Why is market research important?

Why is market research important? As a marketer, you might ask yourself how much market research you really need to be doing regularly.

You probably already look at search engine traffic, social media listening data, and google trends data on a regular basis. And you rely on a comprehensive market segmentation. You might even run target market research or exploratory research on a yearly basis. But how much primary research is really necessary routinely? 

As the industry becomes more data-driven, the need for marketers to do their own market data collection is becoming increasingly clear. 

Market research can help you do your job more strategically and more effectively, and with DIY market research tools, it’s getting far easier to do. You no longer need to be an expert to carry out market research; self-service research tools like Attest, are opening up access to everyone. And it’s in real time.

So, if you’re not already making use of market research in your job, read on to find out 8 reasons you should be. 

8 reasons why market research is important 

Reason #1 market research lets you get to know your target consumers

As a marketer, you’re most likely an expert on your brand… but how well do you know your customers or future customers? The best marketing messages are those that truly speak to the challenges, desires and beliefs of your audience. It’s not possible to craft that type of messaging without truly understanding who you’re speaking to. By carrying out market research in the form of consumer profiling surveys, you can dig deep into what makes your target consumers tick. This will not only make your marketing more effective, but will also help to shape the wider business strategies so that it better serves current and potential customers.  

Download our consumer profiling survey template to get started.

Reason #2 market research can inspire creative ideas

When you carry out market research, it can often spark brilliant ideas for marketing campaigns. That’s because you can isolate your target audience’s motivations for buying your product or service, the frustrations they have, the emotions they feel and the things they’re interested in. It’s far easier to brainstorm with this knowledge than it is to start from a blank page. You won’t have to guess what might appeal to your audience – you’ll be able to identify creative concepts that you know will resonate.

Reason #3 market research can help you make better decisions day-to-day

In marketing, you have to make decisions every day – which channels should you be focusing your budget on? Which ad creative will convert better? How have buying habits shifted in the last couple of months? What can you do to improve your website? Answering questions like these can be hard to do confidently, especially if you’re relying on secondary research that doesn’t address all of your businesses questions. Luckily, using market research can make decisions much easier. With a platform like Attest, you can put out quick surveys and start getting responses in minutes and hours (told you it was real time). It’s a great way to impartially validate decisions, especially the ones that have a lot riding on them. 

Reason #4 market research prevents you from making costly mistakes

When you use consumer data to sense-check marketing decisions, the types of information or insights you get back give you peace of mind that you’re making the right choices. This is especially valuable when it comes to your marketing campaigns. When you’re committing to potentially big budget print, TV or out of home advertising campaigns, you want to be as sure as possible your creative is going to strike the right note with your target audience. Creative testing is a form of market research that allows you to do this, letting you present your creative assets to consumers and get their opinions. We all know it’s not hard to think of ads that should have been scrapped at the drawing board stage!

Download our creative testing survey template to get started.

Reason #5 market research helps you spend budget more strategically

You no doubt already carry out research before you commit media spend to any particular channel by looking at each channel’s audience profile and reach. But should you just take the publisher’s word for it? Isn’t it better to ask your target audience where they spend time watching, reading and watching stuff online? You can do exactly that with a media consumption survey, finding out which media they’re most likely to consume – and when. With this data to hand, you won’t waste budget on channels, platforms or publications that your target audience don’t use. And you can be laser-focused on the timings of your ads so they get maximum exposure. 

Check out the results of our annual media consumption survey here.

Reason #6 Market research lets you optimise your efforts

As well as letting you make more strategic marketing decisions in the first place, market research enables you to continue to optimise your efforts. Once a campaign is live, for example, you can survey consumers to get a better handle on exposure to your ads. When you know who’s actually seeing them, where they’re seeing them and who’s responding to your campaign, you can make savvy tweaks to improve performance. 

Reason #7 market research lets you know how well you’re doing

A really valuable type of market research for marketers is brand tracking. Brand tracking is a health check for your brand, carried out at regular intervals. It looks at things like prompted and unprompted recall, purchase intent and consumers’ likelihood to recommend you to others. It’s important because it lets you know if your brand-building efforts are actually working, and how the work you’re doing is tracking against that of your competition. The data you get from brand tracking also enables you to set measurable goals to strive for. 

Download our brand tracking survey template to get started.

Reason #8 market research helps you keep tabs on competitors

Part of your job as a marketer is keeping your eye on the wider marketplace. It’s important to know how your competitors are performing and whether you’re in danger of being overtaken – or surprised by a challenger brand. You can use market research to regularly ask consumers about the brands they’re buying from and their satisfaction with those brands. You can even undertake brand tracking of your closest competitors so you can benchmark against them. 

Have we convinced you of how important market research is yet?

We hope so…but sometimes, the best way to see something’s value is to try it for yourself. Why not book a demo to see how easy the platform is to use, and learn what it can do for your brand?