Enhance Your Marketing With These Market Research Tips

So many business owners overlook the importance of market research. They think having a good product and following the best practices for online marketing will be enough.

While a good product and some basic marketing can move the needle a little, market research can help you get inside the minds of consumers. When you know what your customers want, their pain points and the types of messaging that connects with them, you can create marketing campaigns that will be much more effective.

Of course, if you are looking to get deeper insights, you would probably need to work with a digital strategy agency for market research. With that said, there are some simple tips and tactics you can follow on your own.

Know Your Audience

The first step in enhancing your marketing is to know your audience. Take a look at the demographics of your customers. You can find this data at any number of sites now, including Feedvisor, Clear Slides and Google’s Keyword Planner.

Once you have access to the information, use it to come up with messaging and messaging that reinforces your brand positioning. For instance, if you sell women’s shoes, focus on products that appeal to female customers (like heels or flats).

Reddit as a Tool for Market Research

Reddit is home to communities for just about anything you can imagine. People go there to discuss all sorts of topics. If you are looking to learn about what people think of a type of product or different problems they might be having, it can be an invaluable resource

Take a little time to search for the subreddits that will be relevant to your brand. Once you have found the best subreddits for your brand and industry, start following the conversations people are having. Many of the posts will be irrelevant, but you will also find some that reveal pain points or deeper insights into what customers want from a company like yours.

Customer Surveys

Most small businesses think they do not have the resources to run an effective survey. This might be true if you are trying to get information from thousands of people or need to reach a market that is new to your business, but you might be able to run smaller, simpler surveys at little to no cost.

If you are already using email automation tools, the platform might come with features that allow you to run surveys using email. As an example, you could survey people after a purchase to get information about the customer experience. You could also run a survey about a specific product. You could send an email to every person that purchased the product to learn about why they wanted the product and what brought them to your site.

Using Quora for Market Research

Quora is and Q&A platform. People go there to ask questions and then people with the necessary expertise provide answers. This can be another site for learning about the questions customers have and the problems they need to solve.

All you need to do is open a Quora account and follow the topics that are most relevant to your business. Quora will then alert you when questions come up on those topics. This makes Quora another tool that is great for learning about customer pain points.

Competitor Websites and Online Assets

You are probably aware of at least one competitor in your niche. They probably have websites and other online assets that you could use to inform your own marketing efforts. This isn’t to say that you should copy them or that they are doing everything right, but the research can still be valuable.

To start, look at the pages on their websites. How is their homepage structured? What do their product pages look like? Follow that up by looking at their social media accounts. How are they engaging with customers on social media? Which platforms do they use? What types of content are they publishing? Along with that, you should check out any digital assets they publish online. If they have brochures or an ebook, you should download them. If they have an email newsletter, subscribe and check it out.

Take Advantage of Analytics

Analytics is no longer just available to the biggest businesses. You have a range of affordable or free analytics tools that could be available to any business. In fact, you might already have subscriptions or accounts with services that may offer analytics.

To start, every business should be using Google Analytics. It is a great tool for seeing how people use your website and it can also work well for testing the results of different marketing campaigns. If you are using an email automation service or pay for ads on a social media platform, there is a good chance that those tools also offer analytics as a part of the service.

Performing research online is not a static process as the internet is constantly evolving with new sources. Not only will you need to search for new websites and tools, but you will also need to keep an eye on your traffic sources. If a channel is providing you with valuable insights, it’s important that you make the most of it.

To do so, experiment with different campaigns and then measure their success using analytics tools. If one messaging strategy is providing better results than another, continue to use it. You can also test out different content types and messaging styles to see what works best.

In the early days of starting your business, you will need to do a lot of analysis. As you start making sales and building a reputation, this will become less important. However, it is still worth doing even though it won’t be as vital. Once you get to a certain level of success, you should consider hiring a marketing professional to handle the analysis portion.

You can also use this time to start building up some trusted relationships with vendors and partners that are in your industry.

Working with market research professionals will take you further, but there is a lot you can do on your own. You just need to know where to look for the information and be willing to spend some time doing the work.

Guest Post:
Chloe Kirby is a writer and digital marketing professional. She earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and her Master’s Degree at Goldsmiths University in London, England. Chloe has professional experience in e-commerce, digital marketing, and copywriting. For the last year she has been working in New York City.