If you are running a small business this year, one of the things which will be a big job for you to manage is the marketing of your brand. Marketing in business is important because it spreads the word about who you are and what you do. Marketing effectively can be a good way to build your audience and sell your products to the world, and today we will chat about one aspect of this: market research.
Market research is the practice of looking at the current market in terms of products and services and seeing where you can fit in for success. You can use market research companies to help you with this or do the work yourself, but today we are going to show you a few tips and tricks.
Know your aim
It is important before you do any kind of research into your market or otherwise that you know your objective. Why are you doing market research? It could be to scope out trends and see which products will be popular in the next year, it could be to see what your competitors are doing and how successful they are. Whatever the reason for your research make sure that you lay it out right from the start.
Know your audience
One of the most important rules of marketing effectively is that you need to know who your target audience is and what they want. This is where market research comes in, and you can use your research to find out exactly who your audience is and how you can best reach them with your products and services. It can be a long winded process but when you finally find your market it will make all the difference.
Use criticism
Being online in this day and age means that you can sometimes get a some negative feedback and this can be a pain for you when it comes to your reputation. However as a clever business owner you should know that it isn’t over when you get bad feedback, because people will still be waiting to see how you handle the feedback and what you do to change things for the better. If you can handle feedback and make good changes swiftly then it can be a huge win for your business and people will trust you more.
Ask for suggestions
If you want to be sure that you are in the loop with your clients all the time, one of the things you can do is ask them for suggestions whenever they buy from you. It could be a question of what colours they like, which products or something else entirely, but it can always be a good thing to get an idea of where your audience is. You can then use this information to tailor your marketing even further.
Make a spreadsheet
If you want to track the changes in your market over time, the best thing you can do is use your data and create a spreadsheet to show trends in behaviour. Having something like this will allow you to build patterns for your customers and sometimes even will allow you to predict what they will do next. For example if you were a conservatory company you would notice that people will start looking for these at the end of January to be ready for the spring, whereas when it gets to October and November you are likely to hit a dry spell. Being able to check results and read them will allow you to get into your customers head and understand exactly what they want.
Is there a gap?
No matter which market you currently work in at the moment, you will always find that there is room for changes and there might be a gap where you can squeeze something new in that no one else has thought of. Be sure that you have a good idea of what you want to sell and see if there is any way of you filling a gap between your competitors.
What are the trends?
Trends are always something you want to keep an eye on as a business, no matter what field you work within, and working to trends can be a wonderful way to gain recognition and build a loyal audience who wants to engage with you. Using hashtags and trending movies and tv is a great idea and sharing content in line with these things can bring you a lot of exposure for your business.
This post has been written by an outside source – See disclosure policy
