Market research is a difficult task, but essential to the success of a business. Over the years, the parameters for collecting market information have expanded and new methodologies have been developed.
The modern market is fluid and dynamic, with ever-changing trends that challenge research teams. However, businesses still want to identify and understand their target audience with insights from market research data for effective engagement. Here are some market research challenges and suggestions on how to overcome them.
Target market identification
You have the perfect product, but identifying the right market for it is the challenge. To overcome this challenge, research possible links between the product and a particular market demographic. These market demographics can include gender, age, occupation, income, religion, or even geography. Isolate a demographic group to target with test ads designed to extract their response to the product.
The research team can use Prolifiq relationship mapping tools native in Salesforce to manage incoming contact data in the survey. Measure the response rate of the target group and cross-reference the data to validate your audience list.
Multiple audiences
Your demographic research produces multiple audiences with different consumer characteristics for the same product. Create customer personas from this information and launch targeted campaigns that match solutions tailored to their interests and motivation. Your marketing initiatives, while selling the same product, should create specific messages for different segments that meet their particular needs.
When selling to different age groups, for example, appeal to what excites young people, is convenient for middle-aged people, and helps seniors reach all target demographics. By create charactersyou basically list specific market audience characteristics that simplify strategy and awareness campaigns, ensuring total coverage.
Know the right hook
So you’ve got your demographics well defined, but how do you engage them? Why should they listen to your pitch, or better yet, buy from you and not the competition? You need to know or have something that will pique their interest and hook them, something different, something personal – crochet.
Conduct subtle surveys to gain insight into their desires, goals, issues, hobbies, who they are currently buying from, to see how it relates to your product. Acquiring this pre-launch business intelligence provides insight into specific messages that are critical to the success of a targeted marketing campaign.
Capacity limits
Budgetary and staffing capacity pose another challenge for targeted market research. Many organizations may not have the means to splash vast budgets on market research programs but still expect credible business information for decision making. A viable solution to this challenge is to adopt technology for research agility by achieving standards of quantitative validation and qualitative iteration.
A lean budget and a handful of employees can deliver quickly and efficiently with the right technology in place. Invest in the latest reporting dashboards for instant feedback, automated templates to speed up your timelines and improve qualitative analysis of your research initiatives.
The Data Privacy Challenge
You hold this valuable treasure trove of customer data that is vital to your business, but it also carries the threat of regulatory penalties. Today, researchers in the rapidly changing e-commerce market need to dig much deeper into personal data to get the right consumer insights. All is well until a breach occurs and the organization faces a barrage of litigation and reputational damage.
Besides the internal privacy policy, adopt the right technology that can handle multiple large data sources with speed, efficiency and high security standards. Constantly review your technology and data security to stay compliant.
