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Does DIY market research work?
Does DIY market research work?
March 10, 2011
With an increasingly competitive marketplace and an unstable economic climate, many established companies are using research to ensure they are meeting their clients’ needs — often in the form of a survey or questionnaire.
Research can now be done very cheaply thanks to free or almost free online survey tools. With marketing budget cuts, managers often take on this task without the help of market research expertise.
But is this wise? Although customer service research can be helpful when establishing the level of satisfaction within the business, it may not be robust enough for other areas — for instance when an established business decides to launch a new product or service. With any new launch, businesses need to canvas the opinions of potential customers as well as existing ones.
There are several reasons why established businesses often neglect to conduct viable market research when launching new products — cost, time restraints, lack of knowledge about the importance of objective research and the belief that existing customers are the most suitable respondents all contribute.
Good quality market research must meet the following criteria:
- Objective respondents
- Unbiased answering
- Expertly-tailored questions
- Detailed results analysis.
Market research can bring new insight into your company and foster innovation. By approaching respondents that are not your clients you can get new ideas and insight into competitors’ operations — something you may not be able to discover by speaking to your current client base.
Ensuring there is a lucrative potential market for your new products and services has never been so important.
Eric Brandenburg is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and manager at Marketest.
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Comments
You can prove anything you like given a badly designed survey....
E.g. How much would you pay for this advice? Options: £50-£99 / £100-£149 / £150+
(No option for £0!!!)
Absolutely right! We often have clients who have already established some survey questions, but we almost alway have to tweek it and edit the response/question to ensure it gives potential customers every possible option! Thats why the experts are needed to ensure the results are valid!
Eric is right. We need to ask the right people the right questions.
That is one of the odd things I noticed about marketing generally. We know that company accounts is a tough one so we employ an accountant. We know that the law is complex so we employ lawyers to write our contracts - or get us out of them! But when it comes to marketing or advertising, we are all experts. We know a 'good ad' when we see one. How hard can it be?
It is the same with market research. We know how to ask questions and therefore we can do it ourselves. With cash-strapped marketing budgets, dwindling training budgets and a difficult economy, we'd better just get on and do it ourselves. Intuitively.
But we ask the wrong people the wrong questions.
Sadly, I have know client organisations that actually asked the right people the right questions - they engaged us to do it for them - but then didn't listen to the answers, or chose to hear but not act on the responses.
Not only do we need to find out about the opportunity for new products and services so we can approach the right market in the right way, it is also important to find out how our existing customers are responding to our existing products and services - and just because they haven't complained doesn't mean they are loyal (repeat sales) and speak highly of you (prompting new sales from others).
As we often say, spend 5% of your marketing budgets finding out how to prevent wasting the other 95%.
What would you do?
Mac Mackay - East Midlands Customer Care Expert
Hi Mac,
Thanks for your feedback!
I agree, many business owners believe because they like their ideas their existing clientsand potential customers will too.
Far too many established businesses don't look outside the box when researching and often try to conduct the research themselves, with unreliable results. I agree a balance is needed between surveying your existing customers and new potentials! It is the only way to get a good perspective and valuable feedback.
Listening to your clients is the next step, thats why business owners shouldnt let their 'love' for the business idea blind them when analyzing the research results.
I do think investing a little in research can help the business save money in other sectors and bring fresh perspoective to existing services.
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