What is marketing research and how to do it?

WHAT IS MARKETING RESEARCH AND HOW TO DO IT

Marketing research is a strategic process carried out by an organization to the end users to determine or evaluate the feasibility of a new product or service. By carrying out this survey it will help the organizations to actually know their main audience and get a good marketing target, also get the opinions or reviews of the end users on the products or services to see if it may need more improvement.

In a short form I will just say that marketing research if finding exactly what your customers want.

OBJECTIVE OF MARKETING RESEARCH

To know the needs of customers
To outstand your competitors
To set up goal target
Find target market/audience and opportunities
To discover trending goods or services
To minimize cost of marketing
To establish a relationship with Ultimate Consumers

IMPORTANT OF MARKETING RESEARCH

It reduces the risk associated with marketing research decision such as the decision which marketing managers as to make to analyze the general knowledge about the processes involved in marketing your goods or services.
It enables you to identify your marketing niche i.e. those location or individual that are most likely to buy your products or render your services.
It produces new ideas which mean that company can obtain fresh ideas for new and innovative products through marketing research information through feedbacks or review.
It identifies customer’s need

TYPES OF MARKETING RESEARCH

Primary Marketing Research (A combination of both Qualitative and Quantitative Research):

This is the traditional way of conducting a marketing research. It is carried out by a representative of the organization or a paid agent to go out to the street and meet the end users and asking them relevant question about the products or services.

The collected data can be qualitative data (non-numerical data) or quantitative data (numerical or statistical data).

In the process of conducting primary research two kinds of information can be obtained which are exploratory and specific researches.

Exploratory research: is like an interview or a group meeting which involves 6 – 10 people. This method is an open-ended, where a problem is explored by asking open ended questions. Examples are focus group, one-to-one interview,

Focus group: this is like a group of people, selected participant about 6-10 who always come together using any of the online meeting platforms such as whatsApps group video chat, zoom meeting e.t.c to shares their feedback, opinions, knowledge, and insights about the topic at hand also respond to online surveys sent to them. It is an expensive method as it is used to collect complex information.

One-to-one interview: as the name implies, it is an interactive discussion, the questions are mostly open ended questions and asked in a way to make response easy. The researcher asks lots of questions to the respondent to get detailed information concerning the research from the respondent.

Ethnographic research: This method involves collection of data through observations and interviews, which are then used to draw conclusions about how societies and individuals function. This method requires the interviewer to adapt to the natural environment of the respondents which could be a city or a remote village.

Specific researches are used to tackle issues that are identified by exploratory research.

Secondary Marketing Research: This are already analyzed, organized, compiled research information you got from external sources, the report could be from studies by: Government agencies,

Trade associations,
Published market studies,
Competitive information,
Internet,
White papers,
Analyst reports,
Prints or Media,
Social Medias,
Previous in-house studies,
Prior internal focus groups,
Customer emails,
Books,
Datebase
Customer surveys and feedback,
Recordings of internal and external meetings or other businesses in your industry. It may include quantitative and qualitative information

BENEFITS OF AN EFFICIENT MARKETING RESEARCH

It helps businesses gain more ground by strengthening their positions
It identifies the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors
It improves the process of strategic planning
It guides the marketing manager in implanting strategic planning
It helps to evaluate the success of a business against benchmarks
It helps to know customer’s communication methods

WHY DOES EVERY BUSINESS NEED MARKETING RESEARCH?

In our businesses today where there is a lot of competition one has to make an effort means to standout. Marketing research is the key to every effective business especially organizations or businesses that are introducing new products or services or those who want to improve on their existing products or services.

It helps businesses outstand competitions
It creates room for more opportunities
By learning more about your customers, you can gather insights into complementary products and services.
It helps you to know if the location of your business can be favourable.
It helps to identify your targeted audience
It helps you to make important business decisions
It helps you to find out exactly what your customers really want

HOW TO DO MARKETING RESEARCH

Know your target audience: knowing your target audience should be the first thing you should research on. This will help you to figure out the kind of people you will sell to e.g. children or adult, male or female, location, e.t.c

Define your research objective: the objective is about the products or services you are about to lunch. The aim of the objective is to figure out if your audience will like the products or services also how much they are willing to pay for it.

Get questionnaires for your audience: now that you have a research objective, the next thing to do is to come up with a list of research questions for your market, customers and competitors.

You ask questions such as;
What age or gender of your market key target?
Will the new products or service you are about to introduce affects the market and customers?
The location where you function does it have good economy?
Who are your potential customers?
What do your customers really need?
What are the weakness and strength of your competitors?
e.t.c

Gather your finding: In this process you can use any of the research methods either Primary Market Research (A combination of both Qualitative and Quantitative Research) or exploratory research. All which include

Telephone polling
Mailed questionnaires
Online surveys
Personal interviews

Review your data, summarize your findings and take decision: this is an important stage decision making. After gathering all finding, you summarize by getting result from the following question such as;