We’ve all seen the best business brands with the best products fall flat in the market. They fail. Do you know why they fail?
Most fail to answer this simple question. It’s a matter of market research. Most companies go straight into designing the product without properly researching the market and the industry they are operating in.
Inadequate market research on how it functions and what products work, what don’t, queries about price are all the questions that are needed to be answered before launching a product or service. But many fail to do this.
The consequence is lost market share, dignity, and money. Just because they skipped one tiny step of market research.
What is Market Research for Startups?
Do you have multiple thoughts regarding your startup? Whether you will pass or fail in your new business? How is the audience going to receive your product or service? Is this the right product or service in the current market?
Don’t worry to avoid all kinds of confusing and complex thoughts, market research is the solution.
When you gather information about the happenings in the market and investigate the market dynamics, that is called market research.
You carry it out to know about who your competitors are, you are your potential customers and what are the current marketing conditions.
The market research gives you a chance to avail a great amount of knowledge about all the elements of the market you will be a part of.
You can search for trends, learn about other companies with similar products and services, investigate the prices and marketing methods.
Moreover, you can also find other relatable information about your prospects. These aspects in total account for market research for your startup.
So if you want to start an enterprise or grow your startup, doing market research will help you in rising high.
When you take necessary actions and follow all the procedures required for your startup, you surely move one step forward in attaining the success you desire. The first step to your success is market research.
What is the Importance of Market Research for Startups?
To put it briefly, market research benefits us with detailed information about the market, the competitors, and the customers.
It gives you a reference point to start with.
It tells you about customers’ preferences, the latest market trends, consumer buying patterns, economic shifts, and demographics.
Once you have analyzed this information, you can make an informed decision about the design, development, promotion, and sales of your product or service.
Moreover, the reality is that market research is there to tell us something, and there’s only so much pleasure we can take without getting research and analysis done.
Consequently, some hits and trials may work. But that isn’t going to make do always.
It holds incredible value and significance and should definitely utilize all these market research benefits to grow immensely in your business.
1. Market Research Helps Startups in Understanding Their Customers
Ultimately you do it all for your customers. But what happens if you can’t find those relevant customers? You lose time, money, and credibility.
This is where the benefits of market research come in handy.
Through adequate and detailed market research and analysis, a brand can get insights and information about their target customers’ age, gender, demographics, preferences, and put-offs.
Market Research gives you answers to the following queries :
Who Are Your Target Customers?
Your target market refers to the customers you will be selling your products and services to. Without having an understanding of your target customers, your startup will not be able to succeed with its brand goal.
You will be done before you even begin. This is why understanding your target customers is extremely crucial, and market research will help you with it.
Who are the Primary Buyers of Your Products?
The next thing that market research will help you with is helping you understand who your primary buyers are.
A startup or not, you should be clear about who will be purchasing your product. It becomes convenient on your part to come up with products that your customers want.
Moreover, when you know the type and behavioral patterns of your primary buyers, you can align your marketing activities to cater to them smoothly.
None of this will be possible without market research.
Who are the Ideal Clients of Your Services?
Identifying your ideal clients is also an integral part of market research.
When you are a startup in the service industry, you need to identify your clients that are ideal for the services that you provide.
This gives you an idea of whom you should direct your marketing and advertising energies to. It also narrows down your marketing efforts and thus you use your dollars effectively.
What are Their Personality Traits?
Understanding the personality traits of your customers can surely help you in identifying your customers’ behavioral patterns.
This includes preferences, habits, and motivations. If you identify all the important traits, it will help in your business growth and greater customer engagements.
When you crack the code to your customers’ personality traits and align your efforts with them, you will be better heard, seen, and loved. And who will help with it? Correct, market research.
How Often Do They Engage In Buying?
Your consumers always go through different phases before making their purchases. Their buying patterns may differ.
For instance, some consumers often engage in routine response behavior. It means they make automatic purchases with low information or information they have gathered in the past.
However, they might also engage in buying products that carry a high risk to buyers if they fail or have higher price tags. It is called high involvement products.
So, there is a lot of factors that go into consumers engaging in the buying process. Your startup needs to identify that in order to market effectively, and market research will help with it.
What Buying Behaviors Do They Exhibit?
The behavioral patterns of the customers these days are incredibly dynamic and complex. Sometimes, it is too hard to understand why customers do what they do.
However, if you don’t have a clear understanding of your customers’ behavioral patterns, you will be at a high risk of losing them even before you acquire them.
Therefore, undergoing thorough market research about customer behavioral patterns will help your startup to a great extent.
What Are Their Expectations of the Brand?
Consumer expectation of the brand means what your target consumers anticipate from your product or service.
It is in terms of set behaviors and actions that they expect from your company.
Some basic expectations of your consumers from your brand include price, functionality, experience, convenience, performance, and many more.
You need to identify these in order to serve them better, and what better way than market research to do that.
Market research will answer all of these questions for you in a systematic, detailed, and thorough manner. It will carve out your potential customers and target audience map for you and you’ll gain incredible insights and information to plan out your next steps.
Customers are who you do this for, and market research helps you understand them better.
2. Market Research Keeps Startup Goals Realistic
Goal setting is the backbone of a business. When business owners are in the process of setting goals for their business, they often fail to look at the bigger picture and are merely focused on increasing monetary sales or boosting customers.
But marketing and creating a brand name and experience is more than these short-term goals. Without proper planning and research, a business that is doing well in the short term will eventually die down in the long term.
This is where market research steps in to help the business and brands. When you give your inputs to set grounds for market research, market research benefits you with real-time and in-depth data which is in alignment with your goals and vision.
Without market research, you won’t be able to know whether your goal is realistic, achievable and measurable.
You’ll also have more information on how to go about achieving the goals you’ve set so that you benefit the most out of them.
3. Market Research Helps Startups in Knowing Their Competitors
The digital market is vast and crowded with competitors. Each of them is striving, just like you to put their best foot forward and come on top.
This is why it’s important for you to always know who your competitors are and what they are up to.
When you are aware of your competitors and what they are offering, you can modify and adjust your marketing plans and products and services accordingly.
Well, this is where market research comes in.
Market research collects data about your competitors, who they are and what they are offering to the customers.
This will enable you to design a product or offer a service that will stand apart from that of your competitors and attract customers.
In addition to that, it will also help you with your pricing. You’ll be able to set competitive prices to gain a competitive edge over your competitors.
Moreover, market research will also tell you about your competitors’ weaknesses which you can use to your advantage.
The benefits of the market research will tell you which and why are customers dissatisfied with the competitor’s products and services. You can take advantage of these opportunities and create a win-win situation for you right?
4. Market Research Dilutes Business Risk For Startups
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, half of the businesses don’t see the sunshine of their fifth year. That’s because of the myopic vision as mentioned earlier.
The focus of these businesses stays more on the short-term sales boost and they forget to look at the bigger picture of creating an overall brand value.
For the long term, steady and strong market presence, a brand needs to ensure that it has customer equity, brand equity, and a steady stream of sales and revenue.
Doesn’t necessarily have to be high rising or record-breaking.
Consistency is the key here.
And market research provides you with the tools needed for that consistency.
With Regular market research, you’re able to keep a check on Your performance as a whole. You’re able to understand in detail whether you’re able to meet your current and potential customers’ needs and wants and if not, market research analyses the reasons for it.
Market research will benefit you to act on the results of such market research quickly before the customers leave your brand.
With market research, you can also develop an understanding of how your existing product is doing in the market and whether your new product will work or not.
A part of market research involves testing your new products on a tiny group of audience and noting their reaction.
This enables you to see if the product will be welcomed by the masses of the audience with a similar set of beliefs.
5. Market Research Leads to Startup Growth
At the end of the day, all of these points snowball into one big scenario. Your business growth. That’s what market research helps you with at the end of the day.
Moreover, it helps you understand your customers’ needs, wants and demands, the algorithms detect various business opportunities for you, it helps you plan out your promotional and advertising activities, helps you know and take advantage of your competitors, help you minimize the risk of doing business to an extent and it helps you achieve your long and short term goals.
By taking care of all of these things and more for your business. Market research opens your business to a plethora of growth opportunities.
Consequently, your business will thrive and get returns on investments if you do your homework and invest well in quality market research.
Moreover, this doesn’t just apply on a short-term basis for new businesses but also applies to already established businesses and brands too.
If you want to keep your brand’s market share intact you need market research. And if you want to grow your brand’s market share.
You need market research because it’s the DNA of any business and runs all the way to the core of the brand.
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6 Market Research Mistakes Startups Must Avoid
I am sure by now you have decided to do market research for your business. However, only deciding isn’t enough.
As a startup, you have to make sure, that your market research is on point and giving you everything you need to become successful in your venture.
For this, you need to avoid certain mistakes that a lot of other brands make while undertaking their market research. Let’s take a look at 6 market research mistakes startups need to avoid.
Trying Secondary Research Only
Market research is usually of 2 types- Primary and secondary. So it is very necessary for you to focus on both types to know about your target market and your audiences. This is something that can help your startup succeed.
Doing primary research will help you gain direct insight into the marketplace. You can carry out surveys and focus groups as your primary research.
While you can carry out secondary research through already published studies, you gain a broader knowledge about your market.
There is no doubt that secondary research won’t help your startup but focussing on primary research will help you to target your efforts directly to the market and your targeted customers and it will be in real-time.
So, instead of just focussing on secondary, also go for primary. Remember it’s a package. If you practice both it will help you more than expected.
Relying Too Much on Family Focus Groups
This is a very common mistake that startups usually commit with their market research.
You need to avoid asking for feedback only from your close friends or family or someone in your network. Instead, you need to adopt a broader approach.
One thing that you should know here is that your close ones will always safeguard your feelings and might not give you honest feedback.
So, if you want your market research to be successful, always talk to your real customers. Keep your family members and friends as your support and not a sole base for market research.
Losing Motivation
It is very true that market research requires effort and this is where people tend to lose motivation because of the field of market research being too large. You need to focus on thousands of things if you want your startup to be successful.
Generally, your enthusiasm is very high when you start with a project but it tends to diminish gradually when you start taking more info about the market. Your complexities tend to rise and your research efforts shorten up.
So you need to stay motivated if you want to effectively conduct your market research.
When you start with a project do thorough secondary research to get knowledge of the industry.
If you need help, you can hire a market research agency to conduct market research for you. This will ease up your work.
Only Focusing on Web Searching
There is no doubt that the internet is a source of massive information for all, be it for a kid or for a businessman. It is flooded with business information that can help you gain all the information you want.
Similarly, if you are a startup, it makes secondary research very easy for you but it limits your search capacity. If you want to go deep down and do thorough research, most pages are either paid or are not accessible without a subscription.
This is something that again limits your market research.
So besides web searching, try to visit local libraries, business centers, or colleges to gain access to quality information. You can do it at zero cost.
Thinking That You Are Aware of All Market Trends
Having spent a few years understanding the industry and the target audiences, you may think that your start-up business does not require market research.
You end up thinking that you are aware of all current market trends and market research is not important for you.
There is no doubt that you know a lot about your customer’s needs and wants but you should also test your assumptions on the market and take real insights into your customer’s behavior.
Moreover, the fact cannot be denied that most business owners launch their business without even talking to their potential customers. They often downplay the importance of attaining customer insight through market research.
So avoid these common errors and make wise use of market research to position your startup at a good place.
Conducting Market Research Only Once
This is one of the most common and most catastrophic mistakes startups make when it comes to market research.
Always remember that market research isn’t a destination, it is a journey. This means that it’s a continuous process.
Especially in today’s time when the market is so dynamic and versatile. The trends, customer behavior, and market environment change within seconds.
This is why it is important to continuously conduct market research as it will help startups keep their marketing activities in alignment with the market itself.
Failing to continuously conduct market research will get your startup stuck in the old obsolete market patterns and you will fall into oblivion.
As poetic as that sounds, you definitely don’t want to go there do you?
Key Takeaway: Market Research for Startups
If your business hasn’t been benefiting from the pros of market research, it’s time that you add market research to your business’s important tasks and benefit from its various positive points.
It is, in fact, the need of the hour in this quick on its feet, dynamic and highly competitive market environment.
Constant and vigilant real-time data is required to be processed and analysed to arrive at a result for your brand and business needs.
All the solid facts and figures that you need to make an informed decision, market research will provide you with that.
You’ll not be operating on the hit and trial method but will be operating in a systematic thought manner.
The Easiest Guide to Market Research
Market research is the magic elixir that can give you that extra edge you always wanted over your competitors. It can help entrepreneurs in launching successful startups within their limited resources; it can even help small business owners from getting their businesses taken over by giant corporations.
Market Research Like a Pro, is written for the sole purpose of helping small businesses and startups not just understand the role market research plays in the success of a business, but also in learning the easiest ways of incorporating it into their day-to-day business operations. Get the Book.
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