Market research is the process of determining the business potential of any product or service through various means such as market segmentation, Product testing, Advertising testing, Satisfaction, and loyalty analysis, Pricing research, Brand awareness and Reach. Market Research can so benefit entrepreneurs and help businesses that it can be considered a nugget of gold for them.
In simple words, it can be said that Market research is a self-motivated effort put by the business to better understand who their target audience is and what exactly are they looking for, and to understand the competitive landscape as well to identity what they already have and to identify external opportunities and threats and what are the gaps left by other brands which can be fulfilled to gain competitive advantage.
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How Market Research Can Benefit Entrepreneurs
Market research benefits entrepreneurs in a number of ways. It helps to develop efficient and effective marketing tactics. It helps to make crucial decisions and develop products according to customers’ needs and run impactful advertising by gauging audience responses etc. Market Research Helps Business In The Following Ways:-Â
Customer clarity
Knowing your customer very well will help you in defining your brand and what your brand is going to mean to them. Many businesses tend to spend a lot of time on designing logos and visuals but it is the clarity about your audience such that your audience fully well will help the business in the long run.
It helps businesses to understand which type of messaging channel to use through which audience will be most receptive. This ensures that you do not spend your marketing budget on such medium which is not by your target audience. It helps in communicating your brand personality, tone, and general messaging in such a way to better suit your audience thus resulting in more memorable and effective communication.
Identify Positional Opportunity
This is a part of market research to develop a positional strategy. It is a strategic marketing plan which helps businesses to determine their stand in the market and how they should position themselves to attract more customers.
It is done by understanding who their audiences are and what options and opportunities they have. It is only by this that businesses can identify gaps in the market and those gaps represent opportunities for positioning that a brand can go and fill in.
A good positioning strategy helps businesses to become an authority in their field, in better brand recognition, or even create new markets by identifying the unaddressed needs of consumers.
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Uncover Market Demands
Market demand keeps on changing. It is imperative for businesses to keep eye on changing trends. Market research will help you in uncovering those market demands. A perfect example of how important is to keep eye on changing demands can be considered Blockbuster, which was an American-based provider of home movie and video game rental services
It did not see the changing demand that consumers are looking for streaming services and left open a wide door open for Netflix to come in and disrupts the industry.
Identify Content Opportunity
If you are done with identifying who your target audience is and what they are trying to achieve and what challenges are they being posted by. So you can create such content which can help your audience to cope with their challenges.
A way to do this is to do a survey among your audience and question them about what their challenges are if your audience is big enough then the data which will be collected would give you enough insight into what type of content you should create.
Market Efficiency
Businesses have become smart these days. They do not like to spend money unnecessarily but they still without market research put a lion’s share of their budget into advertising resulting in the failure of a marketing campaign and learning an expensive lesson.
Doing a great deal of market research and then putting that insight into your advertising campaign would only do justice to the money put into it.
Steal Market Share
The crux of market research understand is to understand your audience and competitors. After knowing your competitors and what they are offering. You can research what are the gaps they have in their products or services that your competitors are not able to fulfill.
Fulfilling those gaps will help businesses to capture market share by addressing the need of your target audience that your competitors are not able to address.
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Clarity And Goals
If you speak with most of the business owners and ask about their goals then you would get answers such as directly or indirectly related to Growth, Sales, Lead market share, etc but if you do not even have an understanding of the market, size of your customer base and then you would not calculate what percentage growth represent what percentage of market share.
if you want to build a brand that connects with who your audience is if you want to build a brand that resonates then you have to understand exactly who that audience is and you have to understand what options they already have in the market .market research will do that for you and it will provide you with the tools to better connect with who your audience is.