Every day, marketers make a bit of everything, from careful creation of website messages and writing from press releases to the analysis of location traffic and coordination with sales in order to collect the latest findings. A decent marketing vigor (ROI) requires considerable efforts.
But at its core, marketing lives from listening and understanding the audience. In fact, marketers who use customer knowledge and data-controlled strategies are driving five to eight times the ROI of those who do not. If you keep pace with a constantly changing consumer base, you must immerse yourself deeply into the behavior of your target audience until your marketing materials deeply use with you. Otherwise they fly blindly and undermine the efforts of their company to thrive under economic uncertainty.
How can you help different types of consumer research to better understand your customers and improve your marketing roar?
The big picture: types of consumer research
Traditionally, consumer research includes four important disciplines, each with promising unique customer knowledge so that you can make intelligent, data -controlled decisions.
Primary research
Essentially, primary research includes collecting information about factors first -hand, which are directly related to your company to help you make more well -founded decisions. For example, if a software company wanted to refine its product functions, it can directly help its users to evaluate important behaviors and generate ideas for product improvement instead of rely on data from third -party providers.
A CMO study of 2022 showed that 75% of the marketers expected primary data use to exceed secondary and third-party data. This underlines the integral role that plays first providers in coping with organizational challenges and opportunities.
Secondary research
In contrast to primary research, secondary research is more based on existing data than on new information from respondents. It contains knowledge from public records, industry reports, government publications, online articles and more from renowned, relevant sources. Secondary research is often more affordable and offers a valuable starting point for understanding market trends and consumer behavior.
Quantitative research
Quantitative research is the process of collecting and analyzing numerical data. The results of this research are typically shown in diagrams, graphics, numbers or statistics in order to enable lenses, scalable analyzes.
The analysis of quantitative research is simple and is based on numerical data and facts, not on opinions. Quantitative research therefore plays a major role in:
- Performance and ROI measurement
- Scalability and generalization
- Risk reduction
Qualitative research
Qualitative research is one of the consumer research examples that show the “why” behind the perceptions, fears, emotions, dreams and motivations of people.
Let us assume that you are a fashion retailer who tries to understand why a certain product line is not sold as expected. Instead of relying on numbers alone, you can carry out qualitative research to understand what customers keep from buying. You can then use these informed findings to adapt the product or marketing approach to improve sales.
Information: Methods within each research type
Each of the four types of consumer research is associated with different customer research methods.
Primary research methods
There are many methods with which you can carry out primary research. However, the most suitable depends on the specific information you want to get and the problem you want to solve. The following table summarizes important primary research methods and the knowledge that everyone can result.
Secondary research methods
Not every organization can afford primary research. Under such circumstances, you can use existing research results to inform your marketing decisions. The following table shows the most popular secondary research methods and the knowledge you can collect.
Quantitative research methods
In order to record quantitative data, you need dedicated data recording technology that translates abstract concepts and raw data into quantifiable measures.
Analysis platforms and customer data
Analytics platforms such as CRM systems (Customer Relationship Management) and Google Analytics, collect and quantify customer data in order to provide implementable knowledge. This data is often of crucial importance for the segmentation of customers, behavior forecasts, storage and campaign evaluation.
A/B test
A/B tests are also referred to as a split test and compares two variants of their marketing materials to show that are better achieved for their goal. This method can help you identify content that finds the most response from your audience and uncover the elements, and drive the conversions forward.
Market segmentation analysis
The market segmentation analysis divides the markets into different groups based on:
- Behave
- Demography
- Location
- Psychography
- Prefer
Analysis of each segment offers insights into how you can adapt your strategies to better use every customer category.
Qualitative research methods
You can carry out qualitative research with various techniques.
Mood analysis
Sentiment analysis is sometimes referred to as reducing opinion and contains the analysis of digital text, e.g. B. online reviews or comments for social media, and interpret the interpretation of customer feelings and attitudes. It reveals consumer feelings for your brand and products to identify improvement areas.
Ethnographic studies
Ethnographic studies include observing and immersing in the surroundings or culture of a target group to examine how they interact in a natural context with their products. This method shows deep, qualitative insights into the decision -making processes and customer experiences of your target market.
User Experience (UX) tests
UX tests evaluate the user interactions with your website, your app or your product to identify pain points and usability problems. It can help you:
- Discover user trips
- Inform design decisions
- Optimize user flows
- Problems with accessibility
Basically, UX tests create valuable findings for creating intuitive and efficient designs that meet user requirements.
The value of each method: convert knowledge into the ROI
Each research method offers unique findings with which you can improve the ROI. The method you choose should depend on your marketing goal. For example, if you try to determine how customers use a product, focus groups can be ideal.
If you have a new product idea, you want to measure and address your livelihood before investing in you. With focus groups you can present the product idea or the prototype of a group that represents your target market in order to obtain immediate, open feedback on your relevance and the perceived value. You can then refine your product and reduce the risks of products that do not meet the market requirements.
On the other hand, you can use A/B tests to make data-controlled decisions about advertising campaign optimizations to improve the marketing ROI. You can test different headings, slogans, formats or pictures to determine what is best swinging with your audience.
The challenge of carrying out effective consumer research
While customer perspectives can have a significant impact on the marketing -roi, marketers often have difficulty causing consumer research in a way that causes reliable knowledge. They often stand out of barriers, such as:
- Lack of resources or specialist knowledge in research methods
- Difficulties in interpreting data and derivation of implementable knowledge
- High costs for special tools for collecting and analyzing information
- Grouthink in focus groups in which the participants meet the dominant opinions and reduce the authenticity and diversity of feedback
- Logistic difficulties to bring everyone into the same space in the focus group
These challenges can lead to incomplete or incorrectly oriented research efforts that can be significant risks to make decisions and the overall business strategy.
Incorrect decision making
Marketers, who rely on incomplete, biased or distorted knowledge in other ways, risk strategies that do not bypass their business challenges. Errors decisions can lead to strategic mistakes, e.g. B. to unsuitable markets or to ignore customer pain points, which can affect the long -term growth of a company.
Ineffective targeting
Without comprehensive research, marketing experts lack the direction of concentrating their resources on highly potential goals. As a result, companies pursue customers who are not interested in their services or products, which leads to a low ROI.
Bad product market passport
Maligned research can overlook customer needs or ideas. As a result, imported products or services cannot take advantage of the intended market, which leads to low acceptance rates, sales and commitment.
It works: Avalaunch Summit and expert instructions
Your company must use the power of consumer data to form profit strategies and to exceed competitors. If you have difficulty gathering the right knowledge, Avalauch Summit can do the heavy lifting for you.
Our team of fractional CMOS and agency experts combine high-ranking strategies and state-of-the-art tools with which you define your target group, carry out a deep circuit analysis and carry out insights that are directly connected to the ROI improvement. Together we simplify the process of unveiling, where your company is particularly good and where you are below average.
Increase your marketing with research -driven knowledge
Consumer research offers knowledge that you can use to develop data -controlled strategies that can improve marketing results and promote sustainable growth. If you are looking for expert instructions and support in carrying out successful consumer research, Grow Digital Hub can help.
We have experience and resources to help companies in all industries collect customer knowledge in order to improve their marketing -roi. Contact us today to find out how we can work with you in order to switch off the full potential of your marketing strategy through expert-slett consumer research.