How is your company going about your market research–Instagram polls? Customer satisfaction surveys? How’s that working out for you?
To truly move the needle for your business, you need market research solutions that stretch beyond freebie or “duct-tape” solutions. A customized market research project helps you see the opportunities and challenges within your specific market, not the marketplace in general. These hyper-relevant insights could be just the intel you need to rocket past the competition.
Here are five key benefits of crafting your own custom research project.
We’ve seen far too many companies lose money by attempting research on their own. Without a clear, focused direction, DIY market research efforts quickly turn into loads of time and money wasted.
When your business is gearing up to expand into a new market, develop a new product, or launch a new ad campaign, you need solid market research to validate your ideas.
While you may worry about the money you’ll invest in a custom research project, you should worry more about the risk of not doing your due diligence. Wouldn’t you rather know how your customers will respond to your new branding, before dropping tons of money on packaging and collateral?
Industry reports and online polls can only go so far in learning what matters most to your customers. With custom projects, you can ask specific and complex questions that increase your business intelligence. You can pivot and follow up when new themes arise, allowing you to go beyond the surface.
Consumer habits and preferences vary wildly across markets, and custom research gives you insight into your unique audience like nothing else can. Many businesses start with generalized secondary research that gives insight into the industry as a whole. While secondary research is useful, it tends to be more general. With an individualized project based on your unique objectives, you’ll get insights you can act on.
From the latest meme to the newest social cause, the quick pace of trends affect consumers like never before. Knowing what will stick and what will be gone tomorrow is an art all of its own – one that market research can help illuminate.
Custom market research helps businesses track and respond to changes in customer buying habits, values, and needs quickly.
For example, if your customers want more health-conscious choices in your store, product taste tests will tell you which products are the most appealing to your market. You may find out that your customers crave organic ingredients but aren’t quite willing to try plant-based meat substitutes. Customized research projects identify details like this before you make costly inventory decisions or react too slowly to changing trends.
It’s never a good idea to rely on one source of information when making important decisions. Your overall business intelligence is much deeper than an Instagram poll or a single survey.
There are several ways to conduct quality market research, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages. With custom research projects, you gain a robust understanding of your market through a variety of research methodologies. Raw data without analysis isn’t very useful, though. You need experts to help you analyze and interpret the results.
Go beyond Instagram polls, SurveyMonkey and last year’s industry reports. Get deeper and more focused insights with a customized market research project. Learn about our individualized end-to-end research solutions to help take your business to the next level.