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Easy Market research tips that will help you – Avoid mistakes, Build confidence, Define your competitors and then Level your competition!

Conducting thorough market research for your business is a must and the only way to really understand where you fit in the market, where your target market lies and who is your competition.

If you are wanting to  gain a maximum return on your Web marketing, Postcard marketing, Email marketing or Direct mail, there are no short cuts. You need to plan your approach,sharpen your tools and then take aim.

Abraham Lincoln once said “If I had 6 hours in the woods to chop down as many trees as possible, I would spend the first 4 hours sharpening my tools” . So spend the time to get your plan right, work hard and the returns will be higher

Here are some easy Market Research tips that you should cover to help you take better aim prior to spending your Market budget..

Primary research is the term given to market research conducted directly by your business, more preferrably by you. In this phase of the market research your goal is to: gain an understanding of what your customers and prospects like and dislike about your business and your industry; where improvements can be made; where they see the future of your industry; is their spending on the increase or declining; what will their needs be for the future and the general demographics of customers i.e Female / Male, Age 30 – 35 etc.

Tip: When conducting the primary research, try and write down exactly what the person your are surveying says, don’t interpret. Doing this will really help with your marketing, especially when you are looking to speak in your customers language.

Where to get started

Draw up a survey asking open questions. Open questions are questions that will start with What / How / When / Why, it is a question where the answer can not be a plain Yes or No.

Sample primary survey questions for a printing company only -

• With regards to your Print spend, is it growing or declining and why?
• Approximately how much are you spending onPprint and other forms of Media per annum?
• Where do you see the future of Print going?
• What do you see is important from Print and Media based companies in the future?
• What or who is driving your Printing requirements?
• What do you and don’t you like about our competitors / the printing industry?
• What do you think needs to be improved with in the Printing industry?
• What are the most important factors to you When purchasing print?

External research The goal of your external research is to understand what is happening in your industry, who your competitors are and where you fit in the market. This part will help you develop where you can offer a Niche service. This part doesn’t consist of talking to customers, although you will need dig as deep as possible with your research. If this is your first time doing this, then you are going to learn so much and be further infront of your competiton then you were before.

What to look for with your External research-

• What is the history of your industry?
• What is currently happening within your industry?
• What are the trends in your industry compared to the Economy?
• Is technology playing a factor in your industry?
• What are the barriers to entry?
• What is happening with selling prices?
• Are sales growing?
• Are costs growing?
• What is you market share? Your sales compared to the total Industry in your target area.
• Who is your target? Women aged 40 – 45 who earn 60K + and live in XXXXXXX

All the information you need to conduct thorough External research is available just by doing a little digging. Some great places to start include-

• Your industry body
• Your State government.
• Australian Bureau of Statistics – www.abs.gov.au .

Online research In this day and age if you are not generating revenue or at least leads from online traffic sources, then you are missing out. Many businesses believe that by setting up a website they have an automatic online presence, but then ask ‘why’ when they are not receiving any leads.

There are many tricks to turning you website into a money making, lead generating machine, but again to be sustainable you are only going to be as good as your market research.

The beauty of the net and Google, is that it is just one big database that offers tools to tell you exactly what people are looking for. All you need to do then is provide it. Please visit keyword research and competition analysis for some tips and tools that will help you on your way.

Online Research Tip Starting with your Keyword Research will help you get started with you overall research as you can Identify Products / Services that people are actually searching for, this will save you wasting your time on products / services that people aren’t interested in.  Once you have identified the terms you can put that into Google and analyse the businesses that you will be competing with. You can then pick the brains out of their business, taking the good for your business and leaving the bad for theirs.

Online Research Tools

Google Keywork Tool – Identify Search Terms
Google Alerts – Keep up to date with what’s being said in your Industy
Competition Analysis – See what your competitors are doing and do it better!
Google Trends – See if your product or service is trending up or down and what periods does it peak and trough