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Market Research Strategy: Best Practices

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Market research simply involves collecting data from the public and a target audience. The data you gather in your research can help you to make the best business decisions concerning the production, marketing, or investing in new or existing products. Moreover, the strategy you employ for your market research largely determines its quality in the end.

While lean marketing is good, using a market research platform is an essential part of the process. Most businesses engage in some form of market research. However, the most successful are those whose market research strategy produces information that captures the target population’s needs and wants.

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The following are the best steps to follow in planning the strategy for effective market research:

Set the Strategy by Identifying the Problem and Outlining the Purpose of the Market Research

Everything about your business should be intentional and purposeful. The strategy for your market research should be no different. Therefore, take time to identify the exact problem your research will address. Typical questions are:

  • What is your target population? Are there unique characteristics you should know?
  • What competition do you have? How will you get ahead of the competition to get the most attention and interest from the target population?
  • Where are you in the market currently? What are you expecting from the initial marketing?
  • Are you entering a new market? Or are you trying to scale popularity?
  • What is the best marketing research platform to use?

Succinctly State the Goals of Your Market Research Strategy

Once you have answered these questions, you can then further your strategy by stating the goals of your market research. Of course, goals will be in sync with the answers you provided.

Every intended goal should be stated as clearly and simply as possible. This gives a sense of direction to the whole process. As experienced marketers like to say, “The why should determine the how.”

1. Assign Responsibilities

In order to fulfill the strategy, every member of the market research team should have a specific role and responsibility. This may sound trivial, but a lot of market research processes fail because some team members lose track of their roles.

2. Set a Timeline

Setting a timeline is an important part of your market research strategy. Timelines are important because they give a sense of purpose to a project. Moreover, scheduling a timeline allows resources to be effectively deployed in line with the overall strategy.

3. Select the Best-Suited Design

Depending on the purpose of your research, you should have primary and secondary research designs. The appropriate designs will help you capture the right population and give you useful data.

Use Appropriate Tools

Market research is a form of marketing and should be treated similarly. Therefore, be sure to use the right tools to get the best results. There are different sets of tools for each research section, each set having a specific function and purpose.

Include in Your Strategy a Plan to Analyze the Data Your Market Research Captures

Whatever your strategy, the data you collect with your market research should go through the working stage so that you can understand its initial value. Then, be sure to analyze the most important data first.

The data you have collected might look easy to understand at first glance. However, in order to decide the best course of action for your company, you would want to complete a thorough round of analysis first.