Written By:
Team Contify
Why Market Research Is Essential in Today’s Competitive Market
Market research (also referred to as marketing research or business marketing research) is conducted to gather information and understand an organization’s target market. There are several market research techniques or market research methodologies that can be used to conduct business market research, and the information gathered can be used by businesses in many ways. These include developing better products, improving user experience, crafting a market research strategy that attracts quality leads and improves conversion rates, and/or improving overall business strategy.
In a world overflowing with information, extracting insights that are relevant to your business can be tough. A market research process (including both traditional and online market research methods) provides a way to sift through the clutter and gather information on your target market and audience. In this article, let us understand why market research for business growth is essential, explore techniques of marketing research that provide a competitive edge, and review some market research tools and techniques to help you conduct research more efficiently. Let’s begin.
1. Understand Your Audience & Competitors: The understanding and perspective gained on the target audience and competition business to business market research or small business market research help companies strengthen their position in the market.
2. Minimize Investment Risks: Market research helps companies, especially those doing market research for small business, can minimize any investment risk by evaluating a market, product, concept or idea in which the company may be thinking about allocating budgets.
3. Identify Threats & Opportunities: It helps identify and highlight any threats down the road, or any opportunity that otherwise may have been missed through traditional methods of market research.
4. Evaluate Strengths & Weaknesses: It helps evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your competitors, using advanced market research techniques.
5. Spot Industry Trends Early: Market research helps in spotting prevalent or emerging trends in your industry, which can help you capitalize on them through modern methods for business research.
6. Fuel Strategic Innovation: It fuels innovation by providing a base for strategic planning and market research business intelligence that bring about a competitive advantage.
7. Target the Right Market Segment: It helps companies segment the market (using common market research methods business leaders trust), so that they can focus on the segment that matches the organization’s profile and provides the highest growth.
8. Focus on Customer Needs: It helps companies focus on the needs and demands of their target audience. Customer is at the center of your business is important in present times, and market research keeps you attentive as to where you can improve your proposition, customer service or product offering.
9. Benchmark Business Performance: It helps companies evaluate their business’s success, using insights from market research business, against established industry benchmarks for faster growth, greater productivity, and increased business effectiveness.
Now that we have a solid grasp on the importance and need of market research for business growth in modern times, let us understand the various types of market research techniques used to conduct research for continuous growth.
Proven Business Market Research Techniques to Help Your Company Grow
While newer tools to conduct market research have joined the array of market research methods and techniques, and online market research is a major tool to extract insights, traditional methods of market research are still used by other companies, particularly for small business market research. Let us break down market research techniques from the top.
Understanding the Two Key Types of Market Research: Primary vs. Secondary
So basically market research can be split into two distinct sections: primary research, and secondary market research(including online marketing research methods), which also encompasses online market research.
Primary research is one of the most effective market research methods that a company carries out itself, including running its own focus groups or conducting market research surveys. It is also known as ‘field research’, as it involves going out into the field to get data.
Secondary market research is researching information already collected by other people that a company wants to use. This is a common approach in market research for small business examples, where agility and budget constraints matter.
These sections are further divided into two part:
- Qualitative research
- Quantitative research
Qualitative research is usually considered to be particularly suitable for exploratory research in business market research methods or when exploring market research for small business dynamics. It is primarily used to discover and gain an in-depth understanding of individual experiences, thoughts, opinions, and trends, and to dig deeper into the psyche of the target audience.
Quantitative research, on the other hand, is all about numbers and figures. It is used to quantify opinions, attitudes, behaviors, of the target audience with the goal to support or refute hypothesis about a specific phenomenon. It is specific as to what is measured and how it is measured in order to uncover patterns in behavior, motivation, emotion, and cognition, and is thus considered to be much more structured than qualitative methods.
The following methods cover all of these sections as well as subsections of market research. Usage depends on a company’s specific aims. Let’s have a look.
Common Market Research Methods
Here are the top 10 proven business research techniques we use for effective market research and decision-making in both small business market research and enterprise-level strategies:
- Surveys
- Focus group
- Social media listening
- Interviews
- Experiments or field trials
- Observation
- Purchasing research reports
- Competitive analysis
- Sales data
- Market intelligence tools
Let’s explore each one in detail to understand how they drive smart business decisions.
1. Surveys
Market research surveys use open-ended or close-ended questions to elicit responses from a sample of the target audience known as respondents. These questions can be given to respondents in person, over the phone, via email, or through an online form. Surveys are one of the most commonly used market research methods and techniques, often considered the best methods of conducting marketing research due to their versatility. They’re particularly useful in market research for small business use cases.
They are also cost-effective, and thus good for small businesses on a tight budget. While surveys are a great way to gather real-time, detailed information directly from the target audience, information gathered this way can be unreliable.
2. Focus group
Focus groups are a classic example of traditional business market research methods. This market research technique is also common in business to business market research settings where insights from decision-makers are essential. Generally, the participants in focus groups will be chosen based on certain criteria, such as demographics, interests, or occupation.
Feedback from focus groups can provide an organization with insights about which particular area they need to invest more to capture a higher market share. However, answers from focus groups can go off on tangents that organizations may not have thought of.
3. Social media listening
This is one of the most useful online market research methods in today’s landscape. It is especially relevant for businesses exploring how to do market research for small business using real-time digital conversations. Organizations use social media listening tools to identify topics of their interest, then analyze relevant social posts.
They can track their brand, product or service mentions (or those of their competitors) and what consumers are saying about them. Social media listening churns out vast amounts of unfiltered information which can offer deep actionable insights when analyzed.
4. Interviews
Interviews involve speaking directly to the respondents. These are highly valuable market research techniques for gathering qualitative insights and are often employed in both market research for business growth and product development studies. They are also favored by those seeking to understand how to research business market dynamics at a deeper level.
They provide valuable and reliable information, and can be used to understand in-depth about a particular topic or a product or service. However, they can be time-intensive and costly.
5. Experiments or field trials
Field trials are experiments conducted on the target audience. These are great for validating ideas and are a practical application of how to do market research for a business idea. Experiments are also one of the more advanced market research techniques, bridging product design with real-world feedback.
For example, a newly launched product is placed in stores. This is done to understand consumer feedback on a new product or service. The feedback from the customers who buy the product will help the company understand if their product will work in the market on a larger scale. It can be considered a form of product testing.
6. Observation
Observational market research involves an organization observing its subjects in either a natural or controlled environment. While observation provides very reliable data about consumer behavior and preferences, it only works when the subjects are unaware of the observation.
This method is part of both traditional and modern methods for business research. Observation plays a key role in market research business studies where actual behavior matters. An example of observation could be a market researcher observing shoppers’ behavior by day of the week, by season, when there are discounts offered, etc.
7. Purchasing research reports
A number of large private companies may not have the time or resources to conduct market research in- house. Purchasing research reports conducted by other companies that specialize in market research services seems like a good business idea for such organizations.
In such cases, they rely on third-party business market research services that offer ready-made insights through published reports. These services provide valuable access to market research tools and techniques that save time and enhance accuracy. Purchasing research reports is popular these days because it is a massive time saver, and organizations have a better idea of what they’ll be getting from the start.
Furthermore, data is presented in a format that makes sense, saving organizations the effort in cleaning and organizing data.
8. Competitive analysis
Competitive analysis is a cornerstone of market research business intelligence. It’s a critical market research strategy for organizations exploring business to business market research, and it supports techniques of marketing research like SWOT and perceptual mapping, allowing organizations to analyze their competitors.
However, the data needed to conduct a competitive analysis sometimes requires some market research of its own.
9. Sales data
Sales analysis is often overlooked in business market research, but it’s one of the most reliable methods of market research business teams can access internally. It also helps validate findings from online market research processes.
An analysis of an organization’s sales data can provide some pretty actionable insights, and answer questions about real world customers, potential customers, their buying habits, and how they are changing over time.
It helps organizations gain a better perspective of action and consequence.
10. Market intelligence tools
Market research is a subset of market intelligence, and thus market intelligence tools can be a very capable form of gathering market research. Market intelligence tools can combine a number of market research techniques like social media listening and competitive analysis, in addition to gathering and analyzing data from the internet, including news, blogs, company websites, social media, regulatory and government portals, industry trade association reports, press releases, job boards, review websites, etc.
They are ideal for conducting scalable online marketing research methods, and help organizations execute a consistent market research strategy with automated insights. Platforms like Contify are leading examples of this evolution in business market research methods.
How Contify's market intelligence tools can help you get along with the market
Contify is a market & competitive intelligence platform that helps organizations collect, curate, and share information on their competitors and their target markets, allowing them to compete intelligently, get ahead and succeed in the modern digital markets. Contify’s proprietary machine-learning algorithm filters noise from unstructured web data, transforming it into actionable competitive and market intelligence. This helps businesses track their competitors, industry segments, customers, and their entire competitive landscape with unmatched precision. A regular stream of competitive intelligence and insights ensures that you’re not just reacting to your competitors’ strategic moves, but planning your own in advance. Thus, not only it can offer the benefits of market research, but lightyears beyond it.
Conclusion
Every organization needs to decide for themselves which market research technique or method works the best for them. Not all methods will be right for your business situation, some methods are great for small business administration, while others are only suitable for enterprises.
Go through this list, and do some research on your own as to which of these market research techniques will be the most suitable for your business. Spend time considering what you want to achieve, what data you’ll need, the pros and cons of each method, the costs of conducting the research, and the cost of analyzing the results. Then, armed with actionable information, take a confident, informed decision. That is the key to success in business, and the key to gaining a competitive edge.
Frequently asked questions
1. What are the most effective market research techniques for businesses?
The most effective market research techniques vary depending on your business goals. Commonly used business research techniques include surveys, focus groups, interviews, observation, and competitive analysis. Many companies also use online market research methods and advanced market research techniques like social media listening or market intelligence platforms for faster insights.
2. How is primary research different from secondary research?
Primary research involves collecting first-hand data through methods like surveys, interviews, and focus groups that are ideal for businesses wanting fresh, targeted insights. Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing existing data from reports, databases, or public sources. Both are key methods of market research business teams use at different stages of strategy development.
3. How do I know which market research method is best for my business?
Choosing the right market research method depends on your budget, objectives, timeline, and target audience. For instance, small business market research often favors cost-effective tools like surveys or social listening, while larger firms may opt for advanced market research techniques or comprehensive business market research services.
4. What tools can help automate market research analysis?
Several market research tools and techniques can automate data collection, analysis, and reporting. Platforms like Contify help streamline online market research processes by pulling insights from multiple sources into a single view. These tools are ideal for both small business market research and enterprise-level intelligence efforts.
