Effective Market Research Tips for Your Startup Business

Marketing is something that every business should incorporate – even new startup businesses. However, to have effective marketing, and to make the most of your budget, you should also undertake market research. This is the process of researching the market your business is in including the products, customers, and competitors. In this mini-guide, we look at the importance of research and provide some simple tips on how to do this effectively.

Understand the importance of market research

Market research is highly important for many reasons. Without market research, you do not have a clear idea of your target customer. This can lead to ineffective marketing and product launches. To appeal to potential customers, you must have an idea of what they want. Also, you must understand current expectations, competition, and trends.

Without market research, you are effectively working in the dark – this can only lead to the ineffective operation of your business.

Effective market research tips

Now that you understand the importance of research, we can look at some specific tips to help start you on the right path.

1. Finding your target customer

One of the most important parts of market research is finding your target customer. By knowing your target customer, you can effectively tailor your products/services and marketing to them. This will improve your effectiveness and ability to compete.

Things you should understand about your target customer include age, gender, employment, salary, and geographical location, for example. These are important things to know and can help improve your pricing, products, and marketing strategies, for example.

2. Observing current trends

In today’s world, marketing campaigns and digital media can go viral overnight. Also, trends are far more important than in previous decades. Part of your research should be to keep up to date with current trends and popular subjects.

Many businesses use this as part of their marketing model and incorporate popular trends or subjects into their marketing material. The key to this approach is that it must be timed to perfection. Ideally, you want to incorporate trending topics in your marketing when they are at their most popular – not when the subject has become irrelevant again.

3. Looking at what competitors do

Competitor research is highly valuable. Under no circumstance should you plagiarise other businesses’ marketing. This is a sure-fire way to land yourself in legal trouble. However, there is no harm in analyzing the competition and looking at what works for them.

What marketing campaigns do they use? What type of marketing works for them? Do they market on particular social media platforms? You can make this type of research as extensive as you wish. The important thing is to see what works and what doesn’t. There are also useful tools like Spyfu that provide competitor keyword research for SEO purposes on platforms like Google Keyword Planner.

4. Branding research

Lastly, it is also important to look at branding. Branding should be a cornerstone of your marketing. However, you must look at what works and what doesn’t. Therefore, an effective type of research is branding research.

This is similar to competitor research, but you are looking specifically at their branding. This includes things like their logo (you can use tools like Graphic Springs to build professional business logos), color schemes, and imagery. By looking at another branding, you can see what elements work, and what direction you want to take with your own brand image.

Hopefully, you now have some ideas of market research and how to use it. Make sure you incorporate this into your startup business plan so you can remain competitive and grow your business quickly.