Market Research: The Key to Successful & Cost-Effective Promotions

Marketing is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, it includes critical market research and the various forms of advertising and promotions to be used.

Every business has an existing market share of customers from the larger pool of potential consumers and clients who are active participants in their industry’s marketplace. A rudimentary example of this is the fact that in any city there are consumers who frequent McDonalds, others who routinely go to Burger King, others who go to Taco Bell, etc. There is less consistent cross over customers then one would think.

Routine surveys and research studies will not usually find the answers you need to be able to successfully implement in your marketing efforts.

The key to creating a direct and effective channel to the highest volume of realistically potential customers and clients is the skilled execution of thorough market research. This is the exact tool needed in order to:

• Identify a business’ actual target public – separating out from the overall marketplace a company’s real potential customers and clients from those who would not likely or never become candidates to buy the company’s goods or professional services.
• Identify their real level of interest, desire, or perceived value of offerings.
• It identifies otherwise unforeseen barriers or market drag to offerings so they can be addressed and resolved quickly and in advance of promotions.
• Finally, and most importantly, it enables the creation and distribution of the most relevant, effective, productive and cost-effective communications (promotions, advertisements, etc.) to be launched direct to the exact prospective customers and clients sought after by the company.
• It is the most important investment for any business, which not only increases the company’s return for their marketing efforts, it can radically reduce their costs.

Market research can cause or prevent successful expansion. If it is done correctly, you win. If done carelessly you won’t.

So, why has it gone wrong in the past?

• Research inadvertently conducted on consumers who are not pre-qualified to be actual prospects is the biggest research error. Not every consumer from your specific market segment will ever buy your product or service so it is critical to identify the more likely consumer and prospective clients within your industry and market. It is the initial and most important aspect of market research
• Family, friends and your staff are NOT the people you survey to identify who will likely buy your products or services. If nothing else, they are already on your side and you are looking to identify and bring into the fold people who should be but are NOT already on board.
• Once you have the correct publics to conduct research on, it is now most important to dig in and get information that not only helps promote your products and services, but also identifies shortcomings and unforeseen blocks, drag and resistances to smooth promotion-to-sale efforts. This is often missed when conducting needed market research, and it can have devastating consequences.
• Promotion which does not communicate the most important research-proven personal benefits and selling points while also avoiding research-proven negatives not only wastes time, money and effort, it can inadvertently taint and push away potential customers forever.  
• No business is short of real competition. Lack of information on actual competitors and their customers and clients is an omission that affords the competition with a leg up. Identifying the company’s actual competitors with formal research is critical.  They are the competitors for a number of reasons and a business needs to discover those reasons to be proactive. When a company is reactive to a competitor’s unknown advantages, they already lost.

This is why you need a flexible and experienced market research team capable of quickly understanding your needs and able to design projects that deliver critical information that you can act on.

Consumer Market Solutions, LLC has over four (4) decades of professional experience working with the country’s leading technology giants and a number of the top advertising agencies in North America and the EU.  This means that we can much more quickly understand your company and your products and services. Our extensive background makes it very easy to recommend, design and deliver the best research solutions to suit your needs.