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Market research is something that a business deals with every day. If you miss what is happening with your customers, suppliers, rivals, and market changes, you will lose your business sooner than you think. Doing market research increases your leads and revenues, even if you have a small-scale business like a boutique or a hair salon. In the following passage, we introduce five ways to improve your business with market research and introduce one of the best market research companies in Canada.
What Is Market Research?
As its name implies, market research is the process of gathering necessary information about customers, competitors, and market trends. Businesses can analyze this data and make future decisions based on it. The best example for effective market research is Starbucks that has been gathering customer feedback for more than 14 years.
But why is market research important for a business? There are 6 reasons why market research is a key to starting a business.
It helps you make data-driven decisions and design targeted marketing campaigns.
It helps you detect potential problems with your business.
It shows how and when you can grow your business.
It tells you more about your customers’ needs and behaviors. This allows you to customize your products and services based on their needs and increase your brand awareness.
It allows you to find and understand your top competitors.
It helps you risk more. Once you have enough data about the marketplace, you can take a risk without being worried about losing all your assets.
Types of Market Research
Market research can be done in 4 ways.
Primary research
In this type of market research, the business acquires the data directly from the customers. Questionnaires, quick interviews, in-app polls, and discussions to get feedback are the most common ways to get data in this method. If your customers are unwilling to fill out a questionnaire or participate in a discussion, you can offer rewards and discounts to motivate them.
Secondary research
Secondary research involves using pre-existing data to improve the business. Reports published by the government and industry, articles, newspapers, competitors’ research, university journals, etc. are great sources of secondary data. Such data helps you enlarge your database and solve your current problems.
Quantitative research
This type of research is a bit more challenging and requires more time and resources. In this type of research, you have to observe and control a group of customers to find their behavioral patterns. Once you obtain authentic data, you can make predictions, make data-driven decisions, and optimize your approaches.
Qualitative research
In qualitative research, you measure things that cannot be quantified, like what the customers «think» about your product or service or their motivation when choosing you over your competitors. This data comes in handy when you are designing a new product or updating the existing ones.
5 Ways to Improve Your Business with Market Research
Market research can make far-reaching changes to your business if it is done correctly. Look at the following 5 ways to improve your business with market research.
Use market research to understand your target audience.
One of the most important benefits of market research is getting to know your customers. This helps you make wise decisions about the new products, when and how to update them, and where to present them. Regardless of your business’s size, you can segment your customers based on their behaviors, needs, location, demographic, and preferred interaction channels. Once you have categorized your customers, you can target them in marketing campaigns and use up-sale techniques to increase sales.
Analyze the market trends with careful market research.
All markets face changes over time. These trends are made by the governments, political issues, social media, and customers’ behaviors. Finding out about the market fluctuations requires market research and technical analysis.
Study your competitors and find growth opportunities.
If your business has failed to keep pace in the marketplace, studying the competitors can be a game-changer. With market research techniques, you can find your rivals’ strengths and weaknesses and compare them to yours. Plus, you will gather invaluable information about the market's gaps, your competitive advantages, and how to make your business unique.
Use market research to optimize your marketing strategies.
Marketing strategies are the cornerstones of business success. With marketing research data, you can adjust your strategies to customers’ needs and preferences, improve your brand image, and find the best advertising tools.
Market research makes you prepared for market challenges.
Taking risks in an ever-changing market is tricky; but with comprehensive market research and risk assessment, you can identify potential risks, make a plan, and mitigate potential hazards. Continuous monitoring of the market prepares you for what’s to come and helps you quickly respond to threats.
Top Market Research Company in Canada
Now that you know how market research helps a business, it’s time to take action. If you own a business in Canada, a full-service marketing agency like 1st Class Digital Solution can help you with your market research. Our marketers use all the available resources, like social media, analytics tools, surveys, reports, newsletters, and e-books to know more about your customers, competitors, and market trends. The data we gather from your competitors (such as their sales volume, market share, suppliers, and weaknesses) will help you find the gap in the market and fill it on time. After doing market research and analyzing its data, we provide you with tailored marketing strategies to:
Increase your customers and leads;
Increase your market share;
Outpace your competitors;
Overcome market challenges and risks;
Help you predict whether a product or service will be successful or not;
Create new products, or update the existing ones based on your target audiences’ needs.
Book your free consultation session with our marketers now.
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