Market research is a key tool for successful entrepreneurs to stay on top of trends, make better business decisions, and keep their companies competitive. Research is essential to understand your target markets, increase sales and start or expand your business.

These are just a few areas in which market research can be a great help to build a business.

1. Enhance your branding

Many companies have poor brand management. They should ask themselves, “How do customers perceive me?” How does our brand compare to our competitors?

Market research can be used to enhance your brand by looking at such subjects as:

• Brand Awareness–Are your customers familiar with your brand and are they aware of it?
• Comparisons of the competitors – How do your customers see you company in comparison to others?
• Personification–What characteristics and traits do customers associate with your brand?

To get feedback from customers on marketing content, such as brochures and websites, you can also survey them. Typically, brand research involves interviewing customers and organizing focus groups. This allows you to explore various topics in depth and receive feedback from participants. These results can help you to improve your brand positioning and market assets.

2. Get to know your customers better

Entrepreneurs sometimes need more information about their market and their target customers to help them make the best decisions. Recently, we completed a study on a client that was developing a new kitchen product. We wanted to gain insights into her target market. These are the things we wanted to learn about potential customers for this product.

• What age are they?
• Are they female or male?
• Which marital status are they in?
• Are they married?
• Where are they located?
• How high is their education?
• Which social media platforms do they use?

We created a questionnaire that could be completed online by 1000 Canadians. This type of study allows us to better understand our target audience and help us develop a targeted brand positioning. Focusing your efforts on the right market will help you achieve faster results, greater efficiency, and better overall performance with your marketing campaigns.

3. You can measure the effectiveness of your marketing

Many entrepreneurs desire to do better at marketing their businesses and generating more sales. Market research can provide information about the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. We can create studies to get feedback from customers about the design and feel of your marketing messages. We can also assess customer reactions to marketing activities and campaigns.

This data will help you to maximize your marketing budget and design marketing that resonates with your audience.

4. Find new opportunities

Market research can help identify potential market opportunities for your company. This can be used to identify potential expansion areas and/or assess the market’s readiness to accept your products or services.

You might be opening a new store or looking for the best location. You might also be considering changing your distribution channel. This will impact your customer base.

These questions can be answered by analyzing data from Statistics Canada, government publications, and/or industry-specific reports. These data can provide insight in areas such as:

• Size of the market
• Demographics
• Statistics on market share
• Industry dynamics
• Major industry suppliers
• Key competitors
• Data on the general industry, such as the number of firms and their geographical distribution

This type of market data can be a crucial first step in helping to “size up” a market to determine the best business strategy and operations.

5. Learn about the product features

You will need to determine if your product has the right packaging and features before you launch a new product. You can refine your products by conducting research before you invest in expensive production.

We gather feedback from consumers on prototypes and concepts when we are designing new products. We collect data about the consumer’s reaction to the product, its features, and its colors.

To gather information for a distribution plan, we might also want to know how customers would shop for this product. We might also want to know how consumers react to marketing messages, promotional content, and creative content that will be used for the product launch.

We would typically start with qualitative research (interviews and focus groups), as this allows us to get rich, in-depth feedback. We would offer a sample or prototype of the product to customers for them to try and touch.

Then, we validate our research findings with a comprehensive survey of a similar audience with a larger sample (i.e. We would then validate the research insights with a comprehensive survey with similar audience but a larger sample set (i.e., more than 100 customers). This will give us the data we need to make informed decisions about finalizing the product design and/or concept.