6 Market Research Methods You Need to Know

Embarking on market research is a complex endeavor, far more intricate than it may initially seem. It's not just a matter of finding individuals who match your customer profile and posing a handful of questions. Nor is it as simple as conducting a quick Google search to uncover relevant statistics and results.

As per the stats, 23% of businesses don’t have a properly placed market research strategy.

However, the real challenge is that your research could go astray without the right approach (methodology). Without the right approach, you could end up with misleading or incomplete information, which can be detrimental to your business decisions.

Worse yet, you may get data that looks conclusive, making you overconfident about using these findings while crafting a strategy. Needless to say, each of these can be quite problematic, and to avoid them, you need some essential market research methods and tricks on your side. Here are six such techniques. 

1. Your search is already tainted

The first thing you have to understand is that you’re already carrying the baggage of your previous searches. You’re either a marketing professional, which means that your search has gone all over the place, or a project manager, which means that you’ve already gone into the topic in-depth.

This means that the usual Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques might not work for you, and your search engine results page (SERP) may give you slightly different results.

Second, you might not share the location with your target audience. You may work for the international market or a global market (like most online businesses nowadays). This is why your location might give you SERPs that are different from what you would normally expect to get.

Fortunately, both of these problems can easily be solved with the right VPN for Chrome, Firefox, or whichever browser you prefer to use. There are many such extensions, and all you have to do is find the right one. According to Aleksandar Stevanovic, a software reviews expert, these extensions are a much easier and quicker way to secure your online activities than typical VPNs. So, with one of these, you can hide some of these factors and get more unbiased (for example, not influenced by your previous searches) and more relevant (for example, specific to your target audience) results. 

2. Understand the mindset of your customer

The next thing you need to understand is your audience's attitude toward your product. While they may want your product, they might not be willing to pay as much as you’re charging. It may even be something they desire but not high on their shopping priority list.

Another thing you need to keep in mind is that not everyone wants to advertise that they’re using your products. This is one of the reasons why more and more people are turning toward crypto casinos. Traditional casinos may ask for your credit card number, and a deposit to your online casino account might appear on your bank statement. With crypto wallets, this definitely won’t be the case. 

Failure to see this might lead you in the wrong direction regarding branding. Sure, you want everyone to wear your logo, but are they comfortable with that, and is your branding affecting the integrity of the product package?

The best solution to this problem is to look for an outsider for aid. 

3. Social proof is not always a reliable source of information

If you want to check the reputation of your competitors, you can’t just rely on reading testimonials. While this sounds like a common-sense argument, you must hear it out once again.

First, you need to understand that marketers hand-pick testimonials and use them as social proof. This means they cherry-pick the best of the best and tweak them a bit to give you a sample.

So, if you included this (highly orchestrated) UGC in your research, the results that you would find would be dubious (to say the least).

Instead, you need to resort to a method like social media listening. This way, you can see what the general audience is saying about the brand when they don’t think anyone’s listening. This way, you’ll get closer to the truth, but even then, the information you receive won’t be 100% reliable. 

4. Competitive Analysis: Understanding Your Rivals

Competitive analysis is a key part of market research that allows businesses to measure themselves against competitors. By examining what competitors do well, where they fall short, and how they position themselves, you can improve your offerings, uncover new opportunities, and stand out in your market.

This is a piece of advice that you don’t hear very often, but there are a lot of industries where your indirect competitors are just as relevant as direct competitors.

For instance, if you’re opening a pizza place, your guests won’t just have to decide which pizzeria to order from. First, they need to settle on getting a pizza, and this isn’t a given. 

This is especially true in the food industry, where people tend to have one place in mind for each food type. If they decide to eat pizza, they’ll likely go to your place, but they might also consider other options.

In this scenario, you’re actually competing with other businesses that they have some loyalty for and need to come out on top (more often than not). Just keep in mind that in some industries, loyalty works differently. Sure, iPhone users buy iPhones exclusively, but no one eats at just one place or wears just one brand. 

This process isn’t just about making surface-level observations. It involves systematically gathering and analyzing data to understand where your business stands and what you can do to stay ahead.

Why do you need Competitive Analysis?

By analyzing your competitors, you can better understand market trends, adjust your strategies to fill gaps and enhance customer satisfaction by identifying unmet needs in their products or services. This helps you stay ahead of shifts in customer preferences and industry changes while refining your approach to stay competitive.

Techniques for Competitive Analysis

There are many ways to gather insights about your competitors, but let’s focus on the most effective techniques for competitor research. 

1. SWOT Analysis: The SWOT framework allows you to assess your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This allows you to compare your business with theirs, identifying areas where you outperform them and areas that need improvement. Understanding these aspects helps you uncover opportunities to differentiate your business and address any weaknesses to stay competitive.
2. Field Trials: Testing your competitors' products or strategies in real-world conditions provides valuable insights into their effectiveness. For example, allowing customers to try a product in-store and collecting their feedback can help you gauge its appeal and understand customer preferences.
3. Customer Feedback Analysis: Monitoring customer reviews, testimonials, and social media mentions about your competitors helps you gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses. By using social listening tools like Brandwatch, you can identify pain points, customer complaints, or areas where competitors excel. This allows you to adjust your strategies and improve your own offerings based on real-time feedback and market sentiment.
4. Advertising Reactions: Studying how audiences respond to competitors' advertising campaigns provides valuable insights into what resonates with customers. By analyzing their reactions, you can understand which messaging, offers, or creative strategies are effective, helping you refine your own marketing research efforts to better connect with your target audience and differentiate from competitors.
5. Public Opinion Surveys: Using surveys to collect customer opinions on competitors' products and services helps you understand perceptions of their value, quality, and brand loyalty. By asking targeted questions, you can uncover customer preferences and identify areas where your competitors excel or fall short, providing actionable insights to refine your offerings and improve customer satisfaction.

Secondary Market Research in Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis often relies on secondary research, where publicly available data is analyzed to gain insights.

• Sources of Data:

  • Annual reports provide valuable insights into your competitors' financial health and strategic priorities, helping you assess their overall performance. Market reports offer a broader view of industry trends and competitor positioning, enabling you to understand the market landscape. Additionally, public domain data, such as trade publications, government records, and industry white papers, can provide further context and uncover key details about competitors' strategies, strengths, and challenges. These sources help you stay informed and make well-rounded decisions.

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

  • Metrics such as customer satisfaction, product adoption rates, and brand loyalty provide measurable benchmarks for evaluating competitors.

Competitive analysis is not a one-time exercise—it’s an ongoing process that keeps your business aligned with market demands. By leveraging techniques like SWOT analysis, field trials, and secondary research, you can stay ahead of competitors and continuously refine your strategies.

Use competitive analysis to benchmark your business and identify innovative ways to differentiate yourself in the market.

5. Pinpoint what you need to learn

It’s so easy to get sidetracked if you don’t have the main objective of your research. Yes, as ridiculous as it may sound, there’s such a thing as learning too much. Excess information will cloud your judgment, sometimes even sidetrack you.

To avoid this, it's crucial to have a clear market research objective. By formulating specific questions you want answered, you can steer your research toward actionable insights, giving you a sense of control and direction.

• How much are my customers willing to pay for my product?
• Will they come back for more, and when?
• What are my upselling and cross-selling opportunities?

By asking these specific questions, you’ll direct your research toward actionable information. For instance, knowing how much your customers are willing to pay for your product can help you set a competitive price point. 

Also, this allows you to filter KPIs (key performance indicators) and differentiate them from vanity metrics. Vanity metrics are superficial data points that may sound relevant but are not directly tied to your business goals. For example, the number of likes and shares is not the same thing as the shopping cart abandonment rate or click-through rate (CTR).

6. Use as many methods as possible

One major fallacy researchers make is assuming that they can use just one method to learn everything they need. While this may sound right, you need to remember that every method has its downsides. For example, surveys may not always capture respondents' true feelings, while dominant personalities may influence focus groups.

Surveys, for instance, are great at getting you the numbers, but without proper segmentation, they won’t give you an idea of what’s really going on in the field.

Interviews give you a more personalized and immersive story around which to craft your strategy. However, they’re tainted by bias, which means that what you learn from one customer might not apply to anyone else. This means that you need more of these interviews, but how many (real, long-form interviews) can you make?

This is why you must combine both methods and seek the truth somewhere down the middle.

Better yet, add more methods to the mix. The more angles you approach this situation, the more conclusive your data will be. 

Picking the Right Research Methodology

Market research methodologies are structured approaches to gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data to understand your target market. Choosing the correct methodology is critical, as it hinges on your goals, the information you already have, and the insights you need.

We’ll explore the four primary research methodologies, their benefits, challenges, and appropriate use cases.

1. Surveys

Surveys are a quantitative research tool for collecting large-scale feedback from your target audience. They are ideal for measuring trends, behaviors, and preferences.

Nearly 89% of market research suppliers and clients regularly use online surveys.

Benefits:

• Cost-effective for gathering data from a large audience.
• Can provide statistically significant results if the sample size is adequate.
• Allows for follow-up questions to explore the reasoning behind responses.

Challenges:

• Achieving a large enough sample size for statistical reliability can be difficult.
• Responses may lack depth, especially if questions are not carefully designed.

2. Focus Groups

This method involves bringing together a small group of participants to discuss a product, service, or idea in detail.

Benefits:

• Provides rich, qualitative data that uncovers emotions, motivations, and perceptions.
• Encourages brainstorming and varied perspectives in a controlled setting.

Challenges:

• Group dynamics can lead to biased responses (e.g., dominant participants influencing others).
• Findings may not be representative of a larger audience.

When to use: Ideal for exploratory research when launching a new product or testing branding concepts.

3. Observational Research

This involves observing consumer behavior in real-world or simulated environments to gather insights without direct interaction.

Benefits:

• Offers authentic insights into how consumers interact with products.
• Uncovers behaviors that participants may not articulate in surveys or interviews.

Challenges:

• Time-intensive and may require sophisticated tools or setups.
• Results are descriptive, requiring further analysis to derive actionable conclusions.

When to use: Best for studying user experience, improving product design, or understanding customer journeys.

4. In-Depth Interviews

This one-on-one qualitative research method examines individual opinions and experiences deeply. Online in-depth interviews with webcams are the most popular qualitative research method, with over one-third (34%) of researchers using them regularly.

Benefits:

• Uncovers detailed insights about customer motivations, pain points, and decision-making processes.
• Highly flexible, allowing researchers to adapt the conversation in real-time.

Challenges:

• Time-consuming and resource-intensive to conduct multiple interviews.
• Results are subjective and may not be generalizable.

When to use: This method can be used to explore niche customer segments or validate hypotheses generated through surveys or focus groups.

How to Choose the Right Methodology

Selecting the correct methodology depends on the questions you want answered, the data you already have, and the data you need to gather. Here’s a practical approach:

1. Define Your Objectives: Start by identifying the core questions you need answered. For example:

   • What do customers think about my product’s pricing?
   • Are there unmet needs my product could fulfill?

2. Consider Existing Information: Evaluate the data you already have. Are there gaps that need addressing?
3. Match Methodology to Needs: Choose a methodology that aligns with your goals:

   • Use surveys for large-scale feedback.
   • Opt for focus groups or interviews for detailed qualitative insights.
   • Leverage observational research to understand real-world behavior.

4. Combine Methods When Necessary: A blended approach often yields the most comprehensive insights. For instance, start with a survey to identify broad trends, then use focus groups to explore specific themes in greater detail.

Asking the wrong questions will give you all the incorrect answers

The moment you realize that getting the wrong answer is worse than having no answers at all is the moment you’ll start understanding market research a lot better. The above-listed tips are there to help you start asking better questions and doubting everything you thought you knew about market research methods. This way, you’ll understand your market much better in no time.