Our Services
Project Management & Market Research
Project management is the practice of leading the work of a team to achieve goals and meet success criteria at the specified time. The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals within the given constraints.
Every business will have a need for management of a project - what's yours?
The Need for Better Project Management in Business
Project management is not rocket science, yet it often gets dressed up that way. At its foundation lies a bedrock of basic organisational skills, which - come to think of it - might as well be rocket science the way some managers grapple with the concept. In reality, project management is just a set of tools that enables managers to guide a project from point A to point B and do so in a way that demonstrates efficiency, cost-savings and leadership.
More and more organisations are recognising project management as one of their core business competencies. These organisations are raising their level of project management performance and are seeing significant business benefits. They choose the projects that make the greatest contribution to the business strategy, and they execute them faster and cheaper, with less risk, and their projects deliver the expected business benefits.
Project Management Software is software used by a wide range of industries for project planning, resource allocation and scheduling - and is now covered by hundreds of 3rd party suppliers helping to enhance your business project management strategy.
Does your business know your Monday from your Wrike? Is Teamworks better than ProofHub? Why would you use Trello when you have Microsoft Planner? A real strength of a business is finding the right platform to run legitimate projects that will improve internal and external business performance. Talk to us today to learn what software we use and what we can recommend for you.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS AND SOFTWARE
Understanding the Project Management Tools
Project management tools are aids to assist an individual or team to effectively organise work and manage projects and tasks.
Identifing what tools and platforms are best for your business communications can make or break your long term outlook. Let us talk you through the 41 (yes, Forty-One) options available
our 6 step guide to project management
Identify & Meet with Stakeholders
Identify & Meet with Stakeholders
Identify & Meet with Stakeholders
A stakeholder is anyone who is affected by the results of your project plan. That includes your customers and end-users. Make sure you identify all stakeholders and keep their interests in mind when creating your project plan.
Set & Prioritise Goals
Identify & Meet with Stakeholders
Identify & Meet with Stakeholders
These goals should outline project objectives or the metrics and benefits you hope to achieve. Write your goals and the stakeholder needs they address in your project plan so it's clearly communicated and easily shareable.
Define Deliverables
Identify & Meet with Stakeholders
Create the Project Schedule
Identify the deliverables and project planning steps required to meet the project's goals. What are the specific outputs you're expected to produce? What are the key targets to reach? What is the timeframe to measure success?
Create the Project Schedule
Present the Project Plan to Stakeholders
Create the Project Schedule
Look at each deliverable and define the series of tasks that must be completed to accomplish each one. For each task, determine the amount of time it will take, the resources necessary, and who will be responsible for execution. This is when you build the project team.
Identify Issues
Present the Project Plan to Stakeholders
Present the Project Plan to Stakeholders
No project is risk-free. Crossing your fingers and hoping for the best isn’t doing you any favours. Are there any issues you know of upfront that will affect the project planning process, like a key team member's upcoming holiday? What unforeseen circumstances could create hiccups?
Present the Project Plan to Stakeholders
Present the Project Plan to Stakeholders
Present the Project Plan to Stakeholders
It's important you understand how to present a project effectively. Explain how your plan addresses stakeholders' expectations, and present your solutions to any conflicts. Make sure your presentation isn't one-sided. Have an open discussion with stakeholders instead.
our project management work
CRM Integration
CRM Integration
CRM Integration
We have integrated 5 CRM platforms into five separate business
Website Build
CRM Integration
CRM Integration
We have helped design and build over 15 websites from scratch
Exhibition
CRM Integration
Exhibition
We have run full-scale exhibitions and conferences for over 20 years
Project Management Case Study
Our work with CMS Distribution was a six-month project management case study that covered seven areas of business change. Take a read
Project Management Case Study
Our work with Wand Education was a 5-month project management case study that covered the design and lunch process of the brand. Take a read
Our Project Management Training
Market Research
Your Market Research Strategy
Market research is an organised effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is a very important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness.
Market Research
The Need to Research your Market
Research, we are told, is as important as the brand product or service you are promoting. Maintaining a true voice to compete, be aware, stay relevant and adapt to marketing conditions is a true bearer of your in-depth market research strategy.
Conducting your own market research on a regular basis is more important than ever if businesses want to keep up with current market trends and maintain their competitive edge. Because today’s market trends are constantly shifting and changing.
Whether you are starting a new business, acquiring a new business, or expanding, conducting market research is imperative to understanding your target market, increasing sales, and spearheading business growth.
With Market Research, you can look at the following areas of your business growth:
Demand
Is there a desire for your product or service? Can you be sure it something that customers want and need? Has the industry changed and your product less valuable? How can the demand for what you do change with your own brand?
Market Size
How many people would be interested in your offering? Why should they want it? Can you meet the demand if you know the size of your audience? What do you know about your target audience?
Economic Indicators
What are the income range and employment rate? What funding can you start with or take forward with your business growth? How much will your research cost and what is the P&L for this research?
Location
Where do your customers live and where can your business reach? Are you local, regional, national or worldwide? Localised marketing is important so what is the outreach of your customers?
Market Saturation
How many similar options are already available to consumers? What do customers need differently? What feedback can you record that shows the need for the service or product you want to promote? Is there space in the market?
Pricing
What do potential customers pay for these alternatives? What pricing structure is measurable against your own offering? Can your offer compete?
By focussing on these key points, you can help develop a market research strategy that supports your promotional concepts.
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 consumers
Understanding the Consumer Persona
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.
Market Research Tools
Tools of your Trade
Today there are ever more market research tools than ever, both free and premium that boast of streamlining market research and providing invaluable consumer feedback. Here are the ones we recommend (although this might change in 6 months time)
Google Keywords Tool
The Google Keywords tool acts as a window into the behaviour of consumers when searching online for products or services such as yours. To use this you’ll need to create a Google Adwords account (it’s free, however) and it’s also advisable that you read a couple of introductory articles to the tool and making the most of it.
Questback
Questback is a premium service that bridges the gap between your company and your target market. It can undertake in-depth research on your behalf and provide invaluable feedback quickly and efficiently.
Social Mention
Social media is now more important than ever and accounts for a medium that could potentially make or break a brand within a matter of viral minutes. Staying abreast of all that is happening in relation to your industry on social media is now both more important and, thankfully, easier than ever.
Soolve
Fresh content is an invaluable tool both in establishing your company as the go-to expert it is, as well as providing Google with plenty of reasons to re-visit your website regularly. To help you with this there is Soovle, which will provide up to 15 smart keyword suggestions based upon your keyword phrase.
Klout
Need to build a solid reputation quickly? Then you need to know who the key influencers are in your market; from this, you can then approach them to partner up, gain an avocation or learn from their successes.
SurveyMonkey
The free platform and application to conduct online surveys. Paid subscription means unlimited questions with your own branding.
Our Market Research Training
