How to conduct a market research.

Marketing research is very important for any business, it creates a picture of what products and services that are in demand, bring good returns, tells whether you are solving your customers problems and what your competitors are doing better than you.  It helps you position your product/service to match your customer’s needs, find your unique value position and give you an unfair advantage in the market. 

A competitive research is not something you can delegate to someone else i.e. consultants or experts it’s something you have to do it all by yourself. You are the best person to do this work cos you are going to use the collected information to make decisions. You might be able to see some things that others cannot see. A takeaway- when you find something a competitor is doing better than you, do not be afraid of copying, if you see a good idea out there, adapt the idea to fit your own needs and remember that being a better thief is the ability to know what to steal.  “Good artist copy but great artists steal”- Pablo Picasso, the greatest painter that ever lived.  

Doing a market research before launching your business venture increases you chances of success, it reduces the number of mistakes you could have made in the market, validates your assumptions, helps your find customer’s pain point and help you capitalize on that to build a business. Your research plan should indicate where and who are your customers, at the end you should be able to tell who, when they are likely or willing to buy your products and at what price are they comfortable paying. It’s also very important to ask right questions in the right manner to the right people.

There are many ways you can use to conduct market research but I have decided today to discuss five techniques you can use: - Conducting surveys, doing focus groups, Interviews, field trials and observation. When choosing a technique to use it will depend on the data needed, budget size and type of the business. At the moment we will not talk about conducting research on your competitors but you have to figure out a way to drive them crazy.

1.      Surveys. 

You need straightforward and precise questionnaires; one can select a sample group that will represent your target market. It is advisable to have a large sample; a small one may not give the true picture of the population under study. 

        i.            In-person surveys we have 1-on-1 interviews which are conducted in places of high-traffic locations like shopping malls, biashara clubs, sports clubs, meet-ups, shows and trade exhibitions. They present an opportunity for potential customers to sample your products and help you get immediate feedback. They are the best way to collect data since have very high response rates which is more than 90% even though they are costly.

      ii.            Telephone surveys are cheaper compared to person surveys, super easy but the problem arises when you are trying to convince someone to participate in your phone survey. The interviewer on the other side is filing the questionnaire, this saves time since data coding and cleaning is eliminated. The response rate is between 50-60 percent.

    iii.             Mail surveys are the best way to reach a larger audience at a very low cost compared to all other surveys. This is where you sent your respondents questionnaires to their emails and request them on their free time to fill in and send back to you. The response rate is between 5-15 percent.

    iv.            Online surveys generate very unpredictable responses and sometimes unreliable data; you do not have control over your respondents. It’s only advisable to use this technique when you are gathering information on customer’s opinions and preferences.

2.      Focus groups. 

We have a moderator in this case it’s you, where one uses a list of questions or topics that guide the direction of the discussion among a group of different people. The group of people is normally industry experts, experienced entrepreneurs and potential customers.  These discussions take place at very neutral locations, they are usually videotaped and last between 1-2 hours.

3.      Personal interviews. 

It includes unstructured open-ended questions that last for less than 1 hour and sometimes you can record them. Data collected is subjective this makes it to be statistically unreliable since it does not represent a large portion of the study population. They will provide a deep insight on customer attitudes and ways to find out things related to introduction of new products and services.

4.      Observation. 

Responses to surveys, Interviews, focus groups may not truly represent the customer’s actual behavior; they may tell you what you want to hear. It’s now the time to go the extra mile and observe the customers actions by videotaping them in the shops, at home, at work, in other words find a way of how you can observe from a distance to see how they use the product. You will be able to find a true picture of your customer’s behavior.

5.      Field trials. 

This is where by you place the new product in selected distribution channels to test the customer’s response under normal selling conditions, this is to help you make price changes, product upgrades and improve your packaging. If you are launching a technology product, you can create a teaser landing page to test your customer’s readiness and acceptance, sometimes you can create a pre-order page.