In the A – Z of Marketing, M is for … Market Research

Are you trying to develop a new service or product to sell? In business one of the best ways to understand what current and potential clients think about what you are offering is to do some Market Research.

Market research is a way of collecting valuable information from the public to see their opinion and thoughts. Many businesses make the mistake of thinking they know what their customers think; this can result in some expensive mistakes later on. Businesses should continuously carry out market research to keep up with current trends and to help maintain a competitive advantage. If you’re just starting or expanding your business market research is vital in understanding your target market and increasing sales.

Why do market research?

• To better understand your existing customers
  
  Why have customers chosen you over your competitors? What do they value about your business? Which websites and magazines do they look at? All of these will help you know what drives your customers to use your business.

• To identify potential customers
  
  Who is going to use your product or service? Male or female? How old are they? Are they married, single or divorced? Asking these questions will help you target your marketing at the right market segment.
• Identify current problems
  
  With the information you gather you should be able to work out why you aren’t gaining as many new clients as you want. You can see where the gaps in your marketing strategy are and fill them.

How to use market research in your business
At Appletree we are currently carrying out a short survey to see what value our clients get from working with us and to see if we’re doing what they expect from us. It’s a simple task of emailing or posting a short questionnaire to our clients. They can choose to either email back with their answers to give us a call and go through the questions.

We’ve asked varied types of questions to gain an insight into what our clients really think about us. We will review the answers and make changes to our service if we need to.

Do you use market research as a way of better understanding your customers? If not it’s about time you started. It can be a valuable tool in gaining information on the clients you have and also on the ones you want to attract.

Next week N is for? ?