there is a shortfall between what a consumer expects you to deliver and what you actually deliver. Market research can also help you keep abreast of what your competitors are offering, which in turn will affect what your customers expect from you.

Market research connects with every aspect of a business – including brand , product , customer service , marketing and sales.

Market research generally focuses on understanding:

• The consumer (current customers, past customers, non-customers, influencers))
• The company (product or service design, promotion, pricing, placement, service, sales)
• The competitors (and how their market offerings interact in the market environment)
• The industry overall (whether it’s growing or moving in a certain direction)

Free eBook: 2024 market research trends report

Why is market research important?

A successful business relies on understanding what like, what they dislike, what they need and what messaging they will respond to. Businesses also need to understand their competition to identify opportunities to differentiate their products and services from other companies.

Today’s business leaders face an endless stream of decisions around target markets, pricing, promotion, distribution channels, and product features and benefits . They must account for all the factors involved, and there are market research studies and methodologies strategically designed to capture meaningful data to inform every choice. It can be a daunting task.

Market research allows companies to make data-driven decisions to drive growth and innovation.

What happens when you don’t do market research?

Without market research, business decisions are based at best on past consumer behavior, economic indicators, or at worst, on gut feel. Decisions are made in a bubble without thought to what the competition is doing. An important aim of market research is to remove subjective opinions when making business decisions. As a brand you are there to serve your customers, not personal preferences within the company. You are far more likely to be successful if you know the difference, and market research will help make sure your decisions are insight-driven.

Traditionally there have been specialist market researchers who are very good at what they do, and businesses have been reliant on their ability to do it. Market research specialists will always be an important part of the industry, as most brands are limited by their internal capacity, expertise and budgets and need to outsource at least some aspects of the work.

However, the market research external agency model has meant that brands struggled to keep up with the pace of change. Their customers would suffer because their needs were not being wholly met with point-in-time market research.

Businesses looking to conduct market research have to tackle many questions –

• Who are my consumers, and how should I segment and prioritize them?
• What are they looking for within my category?
• How much are they buying, and what are their purchase triggers, barriers, and buying habits?
• Will my marketing and communications efforts resonate?
• Is my brand healthy ?
• What product features matter most?
• Is my product or service ready for launch?
• Are my pricing and packaging plans optimized?

They all need to be answered, but many businesses have found the process of data collection daunting, time-consuming and expensive. The hardest battle is often knowing where to begin and short-term demands have often taken priority over longer-term projects that require patience to offer return on investment.

Today however, the industry is making huge strides, driven by quickening product cycles, tighter competition and business imperatives around more data-driven decision making. With the emergence of simple, easy to use tools , some degree of in-house market research is now seen as essential, with fewer excuses not to use data to inform your decisions. With greater accessibility to such software, everyone can be an expert regardless of level or experience.

How is this possible?

The art of research hasn’t gone away. It is still a complex job and the volume of data that needs to be analyzed is huge. However with the right tools and support, sophisticated research can look very simple – allowing you to focus on taking action on what matters.

If you’re not yet using technology to augment your in-house market research, now is the time to start.

The most successful brands rely on multiple sources of data to inform their strategy and decision making, from their marketing segmentation to the product features they develop to comments on social media. In fact, there’s tools out there that use machine learning and AI to automate the tracking of what’s people are saying about your brand across all sites.

The emergence of newer and more sophisticated tools and platforms gives brands access to more data sources than ever and how the data is analyzed and used to make decisions. This also increases the speed at which they operate, with minimal lead time allowing brands to be responsive to business conditions and take an agile approach to improvements and opportunities.

Expert partners have an important role in getting the best data, particularly giving access to additional market research know-how, helping you find respondents , fielding surveys and reporting on results.

How do you measure success?

Business activities are usually measured on how well they deliver return on investment (ROI). Since market research doesn’t generate any revenue directly, its success has to be measured by looking at the positive outcomes it drives – happier customers, a healthier brand, and so on.

When changes to your products or your marketing strategy are made as a result of your market research findings, you can compare on a before-and-after basis to see if the knowledge you acted on has delivered value.

Regardless of the function you work within, understanding the consumer is the goal of any market research. To do this, we have to understand what their needs are in order to effectively meet them. If we do that, we are more likely to drive customer satisfaction , and in turn, increase customer retention .

Several metrics and KPIs are used to gauge the success of decisions made from market research results, including

• Brand awareness within the target market
• Share of wallet
• CSAT (customer satisfaction)
• NPS (Net Promoter Score)

You can use market research for almost anything related to your current customers, potential customer base or target market. If you want to find something out from your target audience, it’s likely market research is the answer.

Here are a few of the most common uses:

Buyer segmentation and profiling

Segmentation is a popular technique that separates your target market according to key characteristics, such as behavior, demographic information and social attitudes. Segmentation allows you to create relevant content for your different segments, ideally helping you to better connect with all of them.

Buyer personas are profiles of fictional customers – with real attributes. Buyer personas help you develop products and communications that are right for your different audiences, and can also guide your decision-making process. Buyer personas capture the key characteristics of your customer segments, along with meaningful insights about what they want or need from you. They provide a powerful reminder of consumer attitudes when developing a product or service, a marketing campaign or a new brand direction.

By understanding your buyers and potential customers, including their motivations, needs, and pain points, you can optimize everything from your marketing communications to your products to make sure the right people get the relevant content, at the right time, and via the right channel .

Attitudes and Usage surveys

Attitude & Usage research helps you to grow your brand by providing a detailed understanding of consumers. It helps you understand how consumers use certain products and why, what their needs are, what their preferences are, and what their pain points are. It helps you to find gaps in the market, anticipate future category needs, identify barriers to entry and build accurate go-to-market strategies and business plans.

Marketing strategy

Effective market research is a crucial tool for developing an effective marketing strategy – a company’s plan for how they will promote their products.

It helps marketers look like rock stars by helping them understand the target market to avoid mistakes, stay on message, and predict customer needs . It’s marketing’s job to leverage relevant data to reach the best possible solution  based on the research available. Then, they can implement the solution, modify the solution, and successfully deliver that solution to the market.

Product development

You can conduct market research into how a select group of consumers use and perceive your product – from how they use it through to what they like and dislike about it. Evaluating your strengths and weaknesses early on allows you to focus resources on ideas with the most potential and to gear your product or service design to a specific market.

Chobani’s yogurt pouches are a product optimized through great market research . Using product concept testing – a form of market research – Chobani identified that packaging could negatively impact consumer purchase decisions. The brand made a subtle change, ensuring the item satisfied the needs of consumers. This ability to constantly refine its products for customer needs and preferences has helped Chobani become Australia’s #1 yogurt brand and increase market share.

Pricing decisions

Market research provides businesses with insights to guide pricing decisions too. One of the most powerful tools available to market researchers is conjoint analysis, a form of market research study that uses choice modeling to help brands identify the perfect set of features and price for customers. Another useful tool is the Gabor-Granger method, which helps you identify the highest price consumers are willing to pay for a given product or service.

Brand tracking studies

A company’s brand is one of its most important assets. But unlike other metrics like product sales, it’s not a tangible measure you can simply pull from your system. Regular market research that tracks consumer perceptions of your brand allows you to monitor and optimize your brand strategy in real time, then respond to consumer feedback to help maintain or build your brand with your target customers.

Advertising and communications testing

Advertising campaigns can be expensive, and without pre-testing, they carry risk of falling flat with your target audience. By testing your campaigns, whether it’s the message or the creative, you can understand how consumers respond to your communications before you deploy them so you can make changes in response to consumer feedback before you go live.

Finder, which is one of the world’s fastest-growing online comparison websites, is an example of a brand using market research to inject some analytical rigor into the business. Fueled by great market research, the business lifted brand awareness by 23 percent, boosted NPS by 8 points, and scored record profits – all within 10 weeks.

Competitive analysis

Another key part of developing the right product and communications is understanding your main competitors and how consumers perceive them. You may have looked at their websites and tried out their product or service, but unless you know how consumers perceive them, you won’t have an accurate view of where you stack up in comparison. Understanding their position in the market allows you to identify the strengths you can exploit, as well as any weaknesses you can address to help you compete better.

Customer Story

See How Yamaha Does Product Research

Types of market research

Although there are many types market research, all methods can be sorted into one of two categories: primary and secondary.

Primary research

Primary research is market research data that you collect yourself. This is raw data collected through a range of different means – surveys , focus groups,  , observation and interviews being among the most popular.

Primary information is fresh, unused data, giving you a perspective that is current or perhaps extra confidence when confirming hypotheses you already had. It can also be very targeted to your exact needs. Primary information can be extremely valuable. Tools for collecting primary information are increasingly sophisticated and the market is growing rapidly.

Historically, conducting market research in-house has been a daunting concept for brands because they don’t quite know where to begin, or how to handle vast volumes of data. Now, the emergence of technology has meant that brands have access to simple, easy to use tools to help with exactly that problem. As a result, brands are more confident about their own projects and data with the added benefit of seeing the insights emerge in real-time.

Secondary research

Secondary research is the use of data that has already been collected, analyzed and published – typically it’s data you don’t own and that hasn’t been conducted with your business specifically in mind, although there are forms of internal secondary data like old reports or figures from past financial years that come from within your business. Secondary research can be used to support the use of primary research.

Secondary research can be beneficial to small businesses because it is sometimes easier to obtain, often through research companies. Although the rise of primary research tools are challenging this trend by allowing businesses to conduct their own market research more cheaply, secondary research is often a cheaper alternative for businesses who need to spend money carefully. Some forms of secondary research have been described as ‘lean market research’ because they are fast and pragmatic, building on what’s already there.

Because it’s not specific to your business, secondary research may be less relevant, and you’ll need to be careful to make sure it applies to your exact research question. It may also not be owned, which means your competitors and other parties also have access to it.

Primary or secondary research – which to choose?

Both primary and secondary research have their advantages, but they are often best used when paired together, giving you the confidence to act knowing that the hypothesis you have is robust.

Secondary research is sometimes preferred because there is a misunderstanding of the feasibility of primary research. Thanks to advances in technology, brands have far greater accessibility to primary research, but this isn’t always known.

If you’ve decided to gather your own primary information, there are many different data collection methods that you may consider. For example:

• Customer surveys
• Focus groups
• Observation

Think carefully about what you’re trying to accomplish before picking the data collection method(s) you’re going to use. Each one has its pros and cons. Asking someone a simple, multiple-choice survey question will generate a different type of data than you might obtain with an in-depth interview. Determine if your primary research is exploratory or specific, and if you’ll need qualitative research, quantitative research, or both.

Qualitative vs quantitative

Another way of categorizing different types of market research is according to whether they are qualitative or quantitative.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research is the collection of data that is non-numerical in nature. It summarizes and infers, rather than pin-points an exact truth. It is exploratory and can lead to the generation of a hypothesis.

Market research techniques that would gather qualitative data include:

• Interviews (face to face / telephone)
• Open-ended survey questions

Researchers use these types of market research technique because they can add more depth to the data. So for example, in focus groups or interviews, rather than being limited to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for a certain question, you can start to understand why someone might feel a certain way.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research is the collection of data that is numerical in nature. It is much more black and white in comparison to qualitative data, although you need to make sure there is a representative sample if you want the results to be reflective of reality.

Quantitative researchers often start with a hypothesis and then collect data which can be used to determine whether empirical evidence to support that hypothesis exists.

Quantitative research methods include:

• Questionnaires
• Review scores

Exploratory and specific research

Exploratory research is the approach to take if you don’t know what you don’t know. It can give you broad insights about your customers, product, brand, and market. If you want to answer a specific question, then you’ll be conducting specific research.

• Exploratory . This research is general and open-ended, and typically involves lengthy interviews with an individual or small focus group.
• Specific . This research is often used to solve a problem identified in exploratory research. It involves more structured, formal interviews.

Exploratory primary research is generally conducted by collecting qualitative data. Specific research usually finds its insights through quantitative data.

Primary research can be qualitative or quantitative, large-scale or focused and specific. You’ll carry it out using methods like surveys – which can be used for both qualitative and quantitative studies – focus groups, observation of consumer behavior, interviews, or online tools.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

Research topics could include:

• Product features
• Product or service launch
• Understanding a new target audience (or updating an existing audience)
• Brand identity
• Marketing campaign concepts
• Customer experience

Step 2: Draft a research hypothesis

A hypothesis is the assumption you’re starting out with. Since you can disprove a negative much more easily than prove a positive, a hypothesis is a negative statement such as ‘price has no effect on brand perception’.

Step 3: Determine which research methods are most effective

Your choice of methods depends on budget, time constraints, and the type of question you’re trying to answer. You could combine surveys, interviews and focus groups to get a mix of qualitative and quantitative data.

Step 4: Determine how you will collect and analyze your data.

Primary research can generate a huge amount of data, and when the goal is to uncover actionable insight, it can be difficult to know where to begin or what to pay attention to.

The rise in brands taking their market research and data analysis in-house has coincided with the rise of technology simplifying the process. These tools pull through large volumes of data and outline significant information that will help you make the most important decisions.

Step 5: Conduct your research!

This is how you can run your research using Qualtrics CoreXM

• Pre-launch – Here you want to ensure that the survey/ other research methods conform to the project specifications (what you want to achieve/research)
• Soft launch – Collect a small fraction of the total data before you fully launch. This means you can check that everything is working as it should and you can correct any data quality issues.
• Full launch – You’ve done the hard work to get to this point. If you’re using a tool, you can sit back and relax, or if you get curious you can check on the data in your account.
• Review – review your data for any issues or low-quality responses. You may need to remove this in order not to impact the analysis of the data.

A helping hand

If you are missing the skills, capacity or inclination to manage your research internally, Qualtrics Research Services can help. From design, to writing the survey based on your needs, to help with survey programming, to handling the reporting, Research Services acts as an extension of the team and can help wherever necessary.

Secondary market research can be taken from a variety of places. Some data is completely free to access – other information could end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are three broad categories of secondary research sources:

• Public sources – these sources are accessible to anyone who asks for them. They include census data, market statistics, library catalogs, university libraries and more. Other organizations may also put out free data from time to time with the goal of advancing a cause, or catching people’s attention.
• Internal sources – sometimes the most valuable sources of data already exist somewhere within your organization. Internal sources can be preferable for secondary research on account of their price (free) and unique findings. Since internal sources are not accessible by competitors, using them can provide a distinct competitive advantage.
• Commercial sources – if you have money for it, the easiest way to acquire secondary market research is to simply buy it from private companies. Many organizations exist for the sole purpose of doing market research and can provide reliable, in-depth, industry-specific reports.

No matter where your research is coming from, it is important to ensure that the source is reputable and reliable so you can be confident in the conclusions you draw from it.

How do you know if a source is reliable?

Use established and well-known research publishers, such as the XM Institute , Forrester and McKinsey . Government websites also publish research and this is free of charge. By taking the information directly from the source (rather than a third party) you are minimizing the risk of the data being misinterpreted and the message or insights being acted on out of context.

How to apply secondary research

The purpose and application of secondary research will vary depending on your circumstances. Often, secondary research is used to support primary research and therefore give you greater confidence in your conclusions. However, there may be circumstances that prevent this – such as the timeframe and budget of the project.

Keep an open mind when collecting all the relevant research so that there isn’t any collection bias. Then begin analyzing the conclusions formed to see if any trends start to appear. This will help you to draw a consensus from the secondary research overall.

Market research success is defined by the impact it has on your business’s success. Make sure it’s not discarded or ignored by communicating your findings effectively. Here are some tips on how to do it.

• Less is more – Preface your market research report with executive summaries that highlight your key discoveries and their implications
• Lead with the basic information – Share the top 4-5 recommendations in bullet-point form, rather than requiring your readers to go through pages of analysis and data
• Model the impact – Provide examples and model the impact of any changes you put in place based on your findings
• Show, don’t tell – Add illustrative examples that relate directly to the research findings and emphasize specific points
• Speed is of the essence – Make data available in real-time so it can be rapidly incorporated into strategies and acted upon to maximize value
• Work with experts – Make sure you’ve access to a dedicated team of experts ready to help you design and launch successful projects

Trusted by 8,500 brands for everything from product testing to competitor analysis, Our Strategic Research software is the world’s most powerful and flexible research platform . With over 100 question types and advanced logic, you can build out your surveys and see real-time data you can share across the organization. Plus, you’ll be able to turn data into insights with iQ, our predictive intelligence engine that runs complicated analysis at the click of a button.

Related resources

Market intelligence 10 min read, marketing insights 11 min read, ethnographic research 11 min read, qualitative vs quantitative research 13 min read, qualitative research questions 11 min read, qualitative research design 12 min read, primary vs secondary research 14 min read, request demo.

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Market Research: A How-To Guide and Template

Discover the different types of market research, how to conduct your own market research, and use a free template to help you along the way.

MARKET RESEARCH KIT

5 Research and Planning Templates + a Free Guide on How to Use Them in Your Market Research

Updated: 02/21/24

Published: 02/21/24

Today's consumers have a lot of power. As a business, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are and what influences their purchase decisions.

Enter: Market Research.

Whether you're new to market research or not, I created this guide to help you conduct a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is market research?

Primary vs. secondary research, types of market research, how to do market research, market research report template, market research examples.

Market research is the process of gathering information about your target market and customers to verify the success of a new product, help your team iterate on an existing product, or understand brand perception to ensure your team is effectively communicating your company's value effectively.

Market research can answer various questions about the state of an industry. But if you ask me, it's hardly a crystal ball that marketers can rely on for insights on their customers.

Market researchers investigate several areas of the market, and it can take weeks or even months to paint an accurate picture of the business landscape.

However, researching just one of those areas can make you more intuitive to who your buyers are and how to deliver value that no other business is offering them right now.

How? Consider these two things:

• Your competitors also have experienced individuals in the industry and a customer base. It‘s very possible that your immediate resources are, in many ways, equal to those of your competition’s immediate resources. Seeking a larger sample size for answers can provide a better edge.
• Your customers don't represent the attitudes of an entire market. They represent the attitudes of the part of the market that is already drawn to your brand.

The market research services market is growing rapidly, which signifies a strong interest in market research as we enter 2024. The market is expected to grow from roughly $75 billion in 2021 to $90.79 billion in 2025 .

Free Market Research Kit

• SWOT Analysis Template
• Survey Template
• Focus Group Template

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are.

As our world becomes louder and demands more of our attention, this proves invaluable.

By understanding your buyer's problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into the following:

• Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
• Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
• What's trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
• Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
• What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience
• Consumer attitudes about a particular topic, pain, product, or brand
• Whether there‘s demand for the business initiatives you’re investing in
• Unaddressed or underserved customer needs that can be flipped into selling opportunity
• Attitudes about pricing for a particular product or service

Ultimately, market research allows you to get information from a larger sample size of your target audience, eliminating bias and assumptions so that you can get to the heart of consumer attitudes.

As a result, you can make better business decisions.

To give you an idea of how extensive market research can get , consider that it can either be qualitative or quantitative in nature — depending on the studies you conduct and what you're trying to learn about your industry.

Qualitative research is concerned with public opinion, and explores how the market feels about the products currently available in that market.

Quantitative research is concerned with data, and looks for relevant trends in the information that's gathered from public records.

That said, there are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products: primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is the pursuit of first-hand information about your market and the customers within your market.

It's useful when segmenting your market and establishing your buyer personas.

Primary market research tends to fall into one of two buckets:

• Exploratory Primary Research: This kind of primary market research normally takes place as a first step — before any specific research has been performed — and may involve open-ended interviews or surveys with small numbers of people.
• Specific Primary Research: This type of research often follows exploratory research. In specific research, you take a smaller or more precise segment of your audience and ask questions aimed at solving a suspected problem.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is all the data and public records you have at your disposal to draw conclusions from (e.g. trend reports, market statistics, industry content, and sales data you already have on your business).

Secondary research is particularly useful for analyzing your competitors . The main buckets your secondary market research will fall into include:

• Public Sources: These sources are your first and most-accessible layer of material when conducting secondary market research. They're often free to find and review — like government statistics (e.g., from the U.S. Census Bureau ).
• Commercial Sources: These sources often come in the form of pay-to-access market reports, consisting of industry insight compiled by a research agency like Pew , Gartner , or Forrester .
• Internal Sources: This is the market data your organization already has like average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and other historical data that can help you draw conclusions on buyer needs.
• Focus Groups
• Product/ Service Use Research
• Observation-Based Research
• Buyer Persona Research
• Market Segmentation Research
• Pricing Research
• Competitive Analysis Research
• Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research
• Brand Awareness Research
• Campaign Research

1. Interviews

Interviews allow for face-to-face discussions so you can allow for a natural flow of conversation. Your interviewees can answer questions about themselves to help you design your buyer personas and shape your entire marketing strategy.

2. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide you with a handful of carefully-selected people that can test out your product and provide feedback. This type of market research can give you ideas for product differentiation.

3. Product/Service Use Research

Product or service use research offers insight into how and why your audience uses your product or service. This type of market research also gives you an idea of the product or service's usability for your target audience.

4. Observation-Based Research

Observation-based research allows you to sit back and watch the ways in which your target audience members go about using your product or service, what works well in terms of UX , and which aspects of it could be improved.

5. Buyer Persona Research

Buyer persona research gives you a realistic look at who makes up your target audience, what their challenges are, why they want your product or service, and what they need from your business or brand.

6. Market Segmentation Research

Market segmentation research allows you to categorize your target audience into different groups (or segments) based on specific and defining characteristics. This way, you can determine effective ways to meet their needs.

7. Pricing Research

Pricing research helps you define your pricing strategy . It gives you an idea of what similar products or services in your market sell for and what your target audience is willing to pay.

8. Competitive Analysis

Competitive analyses give you a deep understanding of the competition in your market and industry. You can learn about what's doing well in your industry and how you can separate yourself from the competition .

9. Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Research

Customer satisfaction and loyalty research gives you a look into how you can get current customers to return for more business and what will motivate them to do so (e.g., loyalty programs , rewards, remarkable customer service).

10. Brand Awareness Research

Brand awareness research tells you what your target audience knows about and recognizes from your brand. It tells you about the associations people make when they think about your business.

11. Campaign Research

Campaign research entails looking into your past campaigns and analyzing their success among your target audience and current customers. The goal is to use these learnings to inform future campaigns.

• Define your buyer persona.
• Identify a persona group to engage.
• Prepare research questions for your market research participants.
• List your primary competitors.
• Summarize your findings.

1. Define your buyer persona.

You have to understand who your customers are and how customers in your industry make buying decisions.

This is where your buyer personas come in handy. Buyer personas — sometimes referred to as marketing personas — are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

Use a free tool to create a buyer persona that your entire company can use to market, sell, and serve better.

Conduct Market Research to Grow Better

Conducting market research can be a very eye-opening experience. Even if you think you know your buyers pretty well, completing the study will likely uncover new channels and messaging tips to help improve your interactions.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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Market Research Definition, Types, Tools and Benefits

Published on Jul 01, 2022

More than doubling in size from 2008 to 2021, the market research sector brought in over $76.4 (Statista) billion worldwide in 2021.  

What is Market Research?

Market research is the process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting information about a market, about the product or service to be offered for sale in that market. It is also about the previous, current, and potential customers for the product or service. 

Data collection, analysis, and interpretation are the three main steps in any successful market research project. The data could pertain to a certain demographic, general consumers, rival businesses, or the entire market. This is the cornerstone of any thriving business. The findings can be used for anything from discovering a fresh opportunity to entering the market to developing an entirely new product or service. 

Small business owners can benefit greatly from conducting market research. It can eliminate uncertainty in the creative process and direct energy and funding toward the most promising ideas and initiatives. Many types of market research are conducted by businesses at many different stages. 

Market Research for Businesses  

Accurate and comprehensive data gives a plethora of information on potential and existing customers, competitors, and the industry as a whole, making it the bedrock of any successful commercial endeavor. It helps entrepreneurs weigh the odds of success before sinking a lot of money into a new firm. 

An essential aspect of every successful business plan is conducting market research to gather data that can be used to address potential marketing obstacles. In reality, it is not viable to develop tactics like market segmentation (identifying distinct groups within a market) and product differentiation (establishing a unique selling proposition for a product or service that distinguishes it from the competition) without conducting market research. 

Types of Market Research  

1. quantitative research .

The results of quantitative studies are typically presented using numerical and graphic representations. It's the gold standard for verifying or disproving hypotheses. It is possible to establish broad, overarching truths about a subject by conducting this kind of study. Experiments, numerically recorded observations, and surveys with a limited number of predetermined answer choices are all examples of common quantitative approaches. 

2. Qualitative research 

Words are the currency of qualitative inquiry. It's a tool for making sense of things like ideas and experiences. Using this method, you can learn more about a topic from every angle, which is very useful for researching controversial or poorly understood subjects. Open-ended interviews, written descriptions of observations, and in-depth analyses of the existing literature are all examples of common qualitative techniques. 

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research 

Quantitative research focuses on numerical and statistical facts, while qualitative research examines concepts and interpretations. Both are necessary to learn various things. Comparatively, qualitative research draws its conclusions from interviews and documents rather than statistics and reasoning. Quantitative studies typically report their findings numerically or graphically, while qualitative studies report their findings verbally. 

3. Primary Research 

Primary data refers to a study that seeks to collect firsthand information from real-world participants. Primary research is data collected by the researcher themselves through various techniques of approaching the target audience directly. You have full legal and ethical rights to the data set you to create. Primary research can be challenging due to the time, money, resources, and familiarity with the topic that it demands. 

4. Secondary Research 

Secondary research is a study that is done after primary research has already been conducted, and it consists of analyzing, interpreting, and summarizing the results of the primary research. A more precise definition of secondary research would be any study that makes use of publicly available data. When conducting secondary research, scholars refer to information that has already been gathered, processed, and made public (and therefore, you do not own this data). Since the accessible data has already been evaluated and interpreted, the researcher just needs to determine the data he wants to use, i.e., the data that is necessary for his project. 

Primary Research vs. Secondary Research

Research that involves the collection of new information, or "primary" research, is distinguished from secondary research by the fact that it is conducted for the first time on a particular topic. Instead, secondary research makes use of information that has previously been gathered through primary research. The fundamental dividing line between primary and secondary research is whether the research has been done before. 

5. Market Research 

Market research on branding can help a business develop, launch, and sustain its brand. This may involve the firm's ethos, branding, visuals, ideals, or very name. Interviews, focus groups, and surveys are all viable options for conducting research. 

6. Customer Research 

Market research on customers is learning what factors most strongly affect your demographic of interest and what adjustments may be made to better attract and retain them as paying customers. The objective of this study is to acquire an intimate understanding of your consumer base and their habits and preferences as they relate to your business. 

7. Competitor Research 

Conducting market research on your competitors entails learning about their businesses and assessing how they stack up against your own. Your competitive product in the market or how to break into a new market could also be a topic of discussion. The study's overarching goal is to help your company prepare for the future by identifying methods to set itself apart from competitors and by learning from customers' opinions and suggestions. 

8. Product Research 

Conducting market research on your items is essential to ensuring they will sell successfully once they hit the shelves. Finding out how people feel about your product and if they feel it's valuable and functioning properly is the goal of this study. The ability to think creatively about enhancements and new features is another benefit. 

Benefits of Market Research 

According to a survey, the market research business is expected to increase at a rate of 12-14% (The Economic Times) per year through FY26, at which point it would have surpassed the $4 billion mark. 

The following is a list of the most important reasons and benefits of marketing research: 

It's a great tool for boosting companies' standing. The ability to think critically and act on that thinking is the key to success. You can keep your business one step ahead of the competition by conducting market research to expand your knowledge of your market or target audience. 

Reduces the potential for loss on an investment. This is a basic point to think about, but it is often crucial to the success of a firm. When starting a firm, it makes sense to spend what amounts to a negligible amount on research and testing the market, product, concept, or idea. 

Possible dangers and benefits are highlighted. Insurance against these two glaring pitfalls lies in both primary research (fieldwork) and secondary research (desk research). Opportunities or red flags may be uncovered through the combination of this with qualitative research for further investigation. 

You can learn more about the advantages and disadvantages of your own business and of your competitors. To achieve entirely objective reporting, it is generally recommended to collaborate with a market research agency. Take advantage of what you've learned from study to improve in areas where you're weak and to gain an edge over the competition. 

Strategic preparation is helped by this. Where do you stand with the core principles of your company plan? If it's supported by data, and you've put in the time and effort to do your own (hopefully continuous) research, you can rest assured that you're giving yourself the best chance of success in your commercial endeavors. 

This aids in the identification of developing tendencies. Being the first, the best, or coming up with the idea that nobody else has is typically what it takes to stay ahead in business. Taking the pulse of your industry on a regular basis is an important habit. You can learn more about the tools available to you to identify and capitalize on these trends by consulting with a research firm or expert. 

Helpful for firms in keeping up with the competition. Being the best calls for an insatiable need for knowledge and a propensity to experiment. The key to success, and the ability to maintain that success, is knowing how to effectively apply the information gleaned from market research, audience research, and data research. 

It includes forecasts for future income. One of the most important parts of any market study is a forecast, which looks into the future and predicts the size, makeup, and trends of the market you're interested in. This allows for the categorization of prospective clients. You should prioritize the market that is the best fit for your business rather than the largest or fastest-growing. 

It's geared toward meeting the wants and desires of its patrons. Many things in business, including research, benefit from keeping clients front and center. By reaching out to individuals through online panels, web forums, telephone surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups, market researchers can learn where their business's ideas, services, and products can be strengthened. 

Using this method, one can measure the progress of one's company against predetermined standards. Utilize data gathered from the market to study the competition, gauge employee enthusiasm, identify knowledge or skill shortages, and identify development opportunities. This will allow you to consider novel approaches, ideas, and resources for boosting your company's efficiency. 

Market Research Tools 

In order to better understand your market and target audience, you need to use market research techniques. It's fundamental to every company's success, and in today's more crowded marketplace, a thorough familiarity with your target market is more important than ever. Good news: you don't have to be an "insights genius" to get started collecting the data you need, owing to the proliferation of market research tools. Some of the best and most widely used methods of market research include: 

• Answer the Public 
• Attest 
• Google Trends 
• Social Mention 
• Remesh 
• Heartbeat Ai 
• Think With Google 
• Spyfu 
• Latana 
• BuzzSumo 
• Statista 
• Typeform 
• Otter.ai 
• Dimensions.ai 

How to Conduct Research for Your Business: Market Research Strategies 

Despite their different objectives, market research and marketing research should use the same framework for gathering and analyzing information about your company's target audiences. These help in primary research as well as secondary research.  

Clearly identify the problem at stake. Establish an initial research topic. Having a clear research question in mind will allow you to better organize your findings. 

Start by figuring out your financial and time constraints. How much money do you have to put into your study? When do you anticipate finishing data collection? Research, like any other tactic for expanding your company, should be carried out within your means. Nonetheless, it may be worthwhile to spend more money to receive the most comprehensive results available, especially if the questions you are answering are time-sensitive. 

Planning your approach and requirements. Find out what information needs to be gathered and figure out how to get it. Observation, surveys, phone calls, and focus groups are among the alternatives. Consult a professional research agency if you are unsure of how to organize your data collection. 

Pick a way to sample the data. I need to know how you plan on picking people to take part in your study. You may require a cross-section of the consumer population at large, a subset of the population who share a particular characteristic of their way of life, or just the opinions of those who are already familiar with your brand. Develop a plan for tracking down and contacting the persons who will take part in your research. 

Prepare a data analysis strategy. Think about the methods you'll use to examine the data. Do you require numbers for statistical analysis, or can you get a sense of things from qualitative, observable data? Spend some time learning about the many types of analysis so you can pick the one that will yield the most useful results for your study. 

Gathering information. The next step is data collection, which may begin once you have settled on a research question and developed a strategy for answering it within the bounds of your time and money. Research is often outsourced to professional firms or consultants by many corporations. 

Examining the information. It is important to apply certain methods of analysis to make sense of your data, no matter how simple it may appear at first. Which analytical techniques you employ are most suited to your data is a function of the information you've gathered. Also, this is the time to double-check for any mistakes that might have crept into your data gathering, analysis, or sampling. 

Make the report you need. Concluding your research with a written report is the next to last stage. From formulating a problem statement to discussing the findings of your data study, your report should include it all. 

Why is Market Research Important?

Over 44,000 businesses across the United States provide some form of market research. Their total annual income is around $23 billion (QuestionPro).  

The importance of Market Research is the following -  

1. Identifies new products or services

By conducting market research, a business can learn what consumers want and how to best meet their demands. Identifying the major challenges associated with creating a product or service can help you save money. It's useful for figuring out what customers value most and how to implement that into your product or service offering. 

2. Identifies potential customers

You may learn more about your clientele by analyzing demographic information like their gender, age, income, occupation, and interests. You'll have a better idea of who to target with your future advertising efforts if you have a clear picture of your current clientele. When a product is marketed to the wrong demographic, sales suffer. 

3. Establishes viability of a product or service

If your organization is considering introducing a novel product or service to consumers, you should find out if there is a need for it. Do people need this product? Do the people you plan to sell to actually want this product? Does it have any chance of succeeding, and does it even have a chance of being a viable trend? 

4. Anticipates and discovers future market trends 

If you are familiar with your market and the tendencies that are just beginning to emerge, you will be better prepared to build tactics to combat any negative tendencies that may threaten your company. As a result, you can use rising tendencies to your advantage and propel your company forward. 

5. Keeps your company ahead of competitors

Examining your company's performance in relation to that of its rivals is a prime use for comparative research. If they're much ahead of you, it's a fantastic chance to figure out what you're doing wrong. It is possible to devise business plans that will help you surpass the competition. 

6. Decide the best marketing strategy

Conducting research is helpful for pinpointing the optimal distribution platform for reaching your target audience. If you find out that a large portion of your audience prefers one form of communication over another, it makes sense to concentrate your efforts there. Because of the scarcity of these resources, it only makes sense to direct them toward endeavors with a high probability of success. 

7. Reduces risk and increases profitability

The ability to assess the value of potential risks in light of past performance and anticipated future market behavior is a crucial business skill. The success or failure of a business idea depends heavily on the results of market research. Understanding your consumers and their habits is another crucial step in risk reduction. Taking less risk leads to greater financial rewards. 

8. Identifies threats and opportunities

The SWOT analysis is likely familiar to many of you. The acronym SWOT refers to a company's "strengths," "weaknesses," and "All four of them can be figured out with the use of market research . While a lot of data can be collected through market research, not all of it needs to be used. Use only information that is directly related to your major objective (which you will have established in advance). 

9. Helps to understand existing customers

By conducting market research, you can learn more about your current clientele. Because of this complexity, you can't assume that you know what your clients require. If you want to be successful, you need to take the temperature of your clientele on a frequent basis. Satisfaction levels among customers can also be measured with the help of surveys. You can find out what is bothering them and make adjustments if necessary. If they are already rather high, you can examine the factors that led to this success and implement changes to maintain it. 

10. Assists in realistic goal setting

Goals that are more realistic can be established with the support of up-to-the-minute information on your market and customer base. Knowing what to expect and how to realistically expand growth over time is greatly aided by establishing a growth pattern throughout time. Setting objectives that are too lofty will cause you to waste time and energy trying to achieve something that is impossible. 

How Efficient is Market Research? 

You should only invest time, energy, and money into market research if you expect to see a favorable return on that investment. Because it is so worthwhile, market research continues to play a significant role in the success of any organization. Market research won't ensure your company's success on its own, but it will arm you with the data you need to make the moves that will. 

Many of the advantages of this type of study were examined, but the drawbacks were also taken into account. If you don't conduct market research, you run the danger of losing clients to the competition, missing out on growth prospects, being more susceptible to hazards, making bad business decisions, and more. Some companies succeed without first doing their homework, but those situations are unusual. To build your firm and avoid typical errors, conduct market research. 

Market Research Methods  

Although there are a variety of approaches to conducting market research, the majority of companies opt to utilize one of the following five fundamental approaches: surveys, focus groups, personal interviews, observation, and field trials. Which strategies you decide to implement for your company will depend on the kinds of data you require as well as the amount of money you are ready to pay. Some of the major methods of market research are following - 

1. Surveys 

Surveys ask participants questions. They can use numerous survey methods. Surveys are a cost-effective technique to collect data for the study. Written surveys may encourage truthful responses since participants feel like they're speaking privately. 

2. Discussions 

Focus groups are moderated discussions. Companies assemble consumers to conduct focus groups, pose questions, and record replies. Participants' replies may reveal what consumers want in a firm or a product because they represent a broad group. Focus groups offer longer participant interaction than surveys. 

3. Interviews 

An interview combines focus group and one-on-one survey aspects. It includes recording one participant's comments at a time. Open-ended questions elicit in-depth answers from the interviewee. Researchers can ask follow-up questions and let interviewees ask their own. 

4. Social media listening 

Social media users routinely discuss corporations and their products. Researchers can search for discussion topics and measure consumer sentiment through social media listening. 

5. Observations 

Observation in market research means studying how consumers shop. Filming shoppers in a store and studying their shopping habits is common. This strategy can reveal their natural selves if they are ignorant of the observation. 

6. Experiments 

In a field trial, a corporation lets participants use a product under typical conditions and collects data. Participants' feedback was used to improve the product. 

7. Competitive analysis 

Competitive analysis is a secondary market research process where companies acquire and analyze competition information. It entails identifying primary and secondary rivals and analyzing their offerings, revenues, and marketing methods. 

8. Statistics 

Public data entails seeking and evaluating public market data. This research is often free online or in libraries. Research centers, polls, or government databases may provide this information. Public data is often used to confirm or compare primary market research. 

9. Purchased data 

Companies without the time or resources to perform their own market research can buy it. Several market research companies sell database subscriptions. Small and medium-sized businesses that can't afford primary market research may benefit from this approach. 

10. Analysis of sales data 

Competition analysis is just one way that may be used in tandem with sales data analysis to show how different business tactics affect revenue. It can also reveal consumers' buying behavior and consumer trends. 

Functions of Marketing Research  

The following are the main functions of Marketing Research - 

Description: Marketing research details customers. Age, sex, education, income, etc., are listed. It describes the market and competitors. This description helps marketing decision-makers and problem-solvers. 

Evaluation: Marketing research evaluates firm performance. It evaluates production and marketing policies. It measures customer reactions to product quality, price, packaging, advertising, sales, and promotions. If consumers dislike the company's policies, they must alter them. It contrasts company and rival policies. 

Explanation: Marketing research answers all marketing questions. It explains why sales are declining, why retailers are unhappy, etc. It explains the problem's causes. It gives a solution. 

Prediction: Marketing research forecasts. Predictions are future forecasts. It predicts sales, market prospects, dangers, marketing environment, customer behavior, etc. All predictions may be wrong. Predictions help the organization create plans and policies. It helps seize possibilities. It prevents future hazards. 

Decision Making: Marketing research aids decision-makers. It gives decision-making data. Decision-making involves choosing between options. Decision-making requires accurate data. MR helps the marketer decide. It gives decision-making data. It offers alternatives. It compares each option's pros and cons. It helps marketing managers choose the right action. 

Conclusion 

The world's markets are changing at a dizzying rate, making it more important than ever for companies to adapt quickly enough to be competitive. One method is to conduct market research. The results of your market research and analysis will provide you with a thorough understanding of your target audience's wants and needs, as well as your competitors' strengths and weaknesses. 

The key to making your business successful in the face of intense competition is identifying and fixing your deficiencies. The right market research tools will aid you in doing just that! The time to begin expanding your company is now.  

With a presence in New York, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Toronto, London, Zurich, Pune, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, SG Analytics, a pioneer in Research and Analytics, offers tailor-made services to enterprises worldwide.    

A leader in  Market research services , SG Analytics enables organizations to achieve actionable insights into products, technology, customers, competition, and the marketplace to make insight-driven decisions.  Contact us  today if you are an enterprise looking to make critical data-driven decisions to prompt accelerated growth and breakthrough performance.

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Market Research: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How To Get It Right

What is market research?

What is market research used for? How important is it? And, how do you choose the right type of research for your business?

Sit back, take five, and I’ll explain the different types of research , what tools are best for the job, and how you can leverage them to grow your business and master your market .

Market research definition:

Market research means to systematically collect and analyze data about a target market or defined segment. It’s a multivariate process that uncovers key facts and insights to inform decisions.

Whether you’re launching a new product , looking for ways to expand a business, or seeking out efficiencies in an existing company, market research is a highly effective way to flesh-out ideas, innovate, and grow. 

Advantages of market research

Market research helps you identify your greatest strengths, threats, and opportunities. It can help you find your way when markets become tough to predict and find efficient ways to grow your business .

• Reduce costs
• Define detailed customer personas
• Make data-driven decisions
• Find new opportunities for growth
• Unpack competitor’s successes
• Develop an informed content marketing strategy
• Identify trends
• Inform market analysis
• Discover the best marketing channels to use
• Find the best ways to communicate with customers
• Benchmark performance against rivals

Online market research can help the whole business at any stage of its life. When practiced consistently and systematically, you can realize its many benefits.

Why is market research important?

Market research helps you identify your greatest threats. And it also gives you a clear picture of opportunities you can capitalize on for greater returns on your business investments, or ROI.

Understanding your specific market on different levels and from different perspectives helps you reach well-informed, data-informed decisions . The process can involve multiple phases. But, if you follow a systematic approach using a market research template , your efforts will pay off.

To skip ahead and start right now, download our free pack of market research templates.

Different types of market research

Market research is a questions and answers game. Once you’ve asked the important questions, you’ll need to choose the right type of research to get your answers. There are four core types of research, each of which can be applied to help you solve a problem or gather insights to inform key decisions.

Primary market research

Primary market research is the first-hand collection of data. It’s data that’s not available to others, and can be obtained in a number of ways. Here are the most common.

• Web Metrics Use analytics software that provides traffic and engagement metrics to understand how audiences behave.
• Observation To observe how users behave and navigate your site, you can install software that records visits and creates heatmaps. Such tools are useful for qualitative research regarding your UX/UI and at the same time, quantify the findings.
• Customer surveys Survey questionnaires and polls can be distributed to any number of customers through email, SMS, your site, or social media. They let you collect both qualitative and quantitative data from respondents using open-ended questions.
• Focus groups You select a small number of people for a group discussion. A moderator leads the session with questions and records the conclusions. This is also a form of qualitative research, and you would use it to get in-depth information.
• Face-to-face interviews Another qualitative assessment method is one-on-one interviews. Consumers representative of your target audience or a segment of it are selected to answer questions about a specific research topic.
• Phone calls To involve a larger number of people and get more answers, you can conduct surveys over the phone. These interviews would be less specific and include fewer questions.

Helpful: A complete guide to doing primary market research

Secondary market research

Secondary research is second-hand data that has already been produced. It’s available to all who wish to consume it. Using this type of data is preferred by those who wish to keep costs low, as it can be quicker and freely available.

• Government reports and census data Annual, quarterly, and other periodic industry reports are a rich data source to tap into. Government organizations publish statistics in areas of trade, ecommerce, and finance.
• Academic papers and educational resources University research is a source of high-quality information. This is useful for in-depth background information on a broad scale.
• Online articles and case studies, public and commercial sources Industry-specific publications can be a valuable source of information for market segmentation, providing you with data and insights on market trends or a specific market segment or niche.

Further reading: A complete guide to doing desk research

Qualitative market research

Qualitative market research is one of the best ways to understand how people think or feel about a brand, product, or service. It takes more time to plan and analyze the results than other market research types. However, with tools like market research surveys , there are quick and effective ways to do it.

As some of the methods are outlined in the primary and secondary research sections, I’ve included a short list of qualitative research methods below.

• Focus groups
• Case study or whitepaper 
• Online forums
• Biometrics 
• Ethnography

Helpful: Read the complete guide to qualitative research and 83 qualitative research questions & examples

Quantitative market research

Quantitative market research is all about numbers. It collects numerical data to help answer specific research questions . The information collected can be easily quantified and analyzed to establish trends, insights, and patterns.

With this type of research, you’ve got three core data collection methods. However, you’ve also got to consider the design of the research, which can impact which method is used.

What is market research used for?

The applications for market research are virtually limitless. Market research can help you unravel the most complex of business challenges to reach data-driven decisions , and when used consistently, it can help you navigate turbulent times, fuel growth, and support your success . Here are just a few examples of what market research is used for, with a few real-world examples thrown in for good measure.

1. Company research

Market research allows you to shine a spotlight on any business and unpack its wins and losses for your own gain. Let’s say you are doing market research for a business plan ; you’ll likely want to evaluate the successes of others in your industry. Doing systematic company research is a proven way to inform a SWOT analysis .

Doing industry analysis can show you who your industry leaders are , along with any emerging players showing exponential growth.

Let’s say I want to find out which companies to research, I would use Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence to analyze an industry. Here, I can see who my top companies to watch are instantly. It also shows me other companies showing rapid growth in my market.

Read More: How to Research a Company: The Ultimate Guide

2. Competitive benchmarking

Most of your relevant data will come from your competition. If you plan to offer something that’s new for you but already exists in the market, learn from other’s mistakes and successes. If your goal is to evaluate and optimize, collect competitors’ data, and compare it to yours. See what works for them, find their weak spots, and improve on them.

What market research gives you here, is the ability to systematically compare each of your rivals. And, it’s not as complex as it sounds either. Simply choose a type of competitive analysis frameworks to use, complete the template for each; then compare the results to uncover relevant insights.

Read More: The Why and How of Competitive Benchmarking

3. Trendspotting

Another objective for market researchers is to forecast upcoming trends. Data collection over time helps you understand the dynamics of the market. Some markets have strong seasonal fluctuations. Increased shopping during December is an obvious example, but often these shifts are not always evident unless you measure and analyze them specifically.

With the data from your historical market research, you can evaluate their impact and the likelihood you will keep seeing these trends. Based on that, you can make predictions about future developments.

4. Audience analysis

Who will find your product most useful and why? 

Examining the size of your audience and the existing demand for your product or services is crucial. Understanding  your target audience allows you to build your product offering and marketing strategy more efficiently. You also want to learn first-hand where people buy this type of product and how much they are willing to spend so that you can estimate your reachable market share .

Here’s a quick example of how we use Similarweb to do effective audience analysis . You can unpack key audience demographics for any site you choose. And get up-to-date stats about gender, age, location, interests, browsing habits, and more.

5. Market segmentation

There are lots of ways to segment a market. Doing this well can deliver higher conversions, reduce costs, redefine marketing strategies, and help you connect with customers on a more personal level. Market research can help you do most types of market segmentation, the most widely adopted of all is demographic segmentation. Here, you look for shared but specific characteristics of a target audience.

Using Similarweb, I can view audience demographics for a website, and compare it side-by-side with rival sites. In this example, I am looking at hotel booking sites to try and spot any difference between the respective audiences of each.

Helpful: Read our complete guide to market segmentation

6. Marketing strategy

Market research can also help you reach the right decision regarding where to advertise or market your business. After analyzing the data, you’ll know which marketing channels are most effective with your target audience. You can also use research to look at the specific keywords and ad creatives that are generating the best responses and ROI.

Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence makes this type of research effortless. Within the marketing channels tab, you can analyze an entire industry or hone in on a specific site of interest. View the various channels across social media, email, direct, organic search, paid search, and display ads to see which channels convert and where the highest channel traffic comes from.

7. Customer experience

Market research is your best way to get information that isn’t naturally visible but that may significantly affect your business. Just think, the fact that your users don’t complain doesn’t necessarily mean they are all delighted with what you offer.

While some customers tend to keep their criticism to themselves, others will be vocal and leave reviews online. Market research is a powerful tool to help inform improvements to services and products alike. Asking for feedback, listening to it, and looking at the feedback left for rivals in your market can uncover telling insights that can shape service offerings, marketing campaigns, and new feature development.

To see what people use market research for and view real-world instances of research in action, head over to our market research examples page.

Tools for market research

When we look at what market research is, the answer is always rooted in data . Over 100 years ago, vehicle manufacturers undertook extensive research to help them develop different models to suit various segments of society. Fast-forward 100 years, and we find similar applications still exist. However, what’s changed are the tools being used and, more importantly, the accessibility of those tools to a far broader audience .

There are more market intelligence tools in existence today than ever before. Here’s a quick summary of a few you can use to collect information for your market research.

• Google Trends Google Trends is a valuable resource for quantitative research data about market tendencies and user behavior.

• Similarweb Research Intelligence Get the freshest digital intelligence from a platform that shows the insights that count. With the ability to analyze an entire market in an instant and unpick competitors’ wins and losses online, you can count on it to help you perform quick and effective market research.
• Hotjar The digital tool lets you observe and record user behavior on your website. It also creates heatmaps of your pages so you can analyze how visitors navigate.
• SurveyMonkey Create your own online survey with this free tool. SurveyMonkey provides templates for questionnaires and lets you distribute them through your various channels, then collect and interpret results.
• YouGov This platform offers its users daily with thousands of data points and statistics on consumer attitudes, opinions, and behavior.
• Pew Research Center This non-profit organization conducts and publishes public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis, and other data-driven social science research.
• Living Facts The site provides current statistics about the American population, including demographics, social and health issues, opinions, and more.

Read this post to see what market research tools are hot right now.

Wrapping up: what is market research

Market research is insight. It gives you information to fuel key decisions in your business. Without it, companies must navigate their market uncertainly and make key decisions based on instinct or outdated data.

Similarweb transforms the way companies do market research . There’s no expensive outlay for prolonged research reports that take an age to produce. The data is the freshest there is; it’s credible and shows traffic trends and comparable performance like no other.

Try using it to answer your next big market research question.

Stop Guessing, Start Analyzing

Get actionable insights for market research here

What are the benefits of market research?

Effective market research helps businesses understand and improve their position while also identifying potential threats and opportunities, while also spotting emerging trends .

What is the main purpose of market research?

The main benefit of market research is insight. It can give you access to the data you need to make decisions in your business. Before you invest money or time in any venture, use market research to inform your decision.  

What’s the difference between primary and secondary market research?

Primary research is research you conduct on your own that uses numbers and metrics, and secondary research is research that was done by someone else with a qualitative focus.

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Home Market Research

Market Research: What it Is, Methods, Types & Examples

Would you like to know why, how, and when to apply market research? Do you want to discover why your consumers are not buying your products? Are you interested in launching a new product, service, or even a new marketing campaign, but you’re not sure what your consumers want?

LEARN ABOUT: Market research vs marketing research

To answer the questions above, you’ll need help from your consumers. But how will you collect that data? In this case and in many other situations in your business, market research is the way to get all the answers you need.

In this ultimate guide about market research, you’ll find the definition, advantages, types of market research, and some examples that will help you understand this type of research. Don’t forget to download the free ebook available at the end of this guide!

LEARN ABOUT: Perceived Value

Content Index

Three key objectives of market research

Why is market research important.

• Types of Market Research: Methods and Examples

Steps for conducting Market Research

Benefits of an efficient market research, 5 market research tips for businesses, why does every business need market research, free market research ebook, what is market research.

Market research is a technique that is used to collect data on any aspect that you want to know to be later able to interpret it and, in the end, make use of it for correct decision-making.

Another more specific definition could be the following:

Market research is the process by which companies seek to collect data systematically to make better decisions. Still, its true value lies in the way in which all the data obtained is used to achieve a better knowledge of the market consumer.

The process of market research can be done through deploying surveys , interacting with a group of people, also known as a sample , conducting interviews, and other similar processes.  

The primary purpose of conducting market research is to understand or examine the market associated with a particular product or service to decide how the audience will react to a product or service. The information obtained from conducting market research can be used to tailor marketing/ advertising activities or determine consumers’ feature priorities/service requirement (if any).

LEARN ABOUT: Consumer Surveys

Conducting research is one of the best ways of achieving customer satisfaction , reducing customer churn and elevating business. Here are the reasons why market research is important and should be considered in any business:

• Valuable information: It provides information and opportunities about the value of existing and new products, thus, helping businesses plan and strategize accordingly.
• Customer-centric: It helps to determine what the customers need and want. Marketing is customer-centric and understanding the customers and their needs will help businesses design products or services that best suit them. Remember that tracing your customer journey is a great way to gain valuable insights into your customers’ sentiments toward your brand.
• Forecasts: By understanding the needs of customers, businesses can also forecast their production and sales. Market research also helps in determining optimum inventory stock.
• Competitive advantage: To stay ahead of competitors market research is a vital tool to carry out comparative studies. Businesses can devise business strategies that can help them stay ahead of their competitors.

LEARN ABOUT: Data Analytics Projects

Types of Market Research: Market Research Methods and Examples

Whether an organization or business wishes to know the purchase behavior of consumers or the likelihood of consumers paying a certain cost for a product segmentation , market research helps in drawing meaningful conclusions.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Targeting

Depending on the methods and tools required, the following are the types:

1. Primary Market Research (A combination of both Qualitative and Quantitative Research):

Primary market research is a process where organizations or businesses get in touch with the end consumers or employ a third party to carry out relevant studies to collect data. The data collected can be qualitative data (non-numerical data) or quantitative data (numerical or statistical data).

While conducting primary market research, one can gather two types of information: Exploratory and Specific. Exploratory research is open-ended, where a problem is explored by asking open ended questions in a detailed interview format usually with a small group of people, also known as a sample. Here the sample size is restricted to 6-10 members. Specific research, on the other hand, is more pinpointed and is used to solve the problems that are identified by exploratory research.

LEARN ABOUT: Marketing Insight

As mentioned earlier, primary market research is a combination of qualitative market research and quantitative market research. Qualitative market research study involves semi-structured or unstructured data collected through some of the commonly used qualitative research methods like:

Focus groups :

Focus group is one of the commonly used qualitative research methods. Focus group is a small group of people (6-10) who typically respond to online surveys sent to them. The best part about a focus group is the information can be collected remotely, can be done without personally interacting with the group members. However, this is a more expensive method as it is used to collect complex information.

One-to-one interview:

As the name suggests, this method involves personal interaction in the form of an interview, where the researcher asks a series of questions to collect information or data from the respondents. The questions are mostly open-ended questions and are asked to facilitate responses. This method heavily depends on the interviewer’s ability and experience to ask questions that evoke responses.

Ethnographic research :

This type of in-depth research is conducted in the natural settings of the respondents. This method requires the interviewer to adapt himself/herself to the natural environment of the respondents which could be a city or a remote village. Geographical constraints can be a hindering market research factor in conducting this kind of research. Ethnographic research can last from a few days to a few years.

Organizations use qualitative research methods to conduct structured market research by using online surveys , questionnaires , and polls to gain statistical insights to make informed decisions.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

This method was once conducted using pen and paper. This has now evolved to sending structured online surveys to the respondents to gain actionable insights. Researchers use modern and technology-oriented survey platforms to structure and design their survey to evoke maximum responses from respondents.

Through a well-structured mechanism, data is easily collected and reported, and necessary action can be taken with all the information made available firsthand.

Learn more: How to conduct quantitative research

2. Secondary Market Research:

Secondary research uses information that is organized by outside sources like government agencies, media, chambers of commerce etc. This information is published in newspapers, magazines, books, company websites, free government and nongovernment agencies and so on. The secondary source makes use of the following:

• Public sources: Public sources like library are an awesome way of gathering free information. Government libraries usually offer services free of cost and a researcher can document available information.
• Commercial sources: Commercial source although reliable are expensive. Local newspapers, magazines, journal, television media are great commercial sources to collect information.
• Educational Institutions: Although not a very popular source of collecting information, most universities and educational institutions are a rich source of information as many research projects are carried out there than any business sector.

Learn more: Market Research Example with Types and Methods

A market research project may usually have 3 different types of objectives.

• Administrative : Help a company or business development, through proper planning, organization, and both human and material resources control, and thus satisfy all specific needs within the market, at the right time.
• Social : Satisfy customers’ specific needs through a required product or service. The product or service should comply with a customer’s requirements and preferences when consumed.
• Economical : Determine the economical degree of success or failure a company can have while being new to the market, or otherwise introducing new products or services, thus providing certainty to all actions to be implemented.

LEARN ABOUT:  Test Market Demand

Knowing what to do in various situations that arise during the investigation will save the researcher time and reduce research problems . Today’s successful enterprises use powerful market research survey software that helps them conduct comprehensive research under a unified platform, providing actionable insights much faster with fewer problems.

LEARN ABOUT:  Market research industry

Following are the steps to conduct effective market research.

Step #1: Define the Problem

Having a well-defined subject of research will help researchers when they ask questions. These questions should be directed to solve problems and must be adapted to the project. Make sure the questions are written clearly and that the respondents understand them. Researchers can conduct a marketing test with a small group to know if the questions are going to know whether the asked questions are understandable and if they will be enough to gain insightful results.

Research objectives should be written in a precise way and should include a brief description of the information that is needed and the way in which it will obtain it. They should have an answer to this question “why are we doing the research?”

Learn more: Interview Questions

Step #2: Define the Sample

To carry out market research, researchers need a representative sample that can be collected using one of the many sampling techniques . A representative sample is a small number of people that reflect, as accurately as possible, a larger group.

• An organization cannot waste their resources in collecting information from the wrong population. It is important that the population represents characteristics that matter to the researchers and that they need to investigate, are in the chosen sample.
• Take into account that marketers will always be prone to fall into a bias in the sample because there will always be people who do not answer the survey because they are busy, or answer it incompletely, so researchers may not obtain the required data.
• Regarding the size of the sample, the larger it is, the more likely it is to be representative of the population. A larger representative sample gives the researcher greater certainty that the people included are the ones they need, and they can possibly reduce bias. Therefore, if they want to avoid inaccuracy in our surveys, they should have representative and balanced samples.
• Practically all the surveys that are considered in a serious way, are based on a scientific sampling, based on statistical and probability theories.

There are two ways to obtain a representative sample:

• Probability sampling : In probability sampling , the choice of the sample will be made at random, which guarantees that each member of the population will have the same probability of selection bias and inclusion in the sample group. Researchers should ensure that they have updated information on the population from which they will draw the sample and survey the majority to establish representativeness.
• Non-probability sampling : In a non-probability sampling , different types of people are seeking to obtain a more balanced representative sample. Knowing the demographic characteristics of our group will undoubtedly help to limit the profile of the desired sample and define the variables that interest the researchers, such as gender, age, place of residence, etc. By knowing these criteria, before obtaining the information, researchers can have the control to create a representative sample that is efficient for us.

When a sample is not representative, there can be a margin of error . If researchers want to have a representative sample of 100 employees, they should choose a similar number of men and women.

The sample size is very important, but it does not guarantee accuracy. More than size, representativeness is related to the sampling frame , that is, to the list from which people are selected, for example, part of a survey.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Research If researchers want to continue expanding their knowledge on how to determine the size of the sample consult our guide on sampling here.

Step #3: Carry out data collection

First, a data collection instrument should be developed. The fact that they do not answer a survey, or answer it incompletely will cause errors in research. The correct collection of data will prevent this.

Step #4: Analyze the results

Each of the points of the market research process is linked to one another. If all the above is executed well, but there is no accurate analysis of the results, then the decisions made consequently will not be appropriate. In-depth analysis conducted without leaving loose ends will be effective in gaining solutions. Data analysis will be captured in a report, which should also be written clearly so that effective decisions can be made on that basis.

Analyzing and interpreting the results is to look for a wider meaning to the obtained data. All the previous phases have been developed to arrive at this moment. How can researchers measure the obtained results? The only quantitative data that will be obtained is age, sex, profession, and number of interviewees because the rest are emotions and experiences that have been transmitted to us by the interlocutors. For this, there is a tool called empathy map that forces us to put ourselves in the place of our clientele with the aim of being able to identify, really, the characteristics that will allow us to make a better adjustment between our products or services and their needs or interests. When the research has been carefully planned, the hypotheses have been adequately defined and the indicated collection method has been used, the interpretation is usually carried out easily and successfully. What follows after conducting market research?

Learn more: Types of Interviews

Step #5: Make the Research Report

When presenting the results, researchers should focus on: what do they want to achieve using this research report and while answering this question they should not assume that the structure of the survey is the best way to do the analysis. One of the big mistakes that many researchers make is that they present the reports in the same order of their questions and do not see the potential of storytelling.

To make good reports, the best analysts give the following advice: follow the inverted pyramid style to present the results, answering at the beginning the essential questions of the business that caused the investigation. Start with the conclusions and give them fundamentals, instead of accumulating evidence. After this researchers can provide details to the readers who have the time and interest.

Step #6: Make Decisions

An organization or a researcher should never ask “why do market research”, they should just do it! Market research helps researchers to know a wide range of information, for example,  consumer purchase intentions, or gives feedback about the growth of the target market. They can also discover valuable information that will help in estimating the prices of their product or service and find a point of balance that will benefit them and the consumers.

Take decisions! Act and implement.

Learn more: Quantitative Research

• Make well-informed decisions: The growth of an organization is dependent on the way decisions are made by the management. Using market research techniques, the management can make business decisions based on obtained results that back their knowledge and experience. Market research helps to know market trends, hence to carry it out frequently to get to know the customers thoroughly.

LEARN ABOUT: Research Process Steps

• Gain accurate information: Market research provides real and accurate information that will prepare the organization for any mishaps that may happen in the future. By properly investigating the market, a business will undoubtedly be taking a step forward, and therefore it will be taking advantage of its existing competitors.
• Determine the market size: A researcher can evaluate the size of the market that must be covered in case of selling a product or service in order to make profits.
• Choose an appropriate sales system: Select a precise sales system according to what the market is asking for, and according to this, the product/service can be positioned in the market.
• Learn about customer preferences: It helps to know how the preferences (and tastes) of the clients change so that the company can satisfy preferences, purchasing habits, and income levels. Researchers can determine the type of product that must be manufactured or sold based on the specific needs of consumers.
• Gather details about customer perception of the brand: In addition to generating information, market research helps a researcher in understanding how the customers perceive the organization or brand.
• Analyze customer communication methods: Market research serves as a guide for communication with current and potential clients.
• Productive business investment: It is a great investment for any business because thanks to it they get invaluable information, it shows researchers the way to follow to take the right path and achieve the sales that are required.

LEARN ABOUT: Total Quality Management

The following tips will help businesses with creating a better market research strategy.

Tip #1: Define the objective of your research.

Before starting your research quest, think about what you’re trying to achieve next with your business. Are you looking to increase traffic to your location? Or increase sales? Or convert customers from one-time purchasers to regulars? Figuring out your objective will help you tailor the rest of your research and your future marketing materials. Having an objective for your research will flesh out what kind of data you need to collect.

Tip #2: Learn About Your Target Customers.

The most important thing to remember is that your business serves a specific kind of customer. Defining your specific customer has many advantages like allowing you to understand what kind of language to use when crafting your marketing materials, and how to approach building relationships with your customer. When you take time to define your target customer you can also find the best products and services to sell to them.

You want to know as much as you can about your target customer. You can gather this information through observation and by researching the kind of customers who frequent your type of business. For starters, helpful things to know are their age and income. What do they do for a living? What’s their marital status and education level?

Learn more: Customer Satisfaction

Tip #3: Recognize that knowing who you serve helps you define who you do not.

Let’s take a classic example from copywriting genius Dan Kennedy. He says that if you’re opening up a fine dining steakhouse focused on decadent food, you know right off the bat that you’re not looking to attract vegetarians or dieters. Armed with this information, you can create better marketing messages that speak to your target customers.

It’s okay to decide who is not a part of your target customer base. In fact, for small businesses knowing who you don’t cater to can be essential in helping you grow. Why? Simple, if you’re small your advantage is that you can connect deeply with a specific segment of the market. You want to focus your efforts on the right customer who already is compelled to spend money on your offer.

If you’re spreading yourself thin by trying to be all things to everyone, you will only dilute your core message. Instead, keep your focus on your target customer. Define them, go deep, and you’ll be able to figure out how you can best serve them with your products and services.

Tip #4: Learn from your competition.

This works for brick-and-mortar businesses as well as internet businesses because it allows you to step into the shoes of your customer and open up to a new perspective of your business. Take a look around the internet and around your town. If you can, visit your competitor’s shops. For example, if you own a restaurant specializing in Italian cuisine, dine at the other Italian place in your neighborhood or in the next township.

As you experience the business from the customer’s perspective, look for what’s being done right and wrong.

Can you see areas that need attention or improvement? How are you running things in comparison? What’s the quality of their product and customer service ? Are the customers here pleased? Also, take a close look at their market segment. Who else is patronizing their business? Are they the same kinds of people who spend money with you? By asking these questions and doing in-person research, you can dig up a lot of information to help you define your unique selling position and create even better offers for your customers.

Tip #5: Get your target customers to open up and tell you everything.

A good customer survey is one of the most valuable market research tools because it gives you the opportunity to get inside your customer’s head. However, remember that some feedback may be harsh, so take criticism as a learning tool to point you in the right direction.

Creating a survey is simple. Ask questions about what your customer thinks you’re doing right and what can be improved. You can also prompt them to tell you what kinds of products and services they’d like to see you add, giving you fantastic insight into how to monetize your business more. Many customers will be delighted to offer feedback. You can even give customers who fill out surveys a gift like a special coupon for their next purchase.

Bonus Tip: Use an insight & research repository

An insight & research repository is a consolidated research management platform to derive insights about past and ongoing market research. With the use of such a tool, you can leverage past research to get to insights faster, build on previously done market research and draw trendlines, utilize research techniques that have worked in the past, and more.

Market research is one of the most effective ways to gain insight into your customer base , competitors , and the overall market. The goal of conducting market research is to equip your company with the information you need to make informed decisions.

It is especially important when small businesses are trying to determine whether a new business idea is viable, looking to move into a new market, or are launching a new product or service.  Read below for a more in-depth look at how market research can help small businesses.

• COMPETITION According to a study conducted by Business Insider, 72% of small businesses focus on increasing revenue. Conducting research helps businesses gain insight into competitor behavior. By learning about your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, you can learn how to position your product or offering. In order to be successful, small businesses need to have an understanding of what products and services competitors are offering, and their price point.

Learn more: Trend Analysis

• CUSTOMERS Many small businesses feel they need to understand their customers, only to conduct market research and learn they had the wrong assumptions. By researching, you can create a profile of your average customer and gain insight into their buying habits, how much they’re willing to spend, and which features resonate with them. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, you can learn what will make someone use your product or service over a competitor.

Learn more: Customer Satisfaction Survey

• OPPORTUNITIES Potential opportunities, whether they are products or services, can be identified by conducting market research. By learning more about your customers, you can gather insights into complementary products and services. Consumer needs change over time, influenced by new technology and different conditions, and you may find new needs that are not being met, which can create new opportunities for your business.

Learn more: SWOT Analysis 

• FORECAST A small business is affected by the performance of the local and national economy, as are its’ customers. If consumers are worried, then they will be more restrained when spending money, which affects the business. By conducting research with consumers, businesses can get an idea of whether they are optimistic or apprehensive about the direction of the economy, and make adjustments as necessary. For example, a small business owner may decide to postpone a new product launch if it appears the economic environment is turning negative.

Learn more: 300+ Market Research Survey Questionnaires

Market research and market intelligence may be as complex as the needs that each business or project has. The steps are usually the same. We hope this ultimate guide helps you have a better understanding of how to make your own market research project to gather insightful data and make better decisions.

LEARN ABOUT: Projective Techniques

We appreciate you taking the time to read this ultimate guide. We hope it was helpful! 

You can now download our free ebook that will guide you through a market research project, from the planning stage to the presentation of the outcomes and their analysis.

Sign up now, and download our free ebook: The Hacker’s Guide to Advanced Research Methodologies 

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Global business

2023 Guide to Market Research: Key Strategies and Best Practices

When Steve Sasson—a Kodak engineer—invented the first digital camera in 1975, a breakthrough in photography was born. However, Kodak wasn’t interested—it was a film company, and Sasson’s digital camera threatened to disrupt its core business. Despite an extensive market research effort confirming the imminent shift from film to digital, Kodak continued to double down on its film business until it filed for bankruptcy in 2012.

The moral of the story is that strategic decisions need to be based on accurate market research in order to avoid costly mistakes, especially when they entail reinvention. Kodak is just one example—another common scenario in which a company might need to reinvent itself is when it’s looking to expand into new markets . Be it a new or adapted product or service, a new target audience, or new business models—changing tack to cater to a new market can be a make-or-break moment for businesses.

That’s why, if you’re looking to take your product global, conducting market research should be a key part of your strategy. Venturing into unfamiliar markets armed with solid market intelligence can help you make the most of opportunities and avoid pitfalls. In this article, we will discuss best practices for market research as a key component of a global expansion , and how you can make the most of it.

What is market research?

Market research is the process of collecting and analyzing data about a target market to understand consumer preferences and purchasing decisions. Companies can use this information to better inform their business strategies, such as what products or services to develop, how to adapt them to different market conditions, or what factors can affect demand.

When a company operates globally or is trying to enter new markets, market research becomes even more important. This is because culture and geography can have a big impact on consumer behavior. To be successful, you need to understand the nuances of each market and tailor your products and marketing strategies accordingly.

Market research vs marketing research

It’s common to see the terms “market research” and “marketing research” used interchangeably, but they actually refer to two different things.

Market research is a broad category that includes all types of data collection and analysis related to a target market. The aim is to understand the market, including the needs of consumers and the dynamics of competition.

Marketing research, on the other hand, is more specific and refers to the process of collecting and analyzing data to assess and identify the changing elements of the marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion).

For example, if you want to launch a new product in the Spanish market, you would first conduct market research to assess whether there is a demand for it, what the market size, what market trends are, and what the competition looks like.

Once you have this information, you can then move on to marketing research for concept testing and to determine how to market the product , what channels to use for distribution, and what kind of marketing campaigns will be most effective.

Both activities do share some similarities, though: They may use the same data sources and methods, and the line between them can sometimes be blurry. Ultimately, the goal of both is to generate insights that can be used to make better business decisions.

Why is market research important?

There are many reasons why market research is important, but perhaps the most important is that it helps you reduce risk. When you have a clear understanding of your target market and what they want, you are much less likely to make costly mistakes.

In the context of globalization , market research can help you assess the potential of new markets and make informed decisions about where to allocate resources. It can also help you develop strategies for entering new markets, such as identifying the most effective channels for marketing and distribution.

When you’re expanding your business into new markets informed by market research, you’re much more likely to:

• Develop successful products and services: By understanding your customers’ needs , you can develop products and services that they will actually want to buy.
• Increase sales: By understanding your target market’s buying habits, pain points, and motivators, you can develop marketing campaigns that are more likely to resonate and result in sales.
• Improve customer satisfaction: If you know what your customers want, you can deliver it to them, resulting in happier customers who are more likely to continue doing business with you.
• Reduce costs by avoiding duplicate effort: Market intelligence allows you to allocate resources strategically and get it right the first time. For example, you can avoid spending money on conventional translation for marketing campaigns that require more creative adaptation to be effective in a new market.
• Get localization right: A good localization strategy is a key to success in any new market. But without market intelligence, it can be difficult to know how to adapt your products and marketing materials for a new culture. For example, you might not realize that certain colors have different connotations in different cultures, or that video content gives you a higher return on investment in one market but not another.

Arming yourself with nothing but assumptions can lead to less-than-optimal results—and this is especially true when expanding into new markets. When legal systems, consumer preferences, and business practices differ from country to country, the risks are even greater, and so should your commitment to market research.

Market analytics vs market research

A common misconception is that market research and analytics mean the same. In reality, they’re two distinct ways of doing consumer investigation, and they serve different purposes.

Market analytics is the process of collecting and analyzing data to unveil patterns and trends. This data can come from a variety of sources, including surveys, social media, transactional data, and web analytics. For example, you might use market analytics to track how often certain foreign-language keywords are being searched for on Google or to understand which demographics are most likely to purchase your product outside your home market.

Market research, on the other hand, captures data to answer specific questions. For example, a company might want to know what factors influence its customers’ purchase decisions in a particular market, or what the barriers to entry are for a new product.

Market analytics can help generate hypotheses that you can then test through market research. You can think of analytics as the inward-looking “what” (What happens? What are the trends?) and market research as the outward-looking “why” (Why does it happen? Why do people want this?).

When you leverage market analytics and market research together, you can get a well-rounded view of your target market and what they want. This, in turn, helps you make better business decisions and avoid costly mistakes.

What types of market research are there?

There are several types of market research depending on the questions you want to answer, the type of data you need, the resources that you have available, and the timeline that you are working with.

Primary market research vs secondary market research

Primary research is the first-hand research that you conduct yourself. This could involve surveys, interviews, focus groups, or any other type of research method where you directly interact with consumers.

Secondary research is the intelligence that someone else has already gathered and published. This includes data from government reports, trade associations, industry journals, commercial data providers, and other published sources.

Quantitative market research vs qualitative market research

Quantitative research focuses on numbers and statistics. For example, if you want what percentage of people in a certain age group prefer your product over a competitor’s, you would use quantitative research. Polls, surveys, desk research, web statistics, and consumer panels are all quantitative research methods.

Qualitative research, on the other hand, focuses on understanding people’s opinions, motivations, and behaviors. Multilingual sentiment analysis, ethnography, and in-depth interviews are all qualitative research methods.

Exploratory market research vs conclusive market research

You use exploratory research to generate hypotheses and identify key variables. This type of research is frequent at the beginning of a project to get a better understanding of the problem. For example, if you want to know why customers are leaving your website in a foreign market, you might use exploratory research to generate hypotheses that you can then test through further market research.

Conclusive research is used to test hypotheses and measure relationships. This type of research usually comes after exploratory research. For example, if your exploratory research suggests that customers are leaving your website because the current user experience isn’t considering their cultural preferences—think things like imagery or payment methods—you could use conclusive research to measure the impact of a new user interface that takes these cultural preferences into account.

Branding research

Branding research helps you create, manage, and measure the success of your brand. This type of research can help you understand how customers perceive your brand, what associations they have with it, and how well your brand is positioned in the market.

When expanding globally, branding research can help you strike the right balance between global brand consistency and local brand relevance. It can also help you understand how to adapt your brand messaging and identity to different cultures.

Product development research

Product development research helps you establish if there is a market for your product or service and what features or benefits customers are looking for. This type of research can help you understand the viability of your product, optimize its characteristics, and ensure it performs well before taking it to market.

Most global companies adapt their product offering to local markets. Product development research can help you understand what features or benefits are most important to customers in different countries so you can out-compete local companies.

Customer research

Customer research is a type of market research that can serve different purposes, from segmenting your customer base to measuring customer satisfaction. In the context of international operations, customer research can help you understand how to appeal to different customer segments in different countries.

For example, when you know that 64% of Asian-Pacific customers are willing to share personal data for a tailored online experience, you can use this information to improve your website design and user experience in the region.

The main types of customer research are:

• Customer satisfaction research: Also known as customer experience research, this type of research helps you understand how customers feel about your product or service. This includes understanding what they like and don’t like, their unmet needs, and how likely they are to recommend your product or service to others.
• Customer segmentation research: Segmentation research helps you understand how to divide your customer base into smaller groups with shared characteristics. This type of research can help you better target your marketing efforts and create more personalized experiences for your customers.
• Consumer insights: Consumer insights are actionable, research-based observations about your customers. They go beyond demographic information to include things like customer values, preferences, and behaviors. For example, if you want to understand why customers in a certain market are choosing your competitor’s product over yours, consumer insights research could help you uncover the reasons.

Competitive market research

Competitive market research helps you understand what your competitors are doing. This can include things like their marketing strategies, product offerings, pricing, and distribution channels. Understanding your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses can help you make informed decisions about how to position your own product or service in the market.

How to do market research?

Like every complex process, you can break market research down into smaller, more manageable steps. Here’s a high-level overview of how to do market research:

Identify your target audience

The first step in any market research project is to identify your target audience. This will help you focus your research efforts and ensure that you’re gathering information that’s relevant to your business. For example, if you’re planning an expansion to the Brazilian market, an example of a target audience you might identify would be “Brazilian upper-middle-class women ages 25-40.”

Define your research objectives

Identify an issue, problem, or opportunity that you want to understand better. For example: “I want to understand what payment methods Brazilian upper-middle-class women ages 25-40 prefer when shopping online so we can optimize our checkout process.”

Select your research methods

Once you’ve identified your target audience and objectives, you’ll need to select the research methods that will help you gather the data you need. There are many different market research methods, some of which are quantitative and some of which are qualitative. In the case above, to find out the preferred payment methods of Brazilian shoppers, you might conduct a survey.

Develop your research plan

Once you’ve selected your methods, you move on to developing your research plan. This should include a detailed description of how you’ll execute your project, including timelines, budgets, and any risks or challenges you anticipate. For example, if you’re planning to conduct interviews in Brazil, you’ll need to consider things like language barriers and cultural differences.

Collect and analyze your data

Once you’ve executed your research plan, it’s time to collect and analyze your data. This can be a complex process, depending on the methods you’ve used and the type of data you’ve gathered. In the case of a survey, you might use statistical software to analyze your results.

Present your findings

After you’ve analyzed your data, you’ll need to present your findings in a way that’s easy for others to understand. The stakeholders in your business will use these findings to make decisions about things like product development, marketing, and expansion plans. How you present your findings will depend on the type of data you’ve collected and the objectives of your research. For example, if you’re presenting the results of a survey, you might create a report or presentation that includes charts and graphs.

The above steps are a high-level overview of the market research process. In practice, each project will be unique, and you’ll need to tailor your approach to fit the specific needs of your business.

What are some key market research methods? 

We’ve briefly touched on some of the most common market research methods, but let’s take a closer look at each one:

Surveys involve collecting data from a target audience through questions administered either in person, by phone, or online. They can be used to gather data about a wide range of topics, including consumer behavior, preferences, and opinions.

• Surveys are relatively easy and inexpensive to administer.
• They can provide a great deal of immediate information.
• Their extensive reach gives you insights about a large number of people.
• Analyzing survey data is typically straightforward.
• Surveys can be time-consuming to administer and analyze.
• It can be difficult to find people who are willing to participate.
• Survey results can be skewed by the way you word questions or by the order in which you ask them .

How to do it right:

• Avoid asking too many questions so as not to overwhelm respondents
• Make sure your questions are clear and concise
• Try to ask neutral questions that don’t lead respondents to a particular answer
• Include open-ended questions to encourage respondents to give more detailed answers.

Interviews are a type of market research that involve conducting in-depth conversations with individuals from a target audience. They can be used to gather data about a wide range of topics, including attitudes, beliefs, and motivations.

• Interviews can provide a great deal of rich, detailed information about a small number of people.
• You can conduct them online if needed.
• They allow you to build empathy with your audience.
• The resources required to administer interviews (e.g., time, money, personnel) can be significant.
• It can be challenging to find people who are willing to participate (incentives might be necessary to encourage participation).
• They don’t reach an audience as extensive as surveys do.
• Choose the most appropriate format for your interview—e.g., in-person, phone, video chat, etc.
• Make sure to explain to the respondent what the interview will entail and how you will use their responses.
• Build rapport by repeating back what the respondent says and showing empathy
• Leave time for follow-up questions.

Focus groups

Many companies choose to bring together a group of potential customers to discuss a product or service before it’s launched. This type of market research is called a focus group, and it can be used to gather data about things like reactions, perceptions, and opinions.

• Focus groups can provide rich, detailed information about a small number of people.
• They can provide insights into the purchase decision-making process.
• You can easily measure customer reactions to a product’s design, packaging, price and message.
• They aren’t as in-depth as interviews.
• They can be expensive to conduct.
• They can be biased by the moderator’s questions or the group dynamics—like a dominant personality in the group who steers everyone’s opinions.
• People might not give honest feedback if you’re paying them to participate.
• Ensure the recruiting process is well-designed so you end up with a diverse and representative group of participants.
• Use skilled and experienced moderators who know how to keep the discussion on track.
• Pay attention to the nonverbal cues of participants—e.g., body language.
• Establish ground rules at the beginning of the session.
• Consider and pre-empty potential intercultural communication issues.

Observational research

When you observe people, you’re looking at their behavior in a natural setting. This type of market research can be used to gather data about a wide range of topics, including shopping habits, use of public spaces, and interactions with technology. There’s both overt and covert observational research, depending on whether or not participants are aware that they’re being watched.

• Observational research is relatively easy and inexpensive to conduct.
• Natural surroundings can provide insights that would be difficult or impossible to glean from other types of market research.
• The researcher’s own biases can skew the data.
• It can be time-consuming to observe people for extended periods of time.
• People might not behave naturally if they’re aware that someone’s watching them.
• When conducting covert observational research, be sure to follow all ethical guidelines.
• When conducting overt observational research, make sure to get the consent of participants.
• Always capture context.
• Try to avoid bias by maintaining a detached and objective attitude.
• Be sure to take detailed notes or record videos of the behavior you’re observing.
• Complete debriefing notes as soon as possible after the observation so the data is fresh in your mind.

What are some best practices for market research?

For any market research project, it’s important to keep the following best practices in mind:

Define your scope and objectives clearly

Unless you know what you’re trying to learn, it will be difficult to design an effective market research project. Based on your product offering, target market, and expansion goals, you should be able to define the scope and objectives of your project. These will help guide the rest of your decisions.

Get input from stakeholders early on

People whom the results of the market research will affect—e.g., marketing, sales, leadership—should be involved from the outset to help shape the project. Their input will ensure that the objectives of the market research are aligned with the company’s goals, and it will help ensure buy-in for the project from key stakeholders.

Consider cultural differences

If you’re expanding into new markets, it’s important to be aware of cultural differences that could affect your market research. For example, some cultures might consider it impolite to ask certain types of questions, or the interpretation of body language might be different. Working with local market research partners can help you navigate these differences.

Choose the right method

While it’s tempting to assume that any research method will eventually get you the information you need, that’s often not the case. For example, if you’re trying to learn about the associations that your content is getting in a foreign market to spot and fix any cultural missteps, a multiple-choice survey with predefined answers might not be the most optimal method.

Pilot-test your methods

Before you launch a full-scale market research project, it’s important to pilot-test your methods to make sure they’re effective. This will help you identify any potential problems so that you can fix them before they impact your data.

Analyze your results carefully

All the data in the world won’t be of any use if you don’t take the time to analyze it carefully. When reviewing your results, look for both quantitative and qualitative trends, and try to identify any potential sources of bias. Moreover, if you’ve conducted the research in a language other than your own, it’s a good idea to enlist the help of professional localizers who can help you interpret the results—they’ll be familiar with the nuances of the language and culture that you might not be.

Communicate your findings effectively

Communication can be a challenge when dealing with market research since you’re often dealing with complex data sets. However, presenting your findings in a way that’s clear and actionable for stakeholders is crucial if you want your research to have an impact.

Follow up with respondents

If you’ve collected data from respondents, it’s important to follow up with them after the fact. This shows that you value their input. Moreover, if you’ve acted on any of their feedback, be sure to let them know the results—e.g., a feature they suggested was added to the product, their feedback helped shape a new marketing campaign, etc. This can make a big impression and solidify your relationship with respondents.

Effective market research must be systematic

When done right, market research is a powerful tool that can help companies make informed decisions about their expansion strategies. However, a lack of planning and foresight can lead to wasted effort and resources.

By following a systematic process and keeping best practices in mind, you can ensure that your market research is effective and informative. The result is a stronger market expansion strategy and a better chance of success in new markets.

Last updated on August 11, 2023.

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5 Tips to Market Research Like a Pro

Table of Contents

Market research provides businesses with valuable insights into their competitors, customers and industry trends. Do it well and you can spot new opportunities before others. You’ll also be better able to anticipate future trends and improve profitability. But where to get started? Five simple strategies can form the basis of your market research plan .

How to conduct effective market research

Most effective market research strategies don’t cost anything but time and labor. Others, however, may require spending some ad dollars or ponying up for a survey platform. All are worthwhile, however, for better understanding the market your business is in and the customers you want to reach. We specifically recommend the following research methods.

1. Develop buyer personas.

Buyer personas, also known as customer personas , give you a much more thorough understanding of your customers and who they are. They are essentially fictional creations based in reality — you imagine your ideal customer and build a realistic persona around them.

Market research tools can help you develop buyer personas based on your target customers’ interests, problems and lifestyles. The more personas you have, the better, as understanding why customers buy from you is perhaps the most valuable piece of information any business owner could have. Do they buy to meet a need or desire, address a problem, or exploit an opportunity to its fullest? Your marketers can zero in on this information to create advertising campaigns that generate inquiries by appealing to customers’ needs and wants. Likewise, this insight will help your sales team sell more and your development team iterate better in the future.

As you build buyer personas, harnessing demographic details like age, location, education level, parental status and income levels is very useful. These details can help you develop a communication style and tone of voice that connects with customers. An appreciation of cultural nuances, especially in a diverse country like America, can also benefit you through a better understanding of consumption patterns, attitudes, and product or service preferences.

Buyer personas can also shed light on the people, organizations and institutions that shape customers’ views and opinions. Take influencer marketing as an example. Partnering with an influencer your customers like and respect can generate a lot of sales. Identifying the influences, values and psychology of your audience can help you understand how emotions play a part in their decision-making. [Read related article: The Psychology of Sales ]

2. Conduct a survey.

A problem that many new businesses face is they don’t have a lot of customer information to use for their own market research. To gather more information about the people who buy — or may buy — your product, consider adding a survey form to your website or sending a survey to email addresses you collect.

Surveys allow you to solicit feedback from prospective and existing customers. When you create a questionnaire, try to include a few questions with text boxes so respondents can type in their own answers. You want to solicit as much information as possible — without making your survey so overwhelming that people won’t want to take it — so you can use the answers to build successful, accurate profiles for your market research.

You can also use surveys as a means to get more sales. Some business owners find that adding the option to do a survey in exchange for a discount, such as giving 10 percent off an order, is enough incentive for customers to answer your questions. Everybody benefits. You learn more about your customers and generate revenue at the same time.

Google’s Keyword Planner is one of the best market research tools you can use to determine which words and phrases you should bid for in digital advertising campaigns.

3. Upload your lead list to Facebook Ads.

Social media marketing tools, specifically the Facebook Ads program, are an effective way to carry out market research on your audience.

Look for a feature called “Custom Audiences” on your Meta Business Manager dashboard and upload your customer email list to it. The platform then automatically finds the profiles of the people on your list. After analyzing their Facebook pages, it builds charts that showcase trends among the people you added. You can see what habits and interests these people have and use this information to conduct more precise market research. 

For example, Facebook may tell you that many of your customers use YouTube. If that’s the case, you may want to advertise on it as well as create video content and a YouTube channel for your target audience.

4. Study your competitors.

All businesses benefit from a better understanding of their competitors. That’s especially so with larger companies that offer similar products to you. They didn’t get big by accident — they must have done something very well consistently over an extended period to grow so large. You want to learn what that is.

Competitors’ websites are a good place to start when researching why they have a greater market share. You can use tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush to understand the aspects of their content marketing that cause their sites to rank so highly. This is great for technical SEO planning , and it’s also good for getting an idea of why their content resonates so well with the target audiences you have in common. 

There are certain things your rivals do better than you that their customers appreciate. Try to uncover what their clients value the most and make those products or services part of your proposition. On the flip side, there are some things you do better than everyone else in the minds of consumers. Find out from your customers what they are and then build on them further to retain your competitive advantage.

On an operational level, there are important insights you can extract by studying your competition. Where are they advertising? What new products or improvements for existing products are they working on? They may have spotted an opportunity before you did.

You’ll find Semrush and other useful services on our list of the best business tools and technology.

5. Set up multiple small email campaigns.

Another way to enhance your market research is through conducting small email campaigns. Once you’ve gathered customer data using the above strategies, you can develop applicable email marketing campaigns and gauge their performance. [See our top picks for high-quality email marketing and survey software .]

Segment your email database into groups that share certain characteristics (like average spend, frequency of purchase, age, annual income, internet habits and so on). Market to each group separately to see who interacts with your emails more by clicking through to your site and making a purchase.

These small tests can provide detailed insight into what kind of marketing works with your audience. While you’re likely to make sales from all segments of customers you contact, you can focus more time on experimenting with the most active groups to incrementally increase engagement with each subsequent campaign.

As explained in our Campaigner review , you can segment customer databases as a list manager in your email marketing platform.

Why market research is important

Market research is time-consuming, yet it’s important for launching and expanding a successful business. When you know your customers and what they want — and you understand the market you’re competing in — the information you collect can help you grow your company, win sales, and build strong relationships with the people who buy your product.

As you conduct your market research, you’ll discover that people are complex and diverse. They have specific wants and needs that they want someone to solve for them. If you use your data properly, you can build great products that truly help people.

Take the five strategies above and start to implement them in your market research activities. Gather data, keep notes, learn what people like, and you could soon build in future success and stability to your business. 

Syed Balkhi contributed to this article. 

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Importance of market research in developing a strategy.

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Developing a successful strategy is crucial for the growth and sustainability of any organization. One of the key pillars of strategy development is market research. Market research provides valuable insights into the market dynamics, customer preferences, and competitive landscape, enabling businesses to make informed decisions and devise effective strategies. In this article, we will explore the importance of market research in developing a strategy and the various steps involved in conducting comprehensive market research.

Table of Contents

Introduction

In the fast-paced and dynamic business environment, companies need to stay ahead of the curve to remain competitive. Market research acts as a compass, guiding businesses through  the complex marketplace by providing relevant information and actionable insights. It involves gathering and analyzing data about customers, competitors, and market trends to uncover opportunities and challenges.

Definition of Market Research

Market research can be defined as the process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting information about a market, its customers, and competitors. It helps businesses understand the needs and preferences of their target audience, identify market trends, and evaluate the competitive landscape. By conducting market research , companies gain a deeper understanding of their industry, enabling them to make data-driven decisions.

Importance of Market Research

• Identifying Market Opportunities : Market research helps businesses identify untapped market segments, emerging trends, and unmet customer needs. By understanding market gaps and customer pain points, companies can develop innovative products or services that cater to specific demands, gaining a competitive edge.
• Understanding Customer Behavior : Market research provides insights into consumer behavior, including purchasing patterns, preferences, and motivations. This understanding allows businesses to tailor their offerings to meet customer expectations, leading to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Target Market Identification : Market research helps in identifying the target market for a product or service. By segmenting the market based on demographic, psychographic, and behavioral factors, businesses can tailor their marketing efforts and messages to resonate with the intended audience.
• Competitive Analysis : Market research enables businesses to assess the competitive landscape and understand their position relative to competitors. It helps identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis) to formulate strategies that leverage strengths and mitigate weaknesses.
• Market Trends and Opportunities : By monitoring market trends, businesses can identify emerging opportunities and adapt their strategies accordingly. Market research helps in forecasting industry trends, technological advancements, and consumer preferences, enabling businesses to stay ahead of the curve.

Types of Market Research

Market research can be broadly categorized into two types: primary research and secondary research.

• Primary Research : Primary research involves collecting firsthand data directly from the target market. This can be done through surveys, interviews, focus groups, or observations. Primary research provides specific and up-to-date information tailored to the research objectives.
• Secondary Research : Secondary research involves gathering and analyzing existing data from various sources such as government publications, industry reports, market studies, and competitor websites. It provides a broader perspective on the market and helps in understanding historical trends and benchmarking against industry standards.

Steps in Conducting Market Research

• Defining Research Objectives : Clearly defining research objectives is the first step in conducting market research. It involves identifying what information needs to be gathered, the purpose of the research, and the specific questions to be answered.
• Designing the Research Methodology : Based on the research objectives, the appropriate research methodology is selected. This includes determining whether primary or secondary research methods are more suitable and selecting the specific data collection techniques.
• Collecting Data : Data collection involves gathering relevant information using various techniques such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, or data mining. Careful consideration is given to sample size, sampling method, and data quality to ensure the validity and reliability of the findings.
• Analyzing Data : Once the data is collected, it is analyzed using statistical techniques, data visualization tools, or qualitative analysis methods. The goal is to uncover patterns, trends, and relationships within the data that can inform decision-making.
• Interpreting Findings : The findings from the data analysis are interpreted to derive actionable insights. This involves identifying key findings, understanding their implications, and drawing conclusions that address the research objectives.

Understanding Consumer Behavior

Understanding consumer behavior is a crucial aspect of market research. By gaining insights into what motivates consumers to purchase, how they make decisions, and what influences their behavior, businesses can create effective marketing strategies. Consumer behavior is influenced by various factors such as cultural, social, personal, and psychological factors. Market research helps in identifying these factors and tailoring marketing efforts to resonate with the target audience.

Identifying Target Market

Identifying the target market is essential for developing a successful strategy. Market research helps businesses segment the market based on various criteria such as demographics, psychographics, and behavioral patterns. This segmentation allows businesses to understand the unique needs and preferences of different customer groups, enabling them to create targeted marketing campaigns and product offerings.

Competitive Analysis

A thorough competitive analysis is a crucial component of market research. It involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses of competitors, analyzing their marketing strategies , and identifying areas where a business can gain a competitive advantage. By understanding the competitive landscape, businesses can differentiate themselves and position their offerings effectively.

Market Trends and Opportunities

Monitoring market trends and identifying opportunities is essential for developing a strategy that is future-proof. Market research helps businesses stay informed about industry trends, technological advancements, and changing consumer preferences. By anticipating shifts in the market, businesses can proactively adapt their strategies and capitalize on emerging opportunities.

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis is a framework used to assess the internal and external factors that impact a business. Market research plays a significant role in conducting a comprehensive SWOT analysis. It helps businesses identify their strengths and weaknesses by analyzing internal factors such as resources, capabilities, and brand perception. Additionally, market research helps in identifying external opportunities and threats by evaluating market dynamics, competitor actions, and industry trends.

Developing a Strategy

Market research forms the foundation for developing a robust and effective strategy. The insights gained from market research help businesses make informed decisions regarding product development, pricing, distribution channels , and marketing communication. A well-defined strategy aligns the business’s objectives with market realities and customer needs, increasing the chances of success.

Implementing and Monitoring the Strategy

Once a strategy is developed, its successful implementation is vital. Market research helps in monitoring the implementation of the strategy by providing feedback and evaluating its effectiveness. By tracking key performance indicators (KPIs), businesses can assess whether the strategy is yielding the desired outcomes and make necessary adjustments if needed.

Final Thoughts on The Importance of Market Research

Market research is a critical component of strategy development. It provides valuable insights into the market, customer behavior, and competitive landscape. By leveraging market research, businesses can identify market opportunities , understand customer needs, and develop effective strategies. The systematic approach of market research ensures that decisions are based on data and analysis rather than assumptions, increasing the likelihood of success.

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Ian has marketed for some of the world's best-known brands like Hewlett-Packard, Ryder, Force Factor, and CIT Bank. His content has been downloaded 50,000+ times and viewed by over 90% of the Fortune 500. His marketing has been featured in Forbes, Inc. Magazine, Adweek, Business Insider, Seeking Alpha, Tech Crunch, Y Combinator, and Lifehacker. With over 10 startups under his belt, Ian's been described as a serial entrepreneur— a badge he wears with pride. Ian's a published author and musician and when he's not obsessively testing the next marketing idea, he can be found hanging out with family and friends north of Boston.

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What Is a Marketing Strategy?

• How It Works
• Marketing Strategies vs. Plans

How to Create a Marketing Strategy

The bottom line.

• Marketing Essentials

Marketing Strategy: What It Is, How It Works, and How to Create One

Investopedia / Daniel Fishel

A marketing strategy refers to a business’s overall game plan to facilitate the buying and selling of its products or services. A marketing strategy determines how to reach prospective consumers and turn them into customers. It contains the company’s value proposition , key brand messaging, data on target customer  demographics, and other high-level elements.

A thorough marketing strategy covers the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion.

Key Takeaways

• A marketing strategy is a business’s game plan for reaching prospective consumers and turning them into customers of their products or services.
• Marketing strategies should revolve around a company’s value proposition.
• The ultimate goal of a marketing strategy is to achieve and communicate a sustainable competitive advantage over rival companies.

Understanding Marketing Strategies

A clear marketing strategy should revolve around the company’s value proposition, which communicates to consumers what the company stands for, how it operates, and why it deserves its business.

This provides marketing teams with a template that should inform their initiatives across all of the company’s products and services. For example, Walmart ( WMT ) is widely known as a discount retailer with “everyday low prices,” whose business operations and marketing efforts are rooted in that idea.

Marketing Strategies vs. Marketing Plans

The marketing strategy is outlined in the marketing plan —a document that details the specific types of marketing activities that a company conducts and contains timetables for rolling out various marketing initiatives.

Marketing strategies should ideally have longer life spans than individual marketing plans because they contain value propositions and other key elements of a company’s brand, which generally hold constant over the long haul. In other words, marketing strategies cover big-picture messaging, while marketing plans delineate the logistical details of specific campaigns.

For example, a marketing strategy might say that a company aims to increase authority in niche circles where their clients visit. The marketing plan puts that into action by commissioning thought leadership pieces on LinkedIn.

Benefits of a Marketing Strategy

The ultimate goal of a marketing strategy is to achieve and communicate a sustainable competitive advantage over rival companies by understanding the needs and wants of its consumers. Whether it’s a print ad design, mass customization , or a social media campaign, a marketing asset can be judged based on how effectively it communicates a company’s core value proposition.

Market research can help chart the efficacy of a given campaign and can help identify untapped audiences to achieve bottom-line goals and increase sales.

Creating a marketing strategy requires a few steps. Here are some of the steps you should consider when creating your marketing strategy.

• Identify your goals: While sales are the ultimate goal for every company, you should have more short-term goals such as establishing authority, increasing customer engagement, or generating leads. These smaller goals offer measurable benchmarks for the progress of your marketing plan. Think of strategy as the high-level ideology and planning as how you accomplish your goals.
• Know your clients: Every product or service has an ideal customer, and you should know who they are and where they hang out. If you sell power tools, you’ll choose marketing channels where general contractors may see your messaging. Establish who your client is and how your product will improve their lives.
• Create your message: Now that you know your goals and who you’re pitching to, it’s time to create your message. This is your opportunity to show your potential clients how your product or service will benefit them and why you’re the only company that can provide it.
• Define your budget: How you disperse your messaging may depend on how much you can afford. Will you be purchasing advertising? Hoping for a viral moment on social media organically? Sending out press releases to the media to try to gain coverage? Your budget will dictate what you can afford to do.
• Determine your channels: Even the best message needs the appropriate venue. Some companies may find more value in creating blog posts for their website. Others may find success with paid ads on social media channels. Find the most appropriate venue for your content.
• Measure your success: To target your marketing, you need to know whether it is reaching its audience. Determine your metrics and how you’ll judge the success of your marketing efforts.

Why Does a Company Need a Marketing Strategy?

A marketing strategy helps a company direct its advertising dollars to where it will have the most impact. Compared with the data from 2018, the correlation between organization and success in marketers jumped from being almost four times more likely to almost seven times more likely in 2022.

What Do the Four Ps Mean in a Marketing Strategy?

The four Ps are product, price, promotion, and place. These are the key factors that are involved in the marketing of a good or service . The four Ps can be used when planning a new business venture, evaluating an existing offer, or trying to optimize sales with a target audience. It also can be used to test a current marketing strategy on a new audience.

What Does a Marketing Strategy Look Like?

A marketing strategy will detail the advertising, outreach, and public relations campaigns to be carried out by a firm, including how the company will measure the effect of these initiatives.

They will typically follow the four Ps. The functions and components of a marketing plan include market research to support pricing decisions and new market entries, tailored messaging  that targets certain demographics and geographic areas, and platform selection for product and service promotion—digital, radio, Internet, trade magazines, and the mix of those platforms for each campaign, and metrics that measure the results of marketing efforts and their reporting timelines.

Is a Marketing Strategy the Same as a Marketing Plan?

The terms “marketing plan” and “marketing strategy” are often used interchangeably because a marketing plan is developed based on an overarching strategic framework. In some cases, the strategy and the plan may be incorporated into one document, particularly for smaller companies that may only run one or two major campaigns in a year. The plan outlines marketing activities on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis, while the marketing strategy outlines the overall value proposition.

Companies need to sell their products and services to generate revenue and put them on the path of being a successful business. To sell their products or services, they have to let consumers know of them. They must also convince consumers to buy them as well as convert consumers from competitors. Having a marketing strategy that outlines this process and more is a crucial step in converting consumers into customers.

Walmart Corporate. “ About .”

CoSchedule. “ Trend Report: Marketing Strategy 2022 .”

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35 Content Marketing Statistics You Should Know

Stay informed with the latest content marketing statistics. Discover how optimized content can elevate your digital marketing efforts.

Content continues to sit atop the list of priorities in most marketing strategies, and there is plenty of evidence to support the reasoning.

Simply put, content marketing is crucial to any digital marketing strategy, whether running a small local business or a large multinational corporation.

After all, content in its many and evolving forms is indisputably the very lifeblood upon which the web and social media are based.

Modern SEO has effectively become optimized content marketing for all intents and purposes.

This is when Google demands and rewards businesses that create content demonstrating experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) for their customers – content that answers all of the questions consumers may have about their services, products, or business in general.

Content marketing involves creating and sharing helpful, relevant, entertaining, and consistent content in various text, image, video, and audio-based formats to the plethora of traditional and online channels available to modern marketers.

The primary focus should be on attracting and retaining a clearly defined audience, with the ultimate goal of driving profitable customer action.

Different types of content can and should be created for each stage of a customer’s journey .

Some content, like blogs or how-to videos, are informative or educational. Meanwhile, other content, like promotional campaign landing pages , gets to the point of enticing prospective customers to buy.

But with so much content being produced and shared every day, it’s important to stay updated on the latest trends and best practices in content marketing to keep pace and understand what strategies may be most effective.

Never has this been more true than in 2024, when we’re in the midst of a content revolution led by generative AI , which some feel represents both an opportunity and a threat to marketers.

To help you keep up, here are 35 content marketing statistics I think you should know:

Content Marketing Usage

How many businesses are leveraging content marketing, and how are they planning to find success?

• According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 73% of B2B marketers, and 70% of B2C marketers use content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy.
• 97% of marketers surveyed by Semrush achieved success with their content marketing in 2023.
• A B2B Content Marketing Study conducted by CMI found that 40% of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy; 33% have a strategy, but it’s not documented, and 27% have no strategy.
• Half of the surveyed marketers by CMI said they outsource at least one content marketing activity.

Content Marketing Strategy

What strategies are content marketers using or finding to be most effective?

• 83% of marketers believe it’s more effective to create higher quality content less often. (Source: Hubspot)
• In a 2022 Statista Research Study of marketers worldwide, 62% of respondents emphasized the importance of being “always on” for their customers, while 23% viewed content-led communications as the most effective method for personalized targeting efforts.
• With the increased focus on AI-generated search engine results, 31% of B2B marketers say they are sharpening their focus on user intent/answering questions, 27% are creating more thought leadership content, and 22% are creating more conversational content. (Source: CMI)

Types Of Content

Content marketing was synonymous with posting blogs, but the web and content have evolved into audio, video, interactive, and meta formats.

Here are a few stats on how the various types of content are trending and performing.

• Short-form video content, like TikTok and Instagram Reel, is the No. 1 content marketing format, offering the highest return on investment (ROI).
• 43% of marketers reported that original graphics (like infographics and illustrations) were the most effective type of visual content. (Source: Venngage)
• 72% of B2C marketers expected their organization to invest in video marketing in 2022. (Source: Content Marketing Institute – CMI)
• The State of Content Marketing: 2023 Global Report by Semrush reveals that articles containing at least one video tend to attract 70% more organic traffic than those without.
• Interactive content generates 52.6% more engagement compared to static content. On average, buyers spend 8.5 minutes viewing static content items and 13 minutes on interactive content items. (Source: Mediafly)

Content Creation

Creating helpful, unique, engaging content can be one of a marketer’s greatest challenges. However, innovative marketers are looking at generative AI as a tool to help ideate, create, edit, and analyze content quicker and more cost-effectively.

Here are some stats around content creation and just how quickly AI is changing the game.

• Generative AI reached over 100 million users just two months after ChatGPT’s launch. (Source: Search Engine Journal)
• A recent Ahrefs poll found that almost 80% of respondents had already adopted AI tools in their content marketing strategies.
• Marketers who are using AI said it helps most with brainstorming new topics ( 51%) , researching headlines and keywords (45%), and writing drafts (45%). (Source: CMI)
• Further, marketers polled by Hubspot said they save 2.5 hours per day using AI for content.

Content Distribution

It is not simply enough to create and publish content.

For a content strategy to be successful, it must include distributing content via the channels frequented by a business’s target audience.

• Facebook is still the dominant social channel for content distribution, but video-centric channels like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are growing the fastest .  (Source: Hubspot)
• B2B marketers reported to CMI that LinkedIn was the most common and top-performing organic social media distribution channel at 84% by a healthy margin. All other channels came in under 30%.
• 80% of B2B marketers who use paid distribution use paid social media advertising. (Source: CMI)

Content Consumption

Once content reaches an audience, it’s important to understand how an audience consumes the content or takes action as a result.

• A 2023 Content Preferences Study by Demand Gen reveals that 62% of B2B buyers prefer practical content like case studies to inform their purchasing decisions, citing “a need for valid sources.”
• The same study also found that buyers tend to rely heavily on content when researching potential business solutions, with 46% reporting that they increased the amount of content they consumed during this time.
• In a recent post, blogger Ryan Robinson reports the average reader spends 37 seconds reading a blog.
• DemandGen’s survey participants also said they rely most on demos ( 62% ) and user reviews (55%) to gain valuable insights into how a solution will meet their needs.

Content Marketing Performance

One of the primary reasons content marketing has taken off is its ability to be measured, optimized, and tied to a return on investment.

• B2C marketers reported to CMI that the top three goals content marketing helps them to achieve are creating brand awareness, building trust, and educating their target audience.
• 87% of B2B marketers surveyed use content marketing successfully to generate leads.
• 56% of marketers who leverage blogging say it’s an effective tactic, and 10% say it generates the greatest return on investment (ROI).
• 94% of marketers said personalization boosts sales.

Content Marketing Budgets

Budget changes and the willingness to invest in specific marketing strategies are good indicators of how popular and effective these strategies are at a macro level.

The following stats certainly seem to indicate marketers have bought into the value of content.

• 61% of B2C marketers said their 2022 content marketing budget would exceed their 2021 budget.
• 22% of B2B marketers said they spent 50% or more of their total marketing budget on content marketing. Furthermore, 43% saw their content marketing budgets grow from 2020 to 2021, and 66% expected them to grow again in 2022.

Content Challenges

All forms of marketing come with challenges related to time, resources, expertise, and competition.

Recognizing and addressing these challenges head-on with well-thought-out strategies is the best way to overcome them and realize success.

• Top 3 content challenges included “attracting quality leads with content” ( 45% ), “creating more content faster” (38%), and “generating content ideas” (35%). (Source: Semrush’s The State of Content Marketing: 2023 Global Report)
• 44% of marketers polled for CMI’s 2022 B2B report highlighted the challenge of creating the right content for multi-level roles as their top concern. This replaced internal communication as the top challenge from the previous year.
• Changes to SEO/search algorithms ( 64% ), changes to social media algorithms (53%), and data management/analytics (48%) are also among the top concerns for B2C marketers.
• 47% of people are seeking downtime from internet-enabled devices due to digital fatigue.
• While generative AI has noted benefits, it also presents challenges for some marketers who fear it may replace them. In Hubspot’s study, 23% said they felt we should avoid using generative AI.
• Another challenge with AI is how quickly it has come onto the scene without giving organizations time to provide training or to create policies and procedures for its appropriate and legal use. According to CMI, when asked if their organizations have guidelines for using generative AI tools, 31% of marketers said yes, 61% said no, and 8% were unsure.

Time To Get Started

As you can clearly see and perhaps have already realized, content marketing can be a highly effective and cost-efficient way to generate leads, build brand awareness, and drive sales. Content, in its many formats, powers virtually all online interactions.

Generative AI is effectively helping to solve some of the time and resource challenges by acting as a turbo-powered marketing assistant, while also raising a few procedural concerns.

However, the demand for content remains strong.

Those willing to put in the work of building a documented content strategy and executing it – by producing, optimizing, distributing, and monitoring high-value, relevant, customer-centric content, with the help of AI or not – can reap significant business rewards.

More resources:

• 6 Ways To Humanize Your Content In The AI Era
• Interactive Content: 10 Types To Engage Your Audience
• B2B Lead Generation: Create Content That Converts

Featured Image: Deemak Daksina/Shutterstock 

Jeff has been helping organizations manage, measure and optimize their Web presences for over 20 years. He has deep knowledge ...

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Cpg will reshape marketing strategies in 2024.

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Flat design with people. CPG - Consumer Packaged Goods acronym. business concept background. Vector ... [+] illustration for website banner, marketing materials, business presentation, online advertising

2024 is shaping up to be a year of innovation for marketing activity in the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) industry says Mediaocean in a new report. Despite macroeconomic headwinds holding over from 2023, optimism pervades the advertising industry. Marketers are gearing up for an active year, expressing their intent to maintain or increase spending in nearly every media channel.

CPG marketing historically has revolved around a focus on the company’s brands. A brand is a name, logo, word, mark, tagline, or any other identifying characteristic that separates a company’s product or service from other competitive offerings on the market. A brand is among the most important assets that a company has because it differentiates the company and helps keep the company in consumers’ minds. Brands are normally protected by using trademarks.

So, it is not surprising that companies invest a lot of time and money to create brand recognition. It is successful when people are able to recognize a brand through visual or auditory cues such as logos, slogans, packaging, colors, or jingles rather than being explicitly exposed to a company’s name. Logos like the Nike NKE swoosh and the Golden Arches of McDonald’s, and taglines like “They’re magically delicious” from Lucky Charms cereal and “I’m a big kid now” from Huggies Pull-Ups diapers all help further brand recognition.

A company’s marketing department works hard to come up with those cues and often conducts market research to determine the success of their brand recognition strategies. These brand recognition strategies are then used in advertising and marketing to drive customer purchases.

In the past, these advertising and marketing plans typically relied on multiple tactics. Popular programs use assorted printed materials (including mailings of all kinds, outdoor signage, etc.) radio messages, product placements, and television ads. As the digital world has advanced, these new platforms have been added to the mix.

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What’s ahead for 2024

Mediaocean recently completed an industry survey among CPG companies that found that brand strategies must evolve; these companies must respond to changing consumer behavior and the advancements in technology that have changed business data and reporting.

Mediaocean noted that CPG companies rated e-commerce as the most critical consumer technology and media trend, a reminder for the CPG industry to focus on omnichannel solutions. These companies must work to optimize their digital presence and leverage data-driven insights. Generative AI, particularly ChatGPT, has captured everyone’s attention, leading to a shift in focus and resources allocation. 2024 promises to be the year that AI moves from speculative use cases to practical day-to-day applications – particularly in the areas of data analysis and market research.

Mediaocean also believes that the importance of measurement and attribution capabilities in advertising investments has steadily increased. CPG marketers today consider it indispensable as part of a full-funnel approach to advertising. Concerns are steadily arising regarding the decline of measuring campaign effectiveness on tech platforms and the open web, highlighting the need for innovative solutions and advanced analytics. As the industry prepares for a cookie less future, marketers are urged to evaluate and test available measurement solutions and proactively adapt before market forces dictate their actions.

Mediaocean concludes that, from an operational standpoint, a prevalent gap between creative and media execution persists. This gap negatively impacts team workflow and messaging relevance, so closing it means an opportunity for brands in a year that will be marked by data deprecation, antitrust regulation, and privacy protection. This sets the stage for adoption of Creative Ad Tech, benefiting all stakeholders in the upcoming year.

POSTSCRIPT: CPG companies represent the bulk of American companies. While the current economic environment has shifted the emphasis of some companies to more private label merchandise, I believe that key marketing principles are basically the same. The brand identification is always valuable to both the customer and the company. The customer looks for quality assurance which is implied in the national brand name and reinforced by the brand’s identity. It is hard to recreate that valuable relationship.

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Case Study | Fashion’s New Rules For Sports Marketing

• Daniel-Yaw Miller

Key insights

• The global sports-sponsorship market is expected to grow from $63.1 billion in 2021 to $109.1 billion by 2030, suggesting there is a huge opportunity for brands using sport to market their products to diverse fanbases.
• Many global sporting organisations are opening up to renewed commercial interest from the fashion industry, resulting in landmark deals such as LVMH’s Olympics partnership and the Skims-NBA tie-up.
• The range of companies showcased in this case study — Tag Heuer and Hugo Boss as well as start-up The Edit Ldn — offer different approaches to building high-performing sports-marketing portfolios.

When the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games kick off in July 2024, the millions of global fans watching will see far more than just athletes.

LVMH brands such as Louis Vuitton, Dior and Berluti will provide uniforms for select teams, while the medals will be the work of its high jewellery label, Chaumet. For the first time ever, the games will feature LVMH-sponsored athletes, including world-champion swimmer Léon Marchand, European champion in artistic gymnastics Mélanie de Jesus dos Santos and Olympic gold-medalist fencer Ezno Lefort.

The “premium” partnership between LVMH and the Olympics marks the biggest indication to date of sport’s newfound importance to fashion. Until recently, sport was one of the remaining cultural arenas in which fashion, with a few exceptions, had failed to forge long-lasting and meaningful relationships. That has changed.

Fashion brands are waking up to the commercial value of sports like basketball, football, tennis and Formula 1 as they look to be part of the booming sports-sponsorship market, which is projected to grow from $63.1 billion in 2021 to $109.1 billion by 2030 , according to PwC.

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“Sport is now the only by-appointment thing to watch on TV or tune into live at that point in time — everything else is on demand,” said Clive Reeves, PwC’s UK sports leader. “To be in the conversation, you need to watch sport at that point in time, which makes it the only thing left in society that really drives a huge volume of people at specific moments, which for brands is very special and valuable.”

A New Playing Field

The scope for fashion’s ability to tap into sports has been blown wide open. Beyond competing with large corporations for traditional sponsorship on jerseys or around stadiums, brands can target niche areas where they may have a more natural impact. For example, they can partner with athletes on clothing lines, dress them for the “tunnel walk” that occurs as they enter an arena — images of which are instantly shared online by dedicated social media accounts — or even create clothing for their avatars in video games.

“There is still so much untapped potential and uncharted territory for brands to explore across so many different sports,” said Kenny Annan-Jonathan, a sports marketing veteran and founder of London-based agency The Mailroom, who was appointed creative director of the Premier League’s Crystal Palace Football Club in August 2023. “We’re only at the outset of seeing where the world of sports can take fashion brands.”

While sportswear companies like Nike, Adidas and Puma have long since aligned their brands with fashion, this case study unpacks opportunities for non-sportswear brands and retailers. The companies profiled — German luxury brand Boss, Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer and UK-based sneaker marketplace start-up The Edit Ldn — each have placed sports marketing at the heart of their growth strategies and brand identities, either to deepen connections with existing consumers or as a means to effectively and authentically target new audiences.

Disclosure: LVMH is part of a group of investors who, together, hold a minority interest in The Business of Fashion. All investors have signed shareholders’ documentation guaranteeing BoF’s complete editorial independence.

Daniel-Yaw Miller is Senior Editorial Associate at The Business of Fashion. He is based in London and covers menswear, streetwear and sport.

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