Market Research for the Discerning Business Owner

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The modern business landscape is more competitive than ever before and it’s critical that business owners do all that they can to stay ahead of the competition. While keeping costs down, employing the right people, having great products and efficient business processes in place are all crucial elements of any business, you simply won’t succeed if you don’t understand the market. Blindly selling your goods and services to the masses is not a good way to go about building a successful and sustainable business. You need to put time, effort and capital into conducting market research that will help you to better understand who your customer really is.

In order to conduct market research that is effective, savvy business owners employ a number of different tactics. Customers surveys, observations and using web scrapers are just some of the effective market research techniques that can help businesses get the information they need to make the right decisions for their business. Depending on your strategy and desired outcome, any one of these or even a combination of these tactics can be effective.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the most effective market research tactics being used by business owners to help them grow their business.

Web Scraping Services

With so much information available online nowadays, business owners have the potential to gather marketing information efficiently through the use of web scraping services. Web scraping essentially takes large data sets from a selection of websites, presenting the required information in a single file. From a market research perspective, it is incredibly powerful in terms of lead generation, for finding information about direct and indirect competition and about buyer personas. The list of applications really is endless and for this reason, more and more marketers are turning to web scraping to gather large amounts of data that otherwise would take months to compile.

Customer Surveys

A long-standing favourite with marketers, customer surveys are a great way to get information directly from the customer. Surveys can be performed either in-store or online and the information gathered is invaluable in making important decisions going forward. Nowadays, it can be more difficult to get people to fill in surveys, so it’s a good idea to pair them with a special offer or giveaway to entice your customers to take part. You could give a one-time only discount code for your online store or enter them into a draw to win a personalised shopping experience if they complete your survey. Remember, always keep your survey questions short and concise as it will be much easier for you to analyse the information after.

Market Observation

As well as understanding your customers and knowing what they want, you must also take the time to understand the current state of the market. You should be up-to-speed on what your competitors are doing, what the current market trends are and what the hot new offerings are. Although it might be more to measure, market observation is key to success and growth. You can employ tactics as simple as visiting your competitor’s stores to see what they are doing to watching sales figures of your competition on specific products. Whatever approach you take, knowing what’s going on around you will help you stay ahead of the curve.

Succeed With The Right Market Research  

Taking the right approach to market research is critical for your business. There is a huge range of marketing research methods available to business owners nowadays and it’s important that you choose the right tactics for your business. Armed with valuable information about your target demographic and your industry or niche as a whole you will be in a great position to take your business to new heights, gain more customers, and ultimately increase your bottom line.