How To Conduct The Proper Market Research?

Overview

Your main goal in your entrepreneurial journey is to succeed. You want to fulfill yourself; you want to maximize your potential, but eventually, you wouldn't start this mammoth of a sacrifice if you didn't want your idea to reach the market, and in the end, make you money.

Why Should I Conduct Market Research?

For your idea to be successful, you have to know what and where you're aiming at. Having a great idea is fine, but if you don't have a market for it or your market-size is not big enough, you'll end up with nothing but some excellent presentations, an incredible mockup, and a massive hole in your pocket.

Thus, conducting the proper market research before you start implementing your next steps is crucial for you to have the potential to succeed.

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What Should I Look For?

1. Q: Does my idea exist? 

 A: Being original is great, but being the first one should raise some questions:

1. Lack of demand for this product? - take advantage of other people's experience
2. Small market size? - the costs for the product are just not justified due to the small amount of people who will consume it

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2. Q: Do I have any competitors?

 A: Scan the field for your main competitors and learn their products. You can be sure that they have done their studies and make sure to learn from their mistakes.     Just think of it as free tuition. Also, you can hone your UVP (Unique Value Proposition) by differentiating your product from theirs. 

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3. Q: What is my market and market size? 

 A: Take the time to learn your market. 

1. What are its properties? 
2. What are its needs? 
3. What are its Pain Points? 
4. What is trending now? 
5. What are my target audience's spending habits?

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Market Research 101

Market research can be generally divided into two segments:

1. Primary - Data that you collected on your own
2. Secondary - Data that is available through public sources

This might sound a bit counterintuitive, but you should start with secondary!

Why? Because secondary market research is free and vastly available online. Thus it will save you a lot of time and money - a vital resource you don't have as an entrepreneur.

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How To Conduct Secondary Market Research?

1. Google - free, abundant with data, and inclusive search engine that will help answer most of your publicly-targeted questions.
2. Social media, i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. - an excellent source for familiarizing yourself with your main competitors and trends. Notice that every social media draws a different styled population with its unique characters. Social media is a great way to understand what your competitors are missing in their products and your target audience's pain-points just by looking at the comment section on their Twitter or Youtube account.
3. Google Ads - Your competitors invest a lot of money in advertising. They will not put their hard-earned cash into ads that will not convert into sales. Thus, understanding where your competitors invest will help you target your marketing campaign to the keyword-level.
4. Google Trends - a great tool that will help you understand more visually about market hypes and searches. Also, you can analyze the correlation between different markets and products at other times of the year and in different geographical regions.

How To Conduct Primary Market Research?

As stated above, primary market research is research done by yourself. You should conduct this research type after narrowing down your audience and grasping the market using your secondary research.

Primary research is usually more expensive and time-consuming, but it allows you to focus on your target audience's problem and help you understand whether your suggested solution actually helps them or not, or in other words, do you have an actual business to go along with.

Bare in mind that you should not ask questions that will help you strengthen your hypothesis but will help you advance your solution to the actual problem.

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1. Google Forms - use this free form application to jot down questions that will help you realize your audience's problems to the tee. Draw up the right questions, copy a link, and share it with your audience. The broader, the better. You'll get plenty of data to go on and make your adjustments accordingly.
2. Surveys to existing clients - if you are fortunate enough to have an existing clientele, you can address it with questions far more specific and relevant to your research. This is because your clientele can feel free to answer more challenging questions from the future perspective of personal benefit. These surveys can be distributed via newsletters and personal interactions such as meetups and video conferences.
3. Poles on social media - There is no better way to reach a vast audience than social media. Find the correct type of social media your suggested target audience uses and create a pole same as before. You can take the long route and create a personally branded page and be even more specific about your pole answeres, but this route either takes too much time or too much money.
4. Online survey services - There are plenty of 3rd party services and websites such as Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Alchemer, and so much more. These services offer you a way to conduct an audience-specific survey by addressing your desired profile of a client for a fee. Thus, you'll get to your desired market without the hassle of finding it. You can find more info here
5. Face-to-face interviews - This type of market research can be more relevant in a B2B business since you can reach plenty of conclusions by interviewing a small number of people. Whereas in B2C, getting valuable and actionable findings can require a few dozen interviews that can be very time-consuming. Interviews are the most personal and desired way. By sitting down with a person, you can reach plenty of subjects you didn't even think would come up, and maybe get different pain-points than you initially hypothesized.

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Conclusion

Market research is the most crucial part of your product and business venture. Without performing truly unbiased, inclusive, and comprehensive market research, you'll be wasting your valuable time and money.

Take the time, pick your desired methods from the article above, and be open to hard answers and even harder questions. 

You'll thank me later. 

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*Background Photo by ja ma on Unsplash