By: Matt Seltzer, Guest Blogger — Founder, S2 Research
Market research is one of those marketing tactics that often gets forgotten within the modern marketing mix. But when it comes to doing better marketing, there’s almost no tactic that makes nearly as much impact.
Market research helps you to:
- Clearly identify your target audience,
- Determine the best way to communicate with your customers,
- Learn what your audience wants from your company, brand or product, and
- Uncover insights about your audience to make your marketing efforts better, more efficient, and more targeted.
The challenge, though, is that most marketers simply aren’t well-versed in how to do this very important market research. Everything from gathering secondary data to surveys can be a daunting challenge for marketers, especially when they’re juggling a million and one other marketing projects. So, conducting research can easily fall by the wayside.
That’s why I wanted to put together this simple seven-step market research process that any marketer can easily follow. Whether you want to dive into a full-blown audience study, or just conduct some preliminary research using website resources, this seven-step market research process will help you understand and use market research more effectively as part of your overall marketing strategy.
Step 1: Decide what you want to learn
At the end of the day, market research is about learning, that is, learning about your target market, gaining feedback from your existing customers, and getting consumer opinions about your products or services. But, that learning needs to be focused. When you set out to do market research you need to have a general idea of what information you want to gather about your target audience.
Start by defining your audience, sometimes called a buyer persona. Then, ask yourself what you’d like to know about them in order to make your marketing more dialed into your customer’s needs. Do you want to learn about their buying habits? Their media habits? Brand or product-category preferences?
Take the first step into the arena of market research by asking yourself what would you want to know about your customers. With that answer in hand, you’ll be able to proceed to the next step in my seven-step market research process.
Step 2: Gather data
Once you have an idea of what you want to learn using this seven-step marketing process, it’s time to gather your research data. This can be a simple process, or it can be as complex as you’d like, so bear with me.
Before you get started, consider the following three factors:
- What information is already out there?
- What is your timeframe?
- What is your budget?
The answers to these three questions are the guiding points of your market research. Secondary research – research that has already been conducted – can often be a great solution for projects with a tight turnaround or a limited budget. And even when those factors aren’t in play, thanks to a wealth of public information and data available online, you can often find the information you need to draw the relevant conclusions you need for your marketing research project.
If you have the resources, working with a marketing consultant to conduct a market research survey study or a focus group can be an easy way to remove some of the headaches of DIY market research.
Take the time to consider the best methods for your business, and then gather relevant information about your audience and what you are seeking to learn about their habits and attitudes.
Step 3: Organize your documents
At this point in the market research process, you probably have a massive amount of information –pages and pages of Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and possibly even Post-it notes scattered on your desk. This is the part where most marketers get frustrated with the market research process, and that’s why my seven-step process helps marketers make sense of all of the parts and pieces.
Organizing your market research information is imperative to get rid of the mayhem. First of all, look for commonalities within your information.
- Do you have a giant set of buyer behavior data? Store that together.
- Did you uncover information about different audience segments? Organize your research by audience type.
- Were you able to uncover insights about your audience’s media habits? Record it all in the same document.
If you’re not sure where to organize a certain piece of information, feel free to include it in a few different places. I’ll show you how to take care of redundancies like that later.
Once you’ve taken the time to organize your market research findings, you’ll have a better idea of what matters most to your end goals.
Step 4: Build a narrative
Once you have your information organized, start converting all of your market research information into a narrative about your audience.
Marketers are storytellers, and as such, your customers also respond to stories. In this step, you’ll be building out those storylines about your market, including their buying habits, preferences, and whatever else you want to measure.
Begin by translating your materials, figures, and data into clear, simple language. Convert those statistics into memorable messages and group redundant chunks of information until they tell a clear, obvious story.
If you have multiple audience segments, you’ll want to build multiple narratives, one for each segment.
By following this step, you’ll develop a series of thoughts that paint a cohesive, detailed picture of who your audience is, and what matters most to them, which, in turn, will allow you to communicate your brand and messaging in a logical manner.
Step 5: Cut out anything irrelevant
One of the most important parts of the market research process is the elimination of unnecessary information. For marketers, it’s time to pull out the scissors and leave some of the information on the cutting room floor!
As you build out your narrative, you probably have discovered some information that isn’t necessarily relevant to your research at hand.
- Redundant information that comes up over and over from multiple sources.
- Unnecessary information that doesn’t pertain to your marketing.
- Obvious information that doesn’t warrant retelling.
With gusto, begin eliminating everything that doesn’t pertain to your end goal. Consider each of your findings in the context of marketing and conscientiously consider whether its inclusion gives you any marketing benefit. If the answer is ‘no’, kill it.
Also, take the time to summarize complex sections or group data that comes up too often or pertains to all segments instead of just one.
What you’re trying to do here is harness the key findings. The best way to do that is to eliminate the clutter of noise surrounding those findings.
Step 6. Boil it down to what it means for marketing
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
— William Shakespeare
As stated, marketers are storytellers. And often, the best stories, especially the ones that stick with us the most, are the short ones. This is akin to developing your elevator spiel.
Market research is valuable when it’s understood. I recommend writing your final research findings into a short, sweet, and to the point research document. Following is an outline of the format you should follow.
Consider common marketing tools that you are most likely already using:
- Creative briefs,
- Messaging briefs,
- Buyer personas, and
- Strategic memos.
All of these tools are known for their short, simple format. Often, these tools are no longer than a page or two. These are the types of tools that will help your marketing research be successful.
Using a combination of text, visuals, and metaphors convert your research into one of the above marketing tools. Then edit, edit, and edit, some more until you have succinctly painted a picture and told a story about your customer base.
Be insightful. Use powerful language to tell a compelling story about your audience. Your goal here is to verify a marketing need, identity competitors, and improve your company’s product offerings in order to satisfy your customers’ needs.
Using traditional marketing skills, storytelling tools, and specialized tactics you’ll be able to make sense of your market research. This critical step will bring your market research insights to life.
Step 7. Revisit your marketing strategy
Finally, with usable market research data in hand, it’s time to revisit your marketing strategies and strengthen them with incredible customer perceptions.
The goal of market research is to enhance or guide your marketing strategy, and with a clear, simple narrative, you will be able to do exactly that.
Begin by addressing your messaging and communications strategy.
- Does it coincide with what you now know about your audience and how they like to be communicated with?
- Does your media or messaging reflect the lifestyle and values of your target audiences?
- If you uncovered key audience segments to guide your marketing, do you have an appropriate strategy for each segment?
This inward, self-reflective approach toward your marketing is where the value of market research really comes to life. Just as an expert on a specific audience or industry would improve a marketing strategy with their own experience and insider knowledge, you too have access to expert information in the form of market research.
Spend time revising your marketing strategy with your market research findings, improving, optimizing, and experimenting. You’ll be amazed by the final results of your truly targeted marketing approach.
Use research in your marketing plan
Again, market research is one of the most beneficial and under-utilized tactics within the marketer’s toolbox. But with the right approach, even complex research analyses can become something accessible to any marketer.
Don’t let the fear of complex market research hold you back. Take the time to follow this seven-step market research process in your current marketing plan or consider using it the next time you sit down to develop a new product or promote an existing product to a new marketplace.
Meet the author
Matt Seltzer is the owner and lead consultant at S2 Research, a Las Vegas-based market research and strategy consulting firm. A life-long marketer, Matt started S2 Research because he recognized a need that marketing agencies and in-house marketing departments have to gain better insight into their customers’ buying habits and perceptions about products and services. Experienced in both research and marketing strategy, he now serves as a market research partner to companies by providing them valuable market research insights, strategies, and methodologies to help them develop a game plan for better marketing effectiveness. Learn more at S2Research.com.
