Small Business Blogging

When you sell a product or service, you want everyone to buy and frankly, you think everyone should.  Unfortunately, not everyone will be interested in your product or what you can do for them.  All you have to do to find exactly who IS interested and if the market you are exploring is viable, is a little market research.

Let me share a secret with you. Market research is pretty simple. All it involves is studying the market and your website traffic to determine who your customers are.  You can either spend money to market to everyone and find maybe twenty percent of your customer base, or you can do a little market research and concentrate your advertising efforts.  The latter option is considerably less costly.

So, how important is market research?

1.  You can learn who is interested in your products or services. It is nice to think that everyone will be jumping at the chance to buy your wares, but the reality is that not everyone will be your customer.  What you want to determine is what type of person needs or wants your products.  Are they housewives, working professionals, or techno junkies?  Knowing the type will help you find the people.

2.  You can learn where the people are who would be interested in your product or services. Your primary market might be teenagers or young adults.  In that case, you’ll find them on the Internet.  They are more computer savvy and use it for gaming, dating, chatting with friends, and shopping.  That opens up a variety of places to advertise your business.

3.  You can learn about the competition. You might not be the only game in town.  What are your competitors selling?  How are they doing?  You won’t know unless you do some research.  Find out about their marketing strategies, advertising campaigns, past and recent sales, and customers.

4.  You can learn what price or rates you should charge. That is another bit of information you can glean from market research.  Whatever the going rate of a product like yours, you can offer a competitive rate, cost-cutting promotional and other incentives to buy your product.

5.  You can improve existing products and services. Poll your customers and other visitors to the site.  What do they think of your products or service provided? While they may like you and your products, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for improvement.  Work on building a better mouse trap and gain some more customers.

6.  You can improve your marketing strategy. How do your customers respond to offers?  Some people like virtual coupons to shop online.  Others like to receive referral bonuses because they know a lot of people.  Some are into free giveaways and contests.  Know what interests your customers and improve those services.

Market research doesn’t have to be difficult or tiresome. You can conduct the research yourself, hire a firm, or pay for someone else’s research.  The bottom line is this: market research holds valuable information that can make or break your business.  Without customers you have no business.  Research tools allow you to gain access to information and build a broader customer base.

Photo by cvander