Posts Tagged ‘marketing tips’

5 Tips for a market study

When you are about to start a business, launching a new product your local or open to the public provided it is common that fill you with doubt and uncertainty of whether your venture will succeed.

Doubt and insecurity are often bad company, but there are smart ways to ensure that your business takes downwind and knowing your market.

Today I share 5 tips to make a market survey a practical, easy and with very little investment to help you make steps safer.

What is market research? It can be summarized as a method or a series of techniques that allow you to discover, visualize and analyze the commercial potential you will have with your business or product.  A Market research performed effectively may reveal important aspects you should consider your business plan and that the naked eye sometimes do not quite consider them.

Why should a market study? For many reasons; suppose you want to sell tires for bicycles. Where is your market? Who are your customers? Do you offer on a property for heavy transport trucks? Do you offer anything to housewives? Or maybe a local would open near a highway where bicycle travel is dangerous? Of course not! Of course, this approach is very obvious, but is intended to illustrate the importance of effectively locate and identify what and where your potential market.

The reason why many businesses fail are not because they have a bad product or because the business itself is bad. Many businesses failed because they started badly wrong. Make a market survey can be easier and cheaper than you think and realize it is a job well worth it:

1. Make a personal tour through the area .The first board recommended to start a travel market research is the area where you plan to personally locate your business. Accompanied preferably someone else in your confident you know the purpose of your journey to help you visualize important details. On this tour seeks to identify: businesses similar to yours that already exist on the perimeter or businesses that offer complementary services. Analyzes their locations and schedules. Look how many people attend and try to guess if their clients are happy or unhappy. Well, a tour the area will reveal important information and ideas for your project that may not have considered.
2. Make polls. Prepare a survey that allows you to detect and measure the demand for your product or service in the area where you plan to locate you. The survey should be short, concise and questions should be raised so revealing interests of people. Remember that time of people is important so your poll should have no more than about 10 to 15 questions can be answered in a couple of minutes (maximum). It is also advised to avoid embarrassing questions, embarrassing or request private data your respondents, which could lead to a rejection with consequent negative effect. Select a reasonable sample that allows you to measure public opinion significantly.
3. Use an undercover customer. You can talk to a friend, associate or partner to help you carry out research work covertly to occur at the premises of your competition like a customer. The objective of this research will determine: the price of products or services, schedules care, quality of customer service, value-added aspects, product quality and other important element that you should know before launching your own business. This type of strategy provides excellent results and is often called Mystery Shopping.
4. Make calls for information. Another interesting way to gather information is by calling your competitors. With one call you can get much important information as we have mentioned and in addition you will measure the level of effectiveness of its sales consultants. Remember that the quality of your sales force is very important for success in the promotion of a product.
5. Analyze their advertising resources. And asks for all publicity material related to products and services offered by your potential competitors, newspaper ads, brochures, catalogs, website and if you can analyze the presentation of their products.

In general terms a basic market research as this will allow you to find a great deal of information that will be useful to determine if your business strategy is adequate or need to make some major adjustments. Additionally, you will determine with greater impact demand and possible acceptance of your business or product.

And the best, as you can see is that you need not invest a lot of resources to conduct your own market research. Any suggestions or personal experience you can provide?