How To

Have marketing research questions? Not happy with a past market research company? This page is for you.

Many companies shy away from using marketing research because they are not really sure how to get started. Others stay away because they accept one of the two most common myths about marketing research:

It is expensive

It is only for large, blue-chip corporations

Does any of that sound familiar? If the answer is “yes”, we have good news. Not all marketing research companies are alike. Moreover, when you pick the right provider of market research services, it is affordable, especially when you consider market research as an investment, not an expense, and you consider marketing research within the context of your entire budget.

For example, here is a simple exercise that puts an investment in market research into the proper perspective: make a list of your top twenty discretionary expenditures and how much you spend on each. Then consider whether you could get by without the bottom five – and use that money to fund your research. See. You can add marketing research to your budget, and you can do it without increasing your overall budget.

Now that we have established that marketing research is affordable, let’s review how to get started. Step one is to identify which of the following areas require testing:

Customer perceptions about a product, new product or service.
Changes in customer behaviors.
Sales potential of a new market or a new class of customers.
Existing positioning or new positioning.
A new distribution channel.
A brand image.
An unsatisfied need.
Employee perceptions of individual managers or the entire company.
Key messages for an advertising or PR campaign.
Market conditions – is demand going up or down?
The impact of new government regulation.
How B-to-B buyers make purchase decisions.

You may even want to start at a more fundamental level by engaging research to identify and prioritize your needs. This is why many first-time buyers of market research come to On Target. We also get a lot of business from companies who had a bad experience with another research supplier and see the benefits of switching to our research methodology, which is based on in-depth, one-on-one interviews.

Why the right sales and marketing research reduces the risk of making the big mistake

Don’t make the mistake of looking at your marketing investment in isolation. The wiser approach is to look at the investment and the potential gain – or avoided loss. For example, how much would you gain if your sales were increased 1% simply because marketing research identified an opportunity you would otherwise have missed. Or look at this the other way: what if a failed product launch was avoided because market research revealed a serious flaw in the advertising campaign. What could that be worth?

What about a more subtle change? For example, could you make gains by knowing which areas of a city produce the most sales for your company? There would be no increase in your marketing costs. All that would change is your aim. Ideally, you should follow the 80/20 rule – spend 80% of your budget on the 20% of your customers who buy the most and generate the most profit for your company. Companies that don’t invest in research often make one – or both – of the following mistakes:

treat all customer classes equally
spend the majority of the marketing budget on the least profitable customer classes

Here is another example. Let’s say a high rate of employee turnover is leading to increased hiring costs and other spin-off problems, such as production errors and reduced customer confidence. How much would you be prepared to spend to identify the problem and, more important, eliminate the resulting costs and lost sales? Remember. Every day you wait, the bleeding gets worse. In this scenario, even a small company would be wise to invest in some tightly targeted research that gets at the root problem.

Why a one-time investment in the right kinds of market research services produces lasting benefits

Remember: a one-time investment in marketing research doesn’t just produce an immediate benefit. It produces a return that will likely continue for many years. Do the math yourself. Look at the cost of marketing research and then look at the potential gain. Even if you are very conservative, the benefits of investing in market research will be clear.