Investing in market research is a key factor that will drive the success of your company. According to a recent article on Forbes.com, companies that embrace a customer-centric approach are 60% more profitable than companies that do not. Whether you are a young entrepreneur starting your first small business or the CEO of a large, established company, you must understand your customer’s needs in order to stay relevant and increase your company’s market share.
Here are 3 aspects of market research to keep in mind as you review your company’s performance this year and build your goals for next year.
- Who do you think your primary audience is? All companies must take the time to define who their primary customers are. Consider key demographic information such as age, socio-economic level, gender, location, hobbies, and buying preferences. Write this down to form a detailed buyer persona. As you work through this process, it is helpful to have stakeholders from all areas of the business create this profile. This will allow you to understand your customers as they relate to all areas of the business. Take note of any differences that come up as you review the information from each person within the business.
- Compare what you believe about your customers to what the data tells you. Analyze sales data from both your online storefront as well as any brick-and-mortar retail locations. How much are customers buying and when? What products or services are most popular for your online customer base? Your retail customers? In what ways are these shoppers the same or different? How frequently do they purchase again? These details can help you develop a better understanding of your customers’ buying habits.
As you study the analytics for your website, keep in mind how customers found you online (where are they coming from), how long they stay on your site, and at what point do they leave your site. All of this information provides important context to add to your sales data.
In addition, review the demographics for all of your social media platforms. For example, Facebook’s Custom Audience feature can help provide you with a detailed analysis of who your audience is in that space. Compare that to Instagram and your email database. Do all of the platforms have a similar buyer persona? How are they alike or different? Which spaces have the most engaged, loyal customers? All of this information is invaluable to determining who your primary customer is, what drives them, and how to best meet their needs.
- Seek feedback from customers. Taking the time to ask your current customers to review your products or services will provide you with valuable information that you can use to optimize your business moving forward. This information can be gathered in a variety of ways. In fact, we recommend that you consider utilizing each of these tools to truly develop a deep understanding of your core customer.
Focus groups and surveys allow you to ask both current customers or customers you are seeking to attract to your business for feedback. Are you meeting their needs? What can you do to improve? Would they purchase again or recommend your business to a friend? If they don’t currently use your product or service, why not? What could you change about your product or service that would motivate them to buy?
Another new tool that you can utilize to help better understand your company is social media sentiment analysis through AI. According to Forbes, these tools can create reports that tell us about who are customers are and what they are saying about our products by monitoring social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Effective marketing research will utilize each of these areas to refine your business moving forward. Staying in tune with who your customer is and how to best meet their needs will provide you with a competitive edge in an ever-changing marketplace.
