Marketing research is one of the most critical stages of business growth. It is used for developing effective products, services, and marketing strategies. Marketing research involves five important steps. The marketing planning process includes the five stages of product planning. Product planning is a crucial part of marketing research, as it’s essential to know exactly what you’re selling before embarking on further stages.
Contrary to popular perception, marketing research is not confined to marketing new products or marketing communications. Marketing research can be used to carry out any marketing function like pricing, promotion planning, deciding new product launch date, etc.
This article aims to enumerate 5 steps in the marketing research process.
Define the Problem or Opportunity
The most important part of the marketing research process is defining the problem. In order to do any research and collect data, you have to know what you are trying to learn from the research. In marketing research, defining the problem you need to solve will determine what information you need and how you can get that information. This will help your organization clarify the overarching problem or opportunity, such as how to best address the loss of market share or how to launch a new product to a specific demographic.
Develop questions that will allow you to define your problem (or opportunity), and examine all potential causes so that the research can be whittled down to the information you actually need to solve that problem or determine what action to take regarding an opportunity. Oftentimes, these are questions about who your target market or ideal buyer persona is (for example: “What does our ideal customer look like?”). These might include questions about demographics, what their occupation is, what they like to do in their spare time—anything to help you get a clearer picture of who your ideal buyer persona is. Consider as many variables and potential causes as possible.
Develop your Research Plan
Once the problem is determined, the next phase is to formulate and design the research plan. In this phase, you have to decide what type of research you will be conducting and from which sources.
Although there are a large number of online tools and data banks freely available, you do not need to limit yourself to only such kind of research. There are a number of research techniques to use, including the following:
Interview Clients
Directly speaking with a customer is one of the best techniques to get honest feedback. This gives you the information straight from the source.
Conduct Surveys
Conduct a brief survey to help you get data quicker and easier from the customer.
Testing
Test your website and review your analytics. By simply checking what you already have or plan to do, you can observe the differences between user behaviors.
After you’ve examined all potential causes of the problem and have used those questions to boil down exactly what you’re trying to solve, it’s time to build the research plan. Your research plan can be overwhelming to create because it can include any method that will help you answer the research problem or explore an opportunity identified in step one.
To help you develop the research plan, let’s review a few techniques for conducting research:
- Interview prospects and customers. Oftentimes, you get the best feedback by using this tactic because you’re going straight to the source. This might take the form of a focus group or one-on-one interviews. Use your defined research problem to help select the right people to interview.
- Conduct a survey using SurveyMonkey or another tool.
- Run user tests on your website or landing page(s). This is a cost-effective approach that can provide a lot of insight and data on how your customers or potential customers behave or respond to something, whether it’s new messaging or branding or a modified product or service you are thinking about offering. Simple A/B tests can go a long way in discovering user behavior. Use heatmapping tools, such as Hotjar or Lucky Orange, and website analytics tools, such as Google Analytics or HubSpot analytics, to track results depending on what data you need to collect.
Oftentimes, we do all of this work and gather all of the data—only to realize that we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel because someone had already run a similar, credible study or solved the same problem. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to do any research, but learning about what other organizations have done to solve a problem or seize an opportunity can help you tweak your research study and save you time when considering all of the research options. In marketing research, this is called secondary data because it has been collected by someone else, versus the primary data that you would collect through your own research study.
Collect Relevant Data And Information
Once you start to collect your data, make sure it’s valid and unbiased. Use a mixture of the methods mentioned above to get relevant data from all angles. The ideal type of information to gather would be analytical/scientific as well as emotional data that you couldn’t get from looking at a graph. In my experience, personal stories can give you a lot of the insight you’re looking for.
Interpreting Research Data
After gathering all the relevant customer and marketing data, it has to be analyzed to determine what it all means and what trends are distinguishable from the information. If any piece of information is not according to the trend you are analyzing, it may be irrelevant and of no use to your marketing goal.
Sometimes the result is not according to the assumption you made before collecting data so don’t try to make your research fit what you want. As an alternative, try to make new decisions for your business while taking the collected data under consideration.
At this step, it is suggested to take the input of other people in your company. Doing so might give your business a fresh perspective and help figure out things you may have ignored.
This step is focused on examining the data and coming up with a conclusion that solves the problem.
Take Action and Solve Problems
This is the last phase where your research is complete, and the owner can use the results to apply to their business’s marketing plans. This is when a company would start a marketing campaign. When done successfully, your research will prove very helpful in developing business strategies as well as improving your company’s services by solving problems that customers have.
Some people may break this marketing process into additional steps, but these five basic steps mentioned above are all you need to make a good start.
Marketing research can be easier for you through these steps. Remember not to rush through the process and conduct as much research as possible for you. Furthermore, evaluate the gathered data in an unbiased manner.
The final step is to report the research findings to those who need the data to make decisions. The findings should be presented in a comprehensible format so that they can be readily used in the decision-making process. In addition, an oral presentation should be made to management using tables, figures, and graphs to enhance clarity and impact.
Conclusion:
Marketing research is one of the most strategic processes in business. It involves analyzing data and information about the needs, wants, and specific behaviors of customers. Its purpose is to identify potential customers for products or services that can be provided with a greater competitive advantage.