Information obtained from marketing research and analysis is used to increase market awareness (volume, supply and demand, level of competition) and the basis for management decisions. In this article, you will learn about how a market research consultant can help in this process.
Why Consulting Market Research is Essential for Business Success
The purpose of market research is to identify the problem and see the actual situation from the outside without relying on the business owner’s opinion. With the help of a professional market research consultant, you can carry out high-quality marketing analysis and solve several important business tasks:
- get to know your competitors;
- identify their strengths and weaknesses;
- study your target audience, their pains, and their needs.
The answers to these questions are provided by the marketing analysis that you will learn to conduct, both in the form of a comprehensive study in several areas and on individual tasks that need to be solved here and now.
Understanding the Market Landscape: Identifying Key Players and Trends
Each company occupies a specific position in the market, which is affected by the surrounding competitive environment. You must understand the market, look for profitable opportunities, and develop a marketing strategy to succeed. The need for more information about the external environment (suppliers, partners, buyers) entails significant risks.
At this stage, you can detect direct and indirect competitors and study their methods of work: advertising campaigns, communications, and product (service) positioning.
Research Methodologies: Choosing the Right Approach for Your Business
Market research methods are selected depending on the purpose and scope of the study and the enterprise’s organizational and financial capabilities. They are used together, separately, at different stages of the analysis. A professional consulting market research company will help you choose traditional methods like SWOT or PEST analysis or find something more modern.
Analyzing Results: Uncovering Key Insights and Trends
If expectations and reality coincide, you prepare and present a report to the team, bank, or investor. The project’s future depends on how accurately you collect the data and how correctly you calculate the volume and capacity of the market.
It happens that the conclusions do not match the goal. In this case, you must return to the research stage and check the collected data’s hypotheses and quality again.
Using Research to Inform Business Strategy
The market analysis serves as the basis for developing a whole range of activities in the business strategy, including product adaptation for new target segments or markets, price adjustment depending on competitors’ prices, and sales promotion. It is followed by constructing a marketing action plan, its implementation, and an analysis of the decisions’ effectiveness.
Choosing the Right Consulting Partner: What to Look For
It is essential to understand that a market research consultant with much knowledge and experience can explain why you may need market research and how to do it correctly. You will learn what role pricing plays, which distribution channels to choose, what kind of advertising to order, and where to place.
For research results to help and not mislead, it is necessary to choose the right consultant. What kind of company to look for?
- Experience. The consultant has experience working in situations similar to the one she faced
- Skills. The consultant has knowledge, skills, and abilities that can benefit the company.
- Specialization. A market research team is a group of specialists in some narrow areas, for example, in organizing qualitative market research (group focusing) or laying out goods on supermarket shelves.
Competent marketing research significantly increases the awareness of management and reduces entrepreneurial risks. Market research allows you to increase the validity of managerial decisions.
