Research shows that businesses are 60% more profitable when they are customer-centric according to an article written by Lucid. Market research is one of the best ways to do this by getting to know your customer base. This is done through gathering data to learn more about demographics and marketing trends as well as other important aspects of business goals. First, there are many subcategories of marketing research and I will only touch on a few in this article. Let’s first look at branding research. The point of this type of research is to understand what type of impressions your brand is making on the consumer. Do they know who you are and will they buy what you are selling? What qualities are associated with the brand and how it is performing in relation to competitors? This can be conducted through surveys, focus groups, or one-on-one interviews and it will help the brand understand areas that need improvement. Second, let’s talk about customer research. The top three points of this research is to see how satisfied your customers are, what level of loyalty do they have to your brand and who exactly are your customers are. That last one is done through customer segmentation that divides your customers into different subgroups based on their behaviors and preferences. This research is done through looking back at purchasing histories, demographics of client base, customer satisfaction surveys, NPS and customer journey mapping. A third type of marketing research is competitor research. It’s important to see what your competitors are doing. Where are they succeeding? Where are they lacking? How can you stand out from them as a unique business? This is done by simply finding your competition and doing simple research on them. Let’s also talk about marketing campaign evaluations and research. This is taking data from single campaigns to see how effect they are in the advertising space. How many people have seen your ad? What is the click-through rate? What is the ROI of the campaign? You can use website traffic to track figures from ads run on webpages. You can use social engagement figures, such as clicks, shares, comments and likes. There are many ways to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Now that we’ve discussed a few know that there are many types of marketing research we didn’t touch on and so many ways to obtain the data you need. You can read more about them here. So, why is it important to conduct marketing research? Well, knowing your customers on a deeper level will help you build trust and connect with them more effectively. It will also help you see where you need to improve as a business. Most importantly it helps minimize your risks through understanding what customers want and need. Overall, this will keep your business afloat and on top of trends in the years to come. Not only that, it will help you strive and succeed to the best of your abilities!
