Researching the Market you want to market too
Marketing Research
Marketing research is not just about gathering data; it's about uncovering insights that drive strategic decisions. It's the compass guiding businesses through the ever-evolving landscape of consumer behavior, helping them navigate towards success with confidence and clarity.
Types of Market Research
Surveys
Focus Groups
Interviews
Surveys ask users a short series of open- or closed-ended questions, which can be delivered as an on-screen questionnaire or via email. Surveys are ideal to use with customers who know your product or service well.
Interviews
Focus Groups
Interviews
Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. Nothing beats a face-to-face interview for diving deep, but if an in-person meeting isn’t possible, video conferencing is a solid second choice
Focus Groups
Focus Groups
Focus Groups
Focus groups bring together a carefully selected group of people who fit a company’s target market. A trained moderator leads a conversation surrounding the product, user experience, and/or marketing message to gain deeper insights.
Observation
Social Listening
Focus Groups
During a customer observation session, someone from the company takes notes while they watch an ideal user engage with their product (or a similar product from a competitor). Ideal for product testing and reviewing
Social Listening
Social Listening
Social Listening
Social listening is the process of monitoring social media channels for mentions of your brand, competitors, product, and more. This practice helps to develop feedback and align a content strategy.
Reporting
Social Listening
Social Listening
Feedback and reporting data insights is a strong way to prove the success and importance of the undertaken research. But reporting itself is an idea KPI for your market research so invest in time and money to produce.
Researching your customers
Understanding Customer Personas
In order to clearly depict who are the target consumers and how they use digital, marketers develop personas that help them to better their understanding of consumers, their characteristics, and behavioural patterns. Although personas are generalisations of the overall population they offer great insight for marketing teams.
A persona is a representation of a consumer and its characteristics which include:
- Demographic characteristics - including age, gender, education, occupation, geographic location, etc.
- Psychographic characteristics - including attitudes, beliefs, values, motives, goals, etc.
- Webography characteristics - including digital use, usage frequency, a device used, etc.
Marketers use personas in order to develop consumer-centric digital marketing strategies which are key to success.
The Persona Journey
Each persona undergoes a journey starting from recognising the need for the product to purchasing it. We refer to it as the consumer (or customer) journey. An online consumer journey depicts the patterns of how consumers become aware of products, search for products, and purchase them.
It starts with awareness, or need recognition, where consumers become aware that they have a need to be satisfied. At this stage, marketing activities may also trigger need recognition. For example, a consumer may see a sponsored post on social media or a pop-up ad on a webpage which will trigger the need for the product. At this stage, it is important to assess ‘what they see’.
What will the consumer do?
Once consumers recognise that they have a need for a product, they will start their product search. At this stage, it is important to know what the consumer will do - how do they search for products? You already know that most consumers will use a search engine for product search. They may also use social media or review websites.
What should we provide to the consumer?
To stimulate interest in the value proposition, marketers need to add digital value to their offering. Can you remember what digital value is? Digital vale refers to content marketers provide the consumer with - it is important that marketers understand what content to provide.
How do we convert the consumer?
The next step is to develop a desire for a product and ensure that the consumer will purchase the product. At this stage of the journey marketers need to ask a question - how do we convert the consumer?
Finally, what is next for the consumer?
When the consumer purchases the product, marketers have to think about what is next
Why run a competitive research strategy for your business?
Don't copy your competition, improve on their offer
You’ve likely heard the saying “Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies even closer.”
When it comes to conducting a competitive analysis, that’s not the whole story.
In any industry, keeping your enemy close won’t prevent you from getting ambushed. Sometimes you don’t even know who your enemies are. The “enemy,” after all, could be acquired by Amazon and put you out of business overnight. Or Google could build a competing product in your market.
Studying the ‘enemy’ can help you understand the battlefield. It can help you identify where the “enemies” are and how they’re approaching the business. It can help you discover strategic areas where you can position yourself for a win.
A competitive analysis is a process of identifying your competitors and evaluating their strategies to determine their strengths and weaknesses relative to your own business, product, and service. The goal of the competitive analysis is to gather the intelligence necessary to find a line of attack and develop your go-to-market strategy.
Competitive research will not help you fund your next product or determine your direct marketing spend, but it will, however, help you develop a high-impact go-to-market (GTM) strategy.
How to Conduct a Competitor research strategy
Segmentation
Segmentation
Segmentation
Break down your potential customer audience into groups based on subjects of your choice.
Criteria
Segmentation
Segmentation
Set the criteria that need to be followed to identify your competition. For example, a publisher would track content publishing platforms as competition.
Competition
Segmentation
Competition
Start with 5 main competitors to focus on that are based on your segmentation and criteria settings – but be aware of more that can be added over time.
Description
Description
Competition
Take the Google description of the business you are researching and simplify for research needs.
Statistics
Description
Statistics
Outline the basic statistics that matter to your brand – website ranking, customer profiles, social media numbers etc.
Strengths
Description
Statistics
List the strengths of the competition based on your own SWOT analysis.
Weaknesses
Weaknesses
Weaknesses
List the weaknesses of the competition based on your own SWOT analysis.
Review
Weaknesses
Weaknesses
Simplified review of the findings, as well as a personal statement on your own experience of the competitive brands.
COMPETITIVE RESEARCH
The 4 Types of Competition
Economists have identified four types of competition - perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly.
Marketers recognise one type - those who are looking to attract your same customer user base
Competitor Research Case study
Next Step Education
Competitor Research Case Study: Analyzing the UK Parent Education Information Market
Overview:The project aims to conduct comprehensive competitor research and analysis within the UK parent education information market, focusing on SaaS-based products catering to parents seeking information, resources, and material on schools via search sourcing.
Goals:
- Identify and evaluate main competitors in the market.
- Break down analysis for marketing and promotion strategies.
Specifications:
- Business and Company Metrics: Review competitive companies, assessing their funding, revenue, and customer base.
- Product and Service Review: Understand product features, pricing, perks, and technology usage.
- Customers and Awareness: Define share of voice, sentiment, key topics of interest, geographical appeal, and social media channels used.
- Marketing and PR Review: Evaluate SEO, social, advertising, content, and customer service strength, while outlining weaknesses in retention, influencers, and sales performance.
Segmentation and Criteria:
- Segmentation: Categorize potential customer audiences into groups based on subjects of choice, including parents of independent schools, parents of state schools, and schools promoted by competitors.
- Criteria: Identify competitors offering educational services to UK parents and charging schools for participation.
Competition:
- Outline 10 key competitive websites based on keyword research, backlink reporting, target market, and customer feedback.
- Research strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of each competitive platform to compare against the Next Step Education product.
This case study will provide valuable insights into the competitive landscape of the UK parent education information market, enabling Next Step Education to refine its marketing strategies and stay ahead of the competition.
