Inbound Marketing Insights

Market research is a tool that you have most likely heard of, but applying this valuable, data-powered tool to your own marketing and sales techniques may be a new concept. It has the potential to provide invaluable insights into your audience, improve your product and service offerings, and solidify your reputation as a customer-first, quality business.

But conducting market research first requires an understanding of what market research is and what it can do. Then, you can employ this research into best practices that can boost your sales and carry your business forward into the data-driven age. Here’s what you should know.

What is Market Research?

Anyone can come up with a new business idea or product plan. What separates successful sales teams from every other entrepreneur out there is the ability to delve into the details surrounding audience behaviors and industry performance.

Thorough market research has become a vital part of any global marketing strategy, but it requires the use and application of big data. Big data allows market researchers to explore not only the ways that customers interact with web pages and applications but how they shop, spend, and determine their next purchase.

Fortunately, today's highly technological marketplace makes market research easier to conduct than ever before. Platforms like Google Analytics are available to businesses for free and readily provide insights into everything from how users find your web content to your overall conversion rates. Even if you operate a brick-and-mortar place of business, market research is a useful tool for exploring competing business metrics, market trends, and potential new avenues for marketing outreach.

How to Make the Most of Your Research

When it comes to market research, the sky is the limit. You are only restricted by how much data you can accumulate and how much information you can find through data services and public information.

Conducting this research is easiest through the use of a host of digital tools, both free and paid, as well as employee support through clear data communication. With the following 5 tips, you can make the most of your market research and boost your business revenues:

1. Use all available resources: Data analytics tools, social media insight platforms, customer surveys, market analysts—all these tools and more are out there for you to use. Some digital platforms like Google Analytics can be taken advantage of for free. Meanwhile, other free online tools can help with keyword research for a successful content marketing strategy while informing you of market overlap where you might be able to expand the scope of your advertising.
2. Study your customers: Next to your employees, your customers are your most valuable asset. Get to know them better through customer analytics. Customer analytics is the process of organizing and analyzing customer behavior throughout their relationship with you. The process consists of gathering demographics and behavior information and then applying it to personas that more accurately summarize your target audience.
3. Expand the scope of your efforts: Don’t limit yourself to insights generated from a single platform. Explore a broader picture of your customer and audience base through email surveys, focus groups, secondary data, and anything else you can find demonstrating what customers want and how they shop. Broadening the scope of your efforts can be the perfect method of generating previously inaccessible leads.
4. Summarize and communicate information with your team: Market research is only as good as how it’s applied across your business process. Without clear and quality communication shared throughout your team regarding the revelations of your market research, your ability to hone your messaging and increase your sales will be limited. Translate data into a verifiable and compelling narrator surrounding your target audience, and share this story throughout your team.
5. Never stop researching: Market research should never be a one-and-done endeavor. Customer behaviors and industry trends change just as often as the technology that empowers them. Consider using a data service and keep abreast of industry news to better understand your customers and competitors.

Helpful tools and strategies like these can smooth the course of all market research and improve the rates at which you can sell products and generate revenues. Market research leads to impeccable customer profiles that help you sell products on more than just assumptions and contrived narratives. Instead, you will have the data to back up empathetic explorations of customer needs. This will help you craft more powerful marketing strategies and will increase your conversion rates.

Securing Higher Revenues Through Data

Market research is an incredibly valuable tool that can bridge businesses and their customers. Whether you are a B2B or B2C company, the insights generated by big data and expert analysts make for all kinds of informed business processes.

Use the power of market research to explore customers, industries, competitors, new audiences, and all kinds of adjacent data that can inform your sales strategy. Follow these tools and strategies to conduct more powerful market research and watch your sales numbers climb.

If you're interested in discussing your current or future market research strategy, we invite you to schedule an inbound marketing consultation with our team.