Market Research: Key to Starting

a Business the Right Way

M A Y 1 8 , 2 0 2 0   7 M I N S R E A D

Table of Contents
 What is market research?
 Types of market research
o Primary Research
o Secondary Research
 Steps to conduct market research
o #1 Define your target audience
o #2 Understand their behaviour 
o #3 Choose a method to get insights
o #4 Collate the responses
o #5 Form hypothesis & take actions
 Conclusion
Before starting off any project, business, or a study, one of the most important
things to do is research. Every business has its own set of target users. It’s
impossible to understand your users, their habits, expectations and behaviours
without detailed market research. This article will help you understand
everything about efficient market research.
What is market research?
Market research is a process that consists of gathering data and information
pertaining to your target audience in a systematic way. It helps in understanding
how viable your product or service would be, before even entering the market. It
also gives you an overview of what is trending in the industry and what
motivates the users to make a decision to convert and buy. Accordingly, you can
plan the roadmap for your product or service. Listed below are some of the key
benefits of market research:
 Increases efficiency: Quality research helps you understand your
customer’s behaviour and habits and tells you the potential focus areas well
in advance
 Competitor overview: Market research is the best way to study the market
or industry you are targeting. By doing this you can make sure to stay ahead
of your competitors by offering varied experience and services
 Cost-efficient: This process does not cost you dollars. You can simply
choose to use a survey tool or one-on-one meetings within your reach to
start with. Shortly put, this is a low investment, high returns process!
 Productive business investment: Market research is a great investment for
any business. It helps the decision-makers to take the right path and achieve
the targets that are required

Types of market research

By any chance, if you have gotten a chance to read the basics about general
research, you know they are divided into primary and secondary research. Let’s
do a quick recap here, and learn about the ways to conduct both of them:

Primary Research
The data derived from the primary research is ‘first-hand’. This means that you
either collect the data yourself or employ someone you know to conduct
research. Often, online surveys, phone interviews etc are the methods used for
this. In this type of research, you have control over the entire process and can
change the format in between. 
Please note: The learnings from this type of research are both qualitative and
quantitative.
Ways to conduct primary market research:
 Ethnographic research+observation: This is in-depth research conducted
in the natural setting of the object. The idea is to make the respondent
totally comfortable in their habitat while the interviewer adapts themselves
to their natural environment. This type of research can last from a few days
to a month. Every minute detail is studied during the duration. 
 Focus groups: Focus group is one of the most commonly used methods for
primary research. Here, a group of about 6-10 people is told about a
particular release/ idea and all of them share their perceptions, thoughts and
views. The best part about this is that it can be conducted remotely and is
cost-effective
 One-to-one interview: As the name suggests, this method involves
interaction with an individual in the form of an interview. The questions
asked to the respondent here are mostly open-ended questions. This is,
however, prone to bring in biased responses and the end result of this
depends a lot on how the interviewer is putting the questions and their
ability to facilitate responses.
 Surveys: Surveys are hugely informative and helpful if conducted the best
way. They can be conducted via phone, in person, on paper or via online
software. It’s a list of questions crafted in a way that gives you the best
possible insight into how a customer feels about your product or service,
your brand and the experience you provide. It can be as broad or as specific
as you want.

Secondary Research
Unlike the primary research methodology, secondary research uses information
that is organised by sources like media houses, chambers of commerce,
government agencies, private research firms etc. This information is published
in different formats and shared with the general public via multiple channels
like online forums, websites, newspapers, magazines, events, etc. 

Ways to get secondary research results:

Public sources: Public sources such as a library is an awesome way to gather
information. The best part is the information is well segregated along with the
timelines. However, with the advent of the internet, the visits to the library have
come down. It’s always a good idea to visit one if you have enough time to find
some unique publications. 
Commercial sources: Local newspapers, magazines, journals, TV, radio etc. is
what comes under commercial sources. Some of these might get expensive but
they are one of the easiest ways to consume information. 
Educational institutions: Not very commonly used, this source of collecting
data can prove to be useful since a number of researchers are carried out by
management and technical institutions which rarely come out.

Steps to conduct market research

Now that you know what is market research, its importance and the ways to
conduct research, let’s talk about how to do market research in 6 quick steps.

#1 Define your target audience

Before you start understanding how your customers operate, you need to
quickly understand who your customers are. Create a buyer persona and keep it
handy.
Please note: It’s absolutely okay to have a number of buyer personas! 

#2 Understand their behaviour 

After knowing well who your target audience is, find out what are the best ways
to get in touch with them to get true answers. Evaluate their active hours,
tonality, preferences and so on.

#3 Choose a method to get insights

Now is the time to take one of the most important decisions: to choose how to
conduct the research. After following step #2, this should get easy. For example,
if you find that your target audience opens their mails regularly and responds to
them, you can choose to run a survey. However, if you find that the internet
penetration to your target audience is very low and they understand their local
dialect, then choosing the ethnographic research comes in handy.
#4 Collate the responses
This is where all your efforts come down to. It can be an excel sheet, a google
document or a particular software, documenting every fact is a must. Make sure
to protect your data and share it only with the relevant people.

#5 Form hypothesis & take actions

After you have a heap of information, it’s time to study the data and build a
hypothesis. There might be instances where you will realise that you need to
change the entire sign-up flow or change the language or take a different
approach. How well you follow this step reflects the success of your business to
a large extent. 

Conclusion
Conducting market research can prove to be an eye-opener and a fact-checker to
a number of individuals and organisations. Even if you think you understand
your target audience in and out, a detailed study will likely uncover new
channels and opportunities for you. It is always the best choice to conduct
market research in the initial phase of starting or building anything as it leaves a
lot of room for improvement.