Conducting research for marketing purposes should involve analysing the sector you’re launching your campaign in and utilising real-life data to influence that campaign. Deliver research-based marketing campaigns that speak directly to your audience.
What is Research-Based Marketing?
It’s all about the prep work. There is little value in pushing out marketing campaigns that are misled and have no foundational research to support them. Instead, you want to build from the ground upwards, gaining the knowledge you need and producing a campaign that works to change your audience behaviours. Whether that’s in encouraging customers to buy your products, changing perceptions within common social habits, or solving issues within society. No matter what you are aiming to achieve, it should start with research.
Research-based marketing is a marketing approach that involves conducting research before launching a campaign. The research will help you to understand your audience, market trends, and customer preferences, which can then be used establish a super accurate and targeted campaign that is effective in delivering results.
Why Conduct Research for Marketing?
Conducting research for marketing purposes sets up your marketing efforts for success. Firstly, it helps you to understand your target audience better, which is never a bad thing. This understanding can be used to develop more effective communications that resonate with customers, and let’s face it this should be at the core of your campaign. You can determine what you need your brand to convey and the messaging that will work for you. Get a better idea of what imagery appeals to your target audience, what copy speaks to them, and what it is that keeps them engaged with a brand.
Secondly, research can help businesses to identify market trends and customer preferences. Being aware of the trends within your market might influence what products or services you choose to push, as well as how you position your message to better meet peoples’ needs.
Essentially, the research should influence the marketing, not the other way around. If you start by knowing what the gaps are in the market, what people want and need, and how people prefer to receive marketing messages, you can tailor a campaign to tick every box.
Methods of Research-Based Marketing
There are several methods of research-based marketing that you can use to gain insights. Some of the most popular methods to engage and audience include online questionnaires, polls, focus groups, and customer interviews.
Online Questionnaires
Ever filled out a questionnaire about a brand or hot topic online? Congratulations, you participated in an organisations’ research for marketing.
Online questionnaires are a popular method of research-based marketing as they allow you to get answers to direct questions. As well as this, questionnaires allow you to collect information from a large number of people quickly and cost-effectively. You might consider hosting a questionnaire on your website or pushing it out to external platforms to increase the pool of people you hear from. The purpose of this style of research is to answer specific questions about customer preferences, buying habits, and opinions on products or services. If you hear it from the horse’s mouth, then I guess you better roll with it.
Polls
Polls are another popular method to conduct your research, and they work in a similar way to questionnaires. Best suited and most conducted via social media platforms, or again on your website, you can get quick responses that clarify the direction you want you campaign to go in by pitting the alternative options against each other.
Polls are super easy to complete which means filling them out is low effort for a consumer and therefore you are more likely to get responses. Let’s face it, we all want to make our lives easy so choosing to respond to a poll is going to be the favoured option over sending in a chunky paragraph response.
Focus Groups
Hear from real people in real time. One of the best ways to get honest responses to a question or genuine feelings surrounding a specific topic is to running focus groups. Focus groups involve bringing together a small group of people who fit your target audience to discuss a specific topic. It might be wise to have an external party running the group to avoid any risk of bias. If you can get focus groups organised, they are extremely insightful and give you evidence to build your marketing campaign from.
If you’re in the business of retail or provide a service, you can also use focus groups to test new products or services before they are launched and gain honest feedback. This can help you move your business in the right direction to suit the wants and needs of your customers. It’s all about receiving the honest-truth, which might seem scary but will position you better in the long-run.
Customer Interviews
Customer interviews involve speaking to customers one-on-one to gather insights into their preferences and opinions. If someone is buying from you or already working with you, it’s obvious that they like your company. However, retaining customers is cheaper and more effective that acquiring them. So, keep ahead of the game with what your current customers want, and you’ll ensure you can create marketing campaigns that keep them interested.
You can ask customers for feedback after purchasing a product, ask consumers to share their thoughts in store/in person, or even give some of them a ring and see if they would be up for a chat.
Start with the Market
Research-based marketing is a powerful tool for businesses looking to gain a deeper understanding of their target audience and the market. So, don’t let it pass you by.
By conducting research for marketing purposes before launching a campaign, businesses can develop more targeted and effective marketing strategies that resonate with customers. So, next time you’re planning a marketing campaign, don’t forget the importance of research!
