Whatever business you want to start up or do market research is the backbone of it. Market research helps you to understand your competitors and audience well. You can build product development and marketing strategies and a complete business model. Moreover, you can find loyal users who refer your product to others, which leads your business to the next level. Here, we will guide you about market research, its benefits, types, engaging methodologies, and tools to get better user research and understand competitors.
What is market research?
Market research is the term of interpreting, analyzing, and gathering information about the market and users that confirm the success of a product. It helps you to understand the user and the behavior of competitors, examine market trends, and provide market insight into your business. It will help you to make decisions, develop marketing strategies, and launch new products.
The main point of market research is to examine the product, how the audience reacts to it after launching, and what marketing strategies it requires.
What is market research?
Types of market research
Before investing in market research, you must know well about the types of market research. These types help you to understand your business needs and goals. There are two main types of market research: primary market research and secondary market research. Let’s briefly discuss these two types of market research.
Primary Market Research
Primary market research is the process of collecting firsthand data that is directly from the source. In other words, it is a process where you can get direct information from users who use your products. It includes many strategies like surveys, focus groups, and interviews to gather information or market trends. Primary research has two further categories: specific primary research and exploratory primary research.
Exploratory research
It involves open-ended questions that detail interview formats, which include a specific number of participants.
Specific research
It includes a targeted and focused approach to collect complete information that aligns with objectives. It follows the exploratory primary market research to identify the problem.
Secondary Market research
Secondary market research is a process that uses the existing data and information organized from outsourcing like media, government agencies, media, etc. The secondary market research has three categories: public sources, commercial sources, and educational institutions.
Public Source
This source is the first layer of gathering data while conducting secondary research. The source of this type is free, and you can find and collect information easily. For instance, Government statistics is the best example of a public source.
Commercial Source
This source often costs a fee to get and download data because these sources are from a specific industry or agency.
Internal Source
This source depends on the existing internal data like average revenue, historical data, customer retention rate, etc. You can get the data from it.
How to conduct market research?
It is difficult for someone to pick the right tool, strategies, and method of better market research for their business. Because there are many tool and resources available for someone who want to start a business, they have to do the proper user research and market research that gives successful leads to the product or website. Here are five main steps that help you to get better market research.
Identify your ideal market.
First, you need to know the niche of your business. Then, focus on the three specific factors related to the market research. These are users or customers, competitors, and the complete target market. If you set your aim for a better market, then you can make the right decision.
Talk to experts
Second, you have to talk to experts who are already in the market and ask them about the pros and cons of market research and which business is suitable for the profit. Moreover, you have to pay attention to the online community of the market, like FB groups, Twitter, Product Hunt, Capterra, Reddit, etc. Another way to make the right decision is to read the reports on the latest trends.
Reach out to friends, family & colleagues
Third, you have to talk with your family, friends, and colleagues and gather information about the insight of the market research. Based on their experience, they must have a great perspective and give recommendations about market research. It may help you to make the decision.
Post on social media
Social media is outsourced for gathering real-time and historical data. When you post on any social media, consider highlighting the requirements and specific needs of market research. If you provide more details in the post, you get detailed and relevant answers from an expert.
Talk To users
You can directly talk with the users of product or website and get the feedback, suggestions, and their pain points. You can provide separate platform to interact with users or just ask question or create pol on Facebook groups, reddit and discord communities etc. By doing this you can get the answers of your questions and can target the right audience.
Use target market research tools
The selection of a Target market research tool is necessary for market research. Market research tools help you to achieve your goal about the target audience, insight, and market trends. Below, you know the five best tools for market research that help you for your target audience and other purposes.
5 Best Tools for Market Research
If you want to know whether your new product is successful, then use tools for your market research. These tools analyze and gather information about the target audience and market personas. Here are the top 5 best tools and sources used in market research.
Google Trends
Google Trend is a search tool of Google that gives consent to users to perform search queries across the globe over a specific period. It also provides keyword-related data, which includes geographical and search volume information related to the users. Moreover, you don’t have to pay a fee to use Google Trends because it is a free online tool.
Source: Ahrefs
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is also a free online search survey tool. It helps you to run and create online surveys, which is necessary for a product to get opinions, feedback, suggestions, and criticism from users and customers. There are more than 100 survey template designs for the survey form, 31 templates in the free plan, and others in the premium, and each survey form has fifteen types of questions. Every question is divided into three categories: open-ended, descriptive, and close-ended.
Source: Zoho Analytics
Semrush
Semrush is an online platform and all-in-one toolkit used for improving digital market research and marketing analysis. It also provides a wide range of tools and functions that complete tasks like SEO, keyword search, backlink analysis, competitive analysis, SMM, PPC, marketing insight, campaign management, PR, etc. Moreover, Semrush has three levels of member subscriptions: Pro, Guru, and Business.
Source: Semrush
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful free web analytics tool from Google to analyze the website traffic and offer insight into how users interact with websites. It provides data on many factors like the number of users, their location, the page visited, the device used, and the duration of their visit. Google Analytics helps business owners understand the behavior of users and the performance of marketing strategies, which helps make decisions.
Source: Agency Analytics
Statista
Statista is not an online research tool, but it gives you visual data, insight, and market research reports across different industries and trends. It provides access to the info-graphics, statistics, forecasts, and studies that are gathered from sources.
Source: Tudo Sobre Eventos
Conclusion
Market research is necessary for a product or website to achieve its goals. It helps you to gather information about the market insight and market trends and know the behaviour of users, like when they visit and how much time they spend on it. Moreover, the five steps of market research help you to choose the right tool for your target audience and better performance.
