Market Research Essentials 🔎

Hi Entrepreneur,

This week we’re diving right into how important it is to understand your market in this fast-paced business landscape.

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Market research is important because it helps business spot new opportunities, to ensure there is lower business risk and understand the competition well. Having an in-depth knowledge of your field of business allows you to find the best platforms to advertise and promote your business to your customers.

How to Conduct Market Research?

This brings us to the question of how should we conduct market research to ensure the success of our business? Here are few pointers that would help you in conducting a market research for your business in the right way:

• Find the market research method that suits your business. There are two types of market research methods that you could use to conduct one for your business and these are:

  1. Primary: This is a research you do it yourself to understand your target audience by gathering information directly from your audience. This could include online surveys or focus groups to get a comprehensive understanding of your future customers.

  2. Secondary: When you use existing data to get an understanding of your business, that is secondary market research. This can be done by spotting trends and using marketing tools. It is to be kept in mind that while using this data, there would be citation bias since this data isn’t made while keeping your business in mind.

• While conducting a market research you might have an idea about why you want to conduct this research, whether you should be launching your startup or not. You will come to know your knowledge holes after you have done your primary and secondary market research. This will help you then to separate your goals and assign them to the team that suits well to accomplish them.

• It’s essential to identify your ideal market, who your competitors are and who would be your ideal target audience. To know this information you’ll have to figure out which market niche your business falls under.

• Try and talk to your customers directly. This will help you gain insights on why people spend so much on the product that’s similar to yours and that will help you market your services/product to land perfectly with your target audience

• Analyse your competitors well, this include direct and indirect competitors. This is to research about their strategies, ask their target audience what they think about their services/products and know their tactics.

• After finishing your market research, it’s time for building a plan of action. The market research will help you determine how your product would be doing in the market as well as if there’s a need to tweak it just a bit.

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How to Analyse Competition?

We talked about analysing your competition to get a better understanding of how you can make your product/service land in front of your target audience in the best ways possible. Now the question is how do we analyse the competition? Here are few things to keep in mind while analysing your competition:

• Identify your Competitors: As mentioned before these competitors can be direct or indirect. The key is to start with a making a list of all these competitors. To start with making a list, you can ask yourself these questions:

  1. Who offers services/product similar to you?

  2. Who targets similar audience in the similar geographical areas?

  3. Who are your rivals when it comes to market shares and sales?

  4. Which businesses that serves the same customers even if the products and services they sell are not similar to yours?

  5. Consider how customers would choose between your products/services and these indirect competitors’ services?

  6. Examine businesses that could potential expand in your industry.

• Outline Your Objectives: It is important to define your objectives by clarifying your goals, identifying your information needs, developing and, KPIs. Determining the time frame of this project will influence the depth and scope of your analysis. Making sure that all of this aligns well with your business strategy and being open to adjusting your objectives when necessary.

• Data Collection: Effective data collection is another fundamental step in the competitor analysis process, as the quality and relevance of the data you gather directly influence the insights you gain. Begin by identifying data sources that will give you the information you’re looking for. These sources can include both online and offline channels.

If you’re looking for expert advices on how to conduct a market research, then Tune in to our Podcast every Thursday on Spotify to learn more about all things related to startups, innovation and creating something from scratch. 🎙️

Here are some tools that would help in the process of market research:

• Glimpse: Glimpse is valuable for doing quick pulse-checks on the latest trends, but it also leverages the power of AI for even deeper insights.

• Statista: Statista is a data visualization website that takes data from reputable reports across the web and makes them easy and digestible for researchers, marketers, and product creators just like you.

• Think With Google: These marketing research tools offer interesting insights on whether anyone is looking for your product (Google Trends), which markets to launch to (Market Finder), and what retail categories rise as the months and seasons pass (Rising Retail Categories).

• Census Bureau: The Census Bureau offers a free resource for searching U.S. census data. You can filter by age, income, year, and location. You can also use some of its shortcuts to access visualizations of the data, allowing you to see potential target markets across the country.

• Make My Persona: This tool allows you to create a buyer persona for your potential new product. In this tool, you pick a name for the persona, choose their age, identify their career characteristics, and identify their challenges, allowing you to pinpoint both demographic and psychographic information.

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We hope that this information was helpful to you and you’d be able to make a perfect market research plan! We hope to hear more about your business at our Networking Event! 🚀

Warm regards,

The Startup Events Team 🌐