As marketing professionals, we’re constantly looking for new ways to connect with our customers more effectively. We want to know what they like about your product or service, how to improve it, and whether they will choose to do business with you.
By collecting and analyzing data through research studies, surveys, and questionnaires, you can make an informed decision as to what changes should be made to better fulfill people’s needs.
The same applies if you are trying to determine which strategies work best in promoting engagement and interaction among your audience members. By studying successful examples, you can pick up helpful tips and tricks.
Market researchers must have solid knowledge of both field theory and statistical analysis before they can perform their jobs professionally.
Fortunately, there are many great resources available online that can teach you these things! Here are some free lessons so that you can begin developing your skills right away.
General Lessons
You can learn quite a bit from watching videos and reading articles related to general market research methods. These tutorials will go into greater detail than what is discussed here, but they will give you a basic understanding of various concepts.
Some of the topics covered include:
Questionnaire design
Survey questions
Sampling techniques
Statistical analysis
Field theories
When learning about survey questionnaire design, special attention should be paid to the type of question asked.
History of marketing research
The practice of market research has changed quite a bit over the years. Back in the early stages of capitalism, business owners would spend their time traveling around seeking out new sources of income and resources for your company.
They would go into various industries and see what methods they used to promote their products and services. By doing this, they would find ways to incorporate those strategies into your company’s budget or use them as inspiration for developing your own.
Since then, however, companies have increasingly relied on online tools to help facilitate their studies. Some even launch apps that do not cost anything at all!
With the availability of technology these days, it is very easy to perform basic research. What you will probably run into, though, are limitations to how much information you get due to advertising policies.
There may also be questions about validity concerning some surveys. Make sure to check out our article here on why survey results aren’t always accurate.
Whatever you are looking to learn from this research, make sure to apply things like theory (what factors influence the product/service) and experiments (testing different versions of an advertisement).
Who should do marketing research
As mentioned before, marketers spend too much time doing non-marketing related work. Doing surveys to find out what people want is one of the most important functions of any marketer. It’s also an easy way to start developing your research skills.
As a marketing researcher, you will be collecting information about products and services for companies to use in advertising or internal reports. You can even choose to perform qualitative research by asking open-ended questions or performing interviews with people to get their opinions more thoroughly.
There are two main reasons why most companies don’t have formal research departments. First, it can be expensive to run a survey process. Companies may not include the cost of designing the questionnaire or paying someone to help conduct the survey when budgeting resources.
Second, some brands believe that they already have all the needed info. They think there isn’t anything new they could learn about their product that they didn’t already know. This assumption is false!
By doing your own research, you will save money and increase knowledge at the same time. Plus, as a professional researcher, you will gain prestige from showing off how well you manage budgets while still providing quality insights.
What types of marketing research exist
There are several different ways to study human behavior for market research purposes, with each method having its own special name. These names make sense because they describe what the studies do!
One way is to call this type of research qualitative. This is due to the fact that it asks people about their thoughts and feelings in order to get insights into how they feel about something. For example, asking someone if they like an item or service will typically not give you much information unless the person chooses to tell you. But by adding a question such as why they think the item/service is good, you can learn a lot!
Another term for this kind of research is interview-based. That is because participants must answer questions during the survey or interview.
Yet another term for this type of research is focus groups. This is because these surveys usually involve small groups of individuals who discuss things together.
What all of these terms have in common is that they require conversation. If you’ve ever watched a movie where two characters talk at length about nothing important, then you know what I mean. (I am referring here to those “important” conversations we sometimes have when there is really nothing else to say.)
Marketing researchers use silence to gain knowledge! They ask open-ended questions, and wait for people to speak before moving onto the next topic.
How can you perform marketing research
Performing market research is an integral part of any successful business. Whether it’s for products, services or to find out more information about how to run your business, marketing research is one of the most important functions in anyone’s career.
By doing proper research, you will know what strategies are working for other businesses like yours and what could be improved upon!
As a marketing researcher, you will need to gather reliable data that doesn’t rely on hearsay or assumptions. You must make sure that you have enough samples before drawing conclusions from them.
There are several ways to conduct effective market research including using surveys, focus groups and interviews. All of these require careful planning and execution.
Sample marketing research methods
There are several different types of studies you can conduct to determine how well your product or service is working for your company. Some are more scientific, while others are not.
The two most common types of marketing research are focused surveys and broader online surveys. Focused surveys ask respondents about products, services, or topics related to yours with quantitative questions (“yes/no”, “on a scale from one to five”, etc.). Broad surveys simply ask people to give their opinion without any parameters.
Surveys can be conducted in person, by phone, or via online questionnaires or applications. It does not matter which type you choose, just make sure to gather adequate data!
For example, buying a large number of items at a discount store to find out what brands are best supported there is not a good way to evaluate merchandise. You would need to compare prices across many stores, and then evaluate whether the discounts were effective before making conclusions.
Bytemation – A short video teaser off an extended YouTube clip.
Further reading
Having a business goal without knowing how to reach that goal is like driving with no destination. You may get somewhere, but you don’t know where so you can’t enjoy the journey!
Business owners who want to see their companies succeed must understand what they hope to achieve and then develop strategies to accomplish those goals.
That’s why marketing research is so important – it helps you identify your company’s strengths and weaknesses by studying market data and answering questions about the products and services you offer.
What is the best marketing research tool?
One of the most important things to consider when choosing between different types of data collection tools are your resources and how much time you have to invest in using each one.
If you do not have enough time to use something, then it is probably better to go with another tool that requires less investment. Your budget can be limited at times, so being cost-effective is an excellent idea.
The main factors determined by effectiveness of a marketing research tool include accuracy, cost, and versatility. Accuracy comes from having adequate test questions prepared ahead of time and practicing these tests to make sure they match what you are looking for.
Cost typically includes the software package, additional fees such as survey sites’s surveys or applications services, and any hard copies needed (for example, questionnaires).
Versatility refers to whether the tool has features that can help you evaluate other aspects of the business. For instance, some tools allow you to add pictures to enhance the answers. This way you can get more detailed information about products and services.
Marketing processes
A marketing process is an organized way to implement changes into your business or organization. These can be internal changes (in-house) or external ones (marketing agencies or other organizations).
Most businesses have a set process for finding new customers, offering products and services, gathering information about their market, developing a message and strategy for them, and then performing these actions consistently over time.
These processes are what makes the difference between success and failure in marketing.
