All of the best products and businesses began with an idea—a spark that ignited a flame of creativity and possibility. But any business owner knows that even the world’s best ideas are worthless if they aren’t able to reach the right audience.

That’s where market research comes in. The key to any successful campaign, market research provides crucial information to help identify your customers and design a strategy that caters to their needs.

Ready to learn how to conduct market research? Keep reading for everything you need to know.

What Is Market Research?

Market research is the process of gathering information, statistics, and analytics about a specific market and the customers within it. It’s used to inform a business’s understanding of their potential audience and that audience’s needs, as well as to analyze and compare against competitors.

Why Is Market Research Important?

Market research is important because it provides valuable insights into the people most likely to care about your product or business and helps you reach them through marketing and advertising campaigns.

After all, you can build the most clever, compelling campaign of all time, but if it doesn’t reach the right audience, you won’t see conversions. Think about it: you wouldn’t advertise high-end luxury experiences in an email newsletter for broke college students, or espresso machines in a Mormon community.

Audience matters—and market research gives you the information you need to properly target the right people.

Who Should Conduct Market Research?

Everyone! No, really—whether you’re a longtime business that desires to continue showing up for your customers well or you’re just starting out and hoping to launch a new business or wondering how to conduct market research for a new product, market research is an invaluable tool for achieving the best results from your advertising.

What Are the Types of Market Research?

There are two main types of market research: primary research and secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is done directly by your organization (or by someone hired on your behalf). It’s great for fully fleshing out your understanding of your audience, as it incorporates direct feedback from customers and/or potential customers within your target market.

Forms of primary research may include:

• Surveys
• Questionnaires
• Interviews

While primary research can be incredibly valuable, it can also be time consuming for your organization.

Secondary Research

Secondary research utilizes data already compiled by a third party—typically authoritative sources such as government agencies or businesses within your industry. It’s the most popular choice for businesses with a limited budget, particularly small businesses and startups, as it can be done more quickly and affordably than primary research.

Forms of secondary research may include:

• Case studies
• Magazines
• Trade journals
• Government agencies
• Industry publications or thought leaders

What Is a Comparative Market Analysis?

A comparative market analysis helps you see how your business measures up against competitors. Whether you’re trying to see where you stand in comparison to other businesses in your industry or are evaluating potential gaps in the market to launch a new product or offering, a comparative market analysis can provide the insights you need.

Identify:

• Your own business’s strengths and weaknesses
• Barriers that may stand in your way
• Gaps or opportunities for you to stand out
• Competitors and their level of threat

Take the time to audit your competitors—their offerings, products, services, web presence, and social media—and see how your own compare.

How to Conduct Market Research: Everything You Need to Know

Understand customer behavior, preferences, and needs through in-depth market research. Here’s how to get started.

Identify Your Research Goals

Before you can conduct market research, you first need to identify what you’re hoping to learn. What gaps do you currently have in your knowledge of your audience?

Possible goals for your market research may include:

• A more clearly defined customer avatar
• A comparison of your product vs. your competitor’s
• New market gaps that you can fill
• Understanding demand for a new product or service
• Mapped out customer buying habits

Don’t get overly ambitious—stick to one or two research goals so you can really hone in on the specifics. Remember, you don’t want to get overwhelmed. You want to gain actionable information.

Determine Your Ideal Customer

Next, evaluate who will most benefit from what you offer. It’s best to have both a broad view as well as a highly specific view of this customer.

Examples of an ideal customer might include:

• Working parents on a budget
• Young professionals who love coffee
• High-end CEOs looking to outsource and lighten their load
• Single women seeking community

The more clearly you’re able to define your target audience, the more strategically you’ll be able to craft your advertising campaigns.

Collect Data

Now it’s time to actually gather your data. Whether you’re undergoing primary research and connecting with individuals or harnessing the power of secondary research to reach your goals, it’s crucial to have a gameplan going in and take your time to ensure your research is thorough.

Analyze Your Data

You’ve gathered your data—now, see what you can learn from it.

Review the information you’ve received, asking important questions like:

• What do most people agree on?
• What patterns are seen across the data?
• What do people need that they’re not currently getting?

Perhaps the most important question is this: what action can you take from what you’ve learned?

Create a Strategy Moving Forward

No market research is complete without first building out a strategy for your business moving forward. Market research is only valuable when its findings create change—so what does that look like?

The possibilities for how market research can inform your marketing and business practices are limitless. It could mean:

• Pivoting to more eco-friendly materials because your audience made it clear that the environment matters to them
• Adjusting your advertising plan to promote better brand loyalty, such as through out-of-home (OOH) advertising
• Clarifying your messaging to ensure your target customer understands what you offer

This process involves trial and error. You may not adjust perfectly on the first try, and that’s okay. Learning how to do a market analysis for a business plan is a process of experimentation and discovery. Consider performing A/B testing throughout the process to provide further insights for your team. 

It takes time to refine your business, but the effort is so worth it in the long run.

Act on Your Market Research With Targeted Billboard Ads 

Market research helps you better understand how you can reach your ideal customer. That specificity allows you to take your marketing to new heights—and it deserves an advertising plan that’s just as targeted.

Billboard advertising provides an incredible level of targeting, both geographically and demographically. When you’ve taken the time to figure out who your ideal customer is and where they’re based, billboard ads give you the power to reach them through an advertising method that consistently provides some of the highest ROI in the industry.

Additionally, billboard advertising is extremely accessible, with options for a wide range of budgets. If you’ve taken the time to learn how to conduct market research for a small business and are now ready to learn how to work with the data you’ve received, billboard advertising could be your best next step forward.

Ready to start building out an OOH advertising strategy that reaches your ideal audience? Receive your free billboard proposal today.

FAQs