One of the main ways a business can ensure that it is primed for success is to truly understand their customer base and the people they want purchasing from them. While some companies believe they can do so without much effort, the truth is that performing market research is a crucial aspect of business. Market research helps by allowing a business to understand the experience they are giving their customers and potential improvements they can make to their products to increase sales. Market research allows for marketing campaigns which will further increase sales and conversions. But what exactly is market research and how is it performed? The truth is that there are multiple methods in which a business can engage in market research. Finding the right method, and likely the right software, will give any business the chance to build upon itself and find the success it craves.
Methods to Conduct Market Research
There’s several ways in which market research can be performed. Some are more common, while others provide more information. The main four methods include:
- Interviews - In this situation, you can have a one on one moment with a potential buyer who’s been identified as a perfect target. It’s important for the interviewer to not just listen to the answers of the questions, but also check tone and body language. It’s easy to empathize with a customer as they discuss any negative interactions and gain a lot of insight from it.
- Surveys - This may be the most common way in which a company conducts market research. Surveys aren’t particularly difficult to set up and they can be filled out in multiple ways, but mostly will be done online. Surveys are easy and quick and you can get a lot of data. The downside is that sometimes you may not get the data you are looking for as not all potential customers care enough about surveys to provide accurate information consistently.
- Observations - In this method, customers are observed as they are actually engaging with a company’s product. In some cases, they may be observed as they use the products of a competitor instead. You can see how a customer will interact with a product without distractions and in a natural setting.
- Focus Groups - Many people will set up a focus group so that they can get data from a number of people at once. There’s a downside to focus groups however. Charismatic people can influence the opinion of others and it’s very possible for the moderator bias to come through.
Common Market Research Software
Since market research is so important for a company, it’s not surprising that a number of different software options have been put on the market to assist. Some of the best pieces of software on the market include:
- SurveyMonkey Audience - Here we have a piece of software that seems to have every feature you can hope for. It’s obviously excellent at building and distributing surveys and has wonderful reporting and analytics built in. You can even see survey responses in real time.
- QuestionPro - This is another offering that manages to hit on almost every feature. It’s cloud hosted. In addition to conducting market research with customers, it also lets you check in with employees and their engagement.
- DataPlay - This software helps build surveys and really helps with reporting and presenting the data gathered. It even can automate the distribution of data through PowerPoint to make presentations especially visually appealing.
- Typeform - Rather than presenting surveys as a long line of questions, Typeform will instead set them up to be asked one at a time to try to increase engagement and meaningful data collection. Typeform is also excellent with integrating to other software and has over 120 potential integrations to take advantage of.
