What Is Market Research And What Is Important For Entrepreneurs?

Market research is very important to do before making products, so that products made are absorbed by the market. (Freefik illustration)

Have you ever read a mystery novel? If you have, you will definitely get a tense sensation that comes through character, instructions, and logic to reveal the secret of the story.

The same thing happens when you do market research and competitors. Of course you want to understand what motivates, encourages, and frustrations consumers.

Meanwhile, in competing research, you want to anticipate their game plans to stay one step ahead in the market.

Market research is a continuous task of learning more about your business, audience, and industry.

When done well, market research can help see a big picture of this, as well as your position in the map of business competition.

Because it relies heavily on data and analysis, you can reveal the right clues to solving the mystery in your market.

Simply put, market research or market research is the process of collecting as much information about your market targets as possible and the current state of the industry. Some research strategies are complicated and layered, but the main goal is always the same.

What is the purpose of market research? To learn everything about your consumers, so you can meet and reach them wherever they are more effectively.

Quality market research will provide answers to questions about consumers. So, you have to start research by formulating questions to make them more focused.

Here are some basic questions that you should answer before starting research:

Whenever you chat with a sales team about customer complaints and questions, or even talk directly with your customers, that's an opportunity to learn more about your market.

In this simple way, you have indeed done market research, but the results are often subjective and biased. The following reasons can illustrate why market research needs to be carried out and formalized.

Market research reveals the socio-economic, socio-cultural, geographical, and personal structure of market targets. This helps you focus on certain segments so that you can adapt to marketing, advertising, and promotion strategies.

When you know more about different market segments, you can create an effective campaign and attractive marketing materials according to the audience in that segment.

Market research can also help you find segments whose needs have been neglected so far. Ask yourself: are there gaps in the market that you can fill?

Market research expresses the current opinion of customers, giving you insight that can encourage innovation and increase in products in the future.

Through market research, you will learn about products, services, prices, and competing marketing strategies, as well as the sentiments of their customers.

How do they attract and maintain customers? What do their customers say? What is their content marketing like? Where do they develop? Where did they not succeed?

To understand your position in the industry, you must set a unique selling point (USP), value proposition, and position of your brand in the middle of a competitor.

The deeper you know about competitors, the better you will understand the uniqueness of your offerings.

Clay Christensen, professor at Harvard Business School, observed that 95% of new products fail as businesses neglect to "infiltrate into the hearts of customers" and empathize with them.

Thanks to market research, you don't have to be a liar who can read people's minds. You can test new products and features on your target and collect direct feedback from them.

Especially if you run a business using the right customer relationship software (Customer Relationship Management/CRM), you can not only get to know more about your customers, but also know how interested customers are in your products.

The risk of selling goods that you don't like the market can be reduced if you do market research correctly. Market research can also help avoid brand positioning and improper pricing strategies.

Knowing the market helps you recognize and prepare for economic and industrial changes. When you know about the needs of consumers, you can test and run an ad campaign that is in line with the audience's targets.

If your business is in progress, market research helps you anticipate what will happen next and you won't be surprised by the unpleasant storyline.

Market research thoroughly offers many benefits, and this short list only gives you an idea of what benefits you will get.

Research your questions and pay close attention to what you find. This is how you meet consumer needs. (ADV)