Using Market Research For Brand Strategy

Market research is an essential step when attempting to determine how your brand performs among your consumer base. In addition to market research, ensuring that your product or service will meet the demands of your target market, can extend past the general façade of marketing and affect your brand position entirely. The key to having a prosperous brand is using market research to help define a brand strategy through the insights that research data provides.

Discovering New Markets

For the purposes of developing a brand strategy, market research can help discover new subdivisions or niches that have an unmet demand. In order to discover such segments and target markets it is important to understand two key types of market research; quantitative and qualitative research.

‍Quantitative research is comprised of data that provides useable statistics or facts. Through quantitative research one can effectively gauge brand awareness and gain a better understanding of how marketing campaigns are performing. For actionable data, quantitative studies typically require larger sample population. Data collection of this sort can include methods such as, online surveys, polls, or secondary research.

‍Qualitative research provides a deep dive into data through smaller sample sizes. Focus groups, observations, and other qualitative techniques can help to uncover the motivations and perceptions behind market behaviors. This type of research will a range of behaviors among your consumer base, provide a larger overview of your intended market, and assist in finding ways to optimize your marketing strategy.

Identify Blind Spots

It is vital to identify the blind spots or weaknesses in your branding strategy. Brand perception is critical for a successful product or service. Fortunately, market research can provide data to reveal any potential negative brand perceptions or misconceptions. Shedding light on data like, your company’s sensitivity to diversity, your commitment to issues that matter to your consumers, or how your brand is perceived against the competition are all important insights to uncover. Discovering these hidden issues will allow you to better appreciate consumer perceptions and strengthen your brands’ trajectory going forward.

Develop Efficient Practices

A company does not have to commit a cataclysmic mistake in order for their brand to fall short of their fullest potential. Minor inconsistencies in foreseen outcomes versus tangible outcomes can create gaps in knowledge that limit the return on investment for marketing spend.

Collecting proper market research data can obtain metrics that will assist in evaluating branding strategies and determine any underlying inefficiencies. It is important to evaluate your current practices and evaluate if results are justifying the spend. For instance, if you have a low-converting ad it would be beneficial to gather data that reassess your target market as you could be directing the ad toward the wrong demographic. Insights such as these will require vigilant data collecting combined with advanced analysis to spot trends and generate actionable reports that facilitate a successful decision-making process.

The Takeaway

Most often, market research is used to develop business plans or marketing strategies, but it can also be using on a continuous basis to improve a company’s long-term success. Establishing a strategic research plan that involves both quantitative and qualitative techniques can take your marketing operations to the next level. Combining the use of research techniques can reap huge benefits as one method can provide data that, in turn, could be explored via another method, and so on. Market research doesn’t have to be a huge hit to the company budget if the approach is correct. Effective market research will result in successful ad campaigns, better business to consumer relationship, and help set your brand apart from the competition.