Large consumer companies like Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, and Unilever spend millions of dollars each year on marketing research to gain an edge in a competitive market. They have large staffs of people with PhDs, MMRs, and MBAs creating and managing complex research studies to provide data and insights to support business decisions.
But what about small or medium-sized businesses? Are the insights leveraged by big companies beyond their scope because of a lack of resources and personnel? Should they depend on guesswork and intuition to drive marketing decisions? The answer is an emphatic NO!
Attaining insights to drive your business is within the reach of any business. The scope and scale may differ, but the focus should be on five key learnings.
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- Know Your Company
- Know your Customers
- Know your Prospects
- Know your Competitors
- Know your Communications
Know Your Company
The first maxim inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi is “Know Thyself”. Organizations of all sizes must develop detailed strategic plans that describe their mission, goals, and objectives and define key strengths and weaknesses. A foundational marketing research study will develop a greater understanding of the marketplace dynamics and consumers to identify your unique selling proposition and better target your organization’s goals and objectives to the needs and characteristics of the marketplace.
Know your Customers
Customer retention is critical to the success of any business. Current customers are easier to engage, cheaper to retain, more likely to spend more dollars with you, and can recommend your products and services to others. But, to retain customers, you first have to know and understand them. Marketing Research is critical to understanding how your current customers perceive and engage with your products and services. Customer experience and customer satisfaction studies conducted on a regular basis measure change in customer perceptions due to marketing programs and tactics deployed by your company and competitive activity. Regular Awareness, Attitude, and Usage research can help you further understand the needs and wants of your customers and the characteristics of their lifestyle, media consumption, and demographics that you can leverage to better meet those needs and wants.
Know your Prospects
Like a shark that must swim forward to stay alive, a business organization must grow to survive. Marketing Research is necessary to learn about the differentiating characteristics of your non-customers and your prospects. Deploy research among prospective customers to measure attitudes and usage of your competitor brands as differentiated from your customers. Additionally, a Market Segmentation study can be used to group prospects into homogenous segments that can be differentially targeted with specific marketing.
Know your Competitors
In his famous treatise, “Art of War”, Sun Tzu says, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Having insights about your competitors can identify gaps in their product and service delivery to exploit in your tactical marketing. The starting point is to gain a relative measure of brand awareness for your company and that of your competitors. Interviews with your competitors’ customers can identify competitive brand positionings relative to your own and their strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, your analysis should “map” or compare your brands’ strengths and position versus those of your competitors.
Know your Communication
George Bernard Shaw is quoted, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” In a world overrun with messaging, how do you get your messages to stand out? Marketing Research is the vehicle to provide feedback about how successful your marketing campaigns are in building awareness and supporting your brand positioning. Attitudinal information will also help guide the development and structure of your advertising and promotional messaging to effectively break through the clutter, clearly communicate, and support the positioning and unique selling proposition of your products and services.
Therefore, don’t avoid conducting marketing research because you feel that it is out of reach due to cost, complexity, or relevancy. You need to know your company, your customers, your prospects, your competition, and your communication to be successful and thrive in the marketplace. Marketing research can provide you with the answers you need.
Carl Fusco is an accomplished Marketing Research Consultant who helps businesses more effectively solve problems by applying research techniques and data-based insights. For more information, reach out to Carl at fuscoresearch@gmail.com
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