Before foraying into a business venture, a person must do market research. For example, if you are thinking about establishing an outbound call center service, you must know the current demand for the service and the scope for the future. When we talk about outbound call center service, we think about procuring the necessary assets to run the business successfully, but it is also important to know whether it’s in demand in the market.
Not just that, market research is a phenomenon that needs to be conducted at regular intervals even after you have successfully set up your business. To ensure a seamless future for a business, business owners must never cease to keep themselves abreast of the market. Otherwise, there will be chances your competitors may get an edge over and eventually you will face a steady decline in the business performance.
- Today we are going to discuss the importance of market research and the prospective benefits of outsourcing market research services. We are necessarily trying to sell a product or service to prospective clients or customers. But how do we know whether they need it or not? Or whether we are selling to the right people or not? To know that, we conduct market research.
- Market research is easy to understand and difficult to implement. As a novice entrepreneur, you might feel baffled because you don’t know where to start. See, market research involves a lot of things. Sometimes, you need to create a requirement to let people know about the product or service. The process may take extensive groundwork involving marketing tactics.
- Do you think you can do that? For an intensely required service such as inbound or outbound call center service, it might be easier to track the target audience. The target audience is mostly customer-oriented companies. Therefore, it would be easier to devise a strategy that would quickly get you some traction.
- By conducting market research a company can quickly know how to position itself in the market and foresee the future possibilities in the respective industry. It is all done to engage people into buying your product and service. It can take a significant amount of time and money if you do it yourself, with a little bit of insight.
- However, if you just let a third-party company do the groundwork for you, they will not only share some actionable insights for you but will also construct an impeccable plan of action that would help you to get an instant grip on the market. Meanwhile, you can dedicate your focus and allocate your resources to the core business activities of your company.
- Furthermore, once you have done market research, the next thing you do is contemplate the ways to give more value to the prospective clients or buyers; something better than your competitors. Giving a better value than your competitors is necessary to engage more customers. If you wish to have an edge over your competitors, you must provide more value to your customers.
Doing extensive market research will give you many answers. You will get to know about your business from a broader perspective. Understanding market conditions is paramount for leading a business. However, it could take several months to investigate certain areas of business. Of course, it depends on the type of your business and the industry you are involved in. You may have to dedicate more time and energy to rule out certain things.
Interesting Blog: How do Market Research Services Valuable for your Business?
Making a Sound Judgement on the Market
We are going to understand it with an example. Let us say you wish to start a call center service. There are basically 2 types of call center service - inbound and outbound call center service. Naturally, you will find a lot of existing competitors in this industry. You might have come from the same background. Certainly, you might have acquired your unique sense of industry and expectations from the industry.
- First of all, you must be mindful of the fact your competitors probably have some level of understanding about the customer base. They have also experienced professionals like.
- Also, there is a high chance they might be in possession of well-placed resources just like you. So, you need to do something out of the box to remain at the competitive edge. So, you need to conduct more intensive market research.
- For getting more insights and knowledge about the market, you must use a larger sample size than anyone. A larger sample size means you will be able to get better analysis and more substantial data.
- Having a better conviction about the customer base will help you create an impeccable strategy. A strategy that has a bigger chance of getting successful. All the information collected during market research is important.
- Second, a particular group of customers doesn’t represent the entire mindset or attitude of the entire market. You are only privy to a particular element of customers’ behavior as per your understanding. Customers can have highly volatile behavior.
So, in both cases, you need to play the hands you dealt with and see what works best for the company. You can never make firm conclusions unless you have enough data to substantiate the argument about customers’ behavior. You need a comprehensive market research strategy to ascertain all your business moves.
For opening an outbound call center service, you might require a third-party company that already has enough call center market experience and they always keep itself updated on the latest market trends and downfalls. Sometimes you need previous data for making comparisons and shifts in the market.
Outsourcing market research services will be your company's best bet because as we move into a more advanced and sophisticated ecosystem, there are too many variables to consider. It can take ages for your company to understand customers’ persona. Outsourcing marketing research will help you ramp up your business operations and performance.
Read more: How trusted market research firms can help your business?
Types of Market Research
Do you know why it is best to reach out to outsource a marketing research service? It is because the whole process is quite extensive. To give you a brief idea, you can consider dividing the process of market research into two ways - qualitative and quantitive. Both research types are pretty intense in their own way.
You will need to do a lot of analysis when it comes to quantitative market research, and qualitative research mostly comprises interviews, public opinions, and surveys that can be quite a tedious job but you will get a lot of actionable insights on a real-time basis. Depending on your purposes you can select from one of these market research strategies.
Qualitative Marketing Research
Interviews: The conversations held one-on-one with people can draw a lot of information. These vital pieces of information will help you to get a good grasp of the market’s reality. The interviews involve people already involved in the field of business.
In some cases, you will need to create hypothetical personas of prospective buyers: the personas will include details like gender, age, family size, job title, budget, challenges at the workplace, etc.
By getting into a direct conversation with people, you are able to share their perspectives about the market, personal experience, and opinions. You may contact them via call or email, and probe them to share crucial information that you can use.
Focus Groups: Interviews that are conducted with a group of people with similar backgrounds save a lot of time and effort. Instead of speaking to individuals one by one, you can simply call out a group of people to attend a seminar and share their viewpoints and inputs about the industry you are trying to learn.
Surveys: Instead of seeking appointments from people for interviews, you can simply send out questionnaires to prospective people and get them to answer the questions designed to draw tangible information for understanding the market’s maneuvers and behavior. Nowadays, people have created many creative ways to conduct surveys through online platforms. Surveys are considered impactful qualitative market research procedures.
Quantitative Market Research
Data collected from qualitative market research forms the basis for quantitative marketing research - it is called secondary data. Companies don’t necessarily have to go to places and meet people for getting answers. Instead, they use data from previous market research. They collate and analyze all data, then convert them into sensible information.
Companies conduct meeting for understanding market behavior, and the information collected from secondary data helps them in the decision-making process. Quantitative market research can help you to get a good understanding of the market if you have authentic data and the necessary tools to analyze the data.
Also Check: Compendium of Market Research and Analytics Solutions
Consequences of Improper Market Research
Not conducting proper market research can have several consequences for a business. Some of these consequences include:
Making Poor Business Decisions:
Without proper market research, a business may make decisions that are not based on accurate or complete information. This can lead to poor decisions that ultimately harm the business.
Losing Customers:
If a business does not understand the needs and preferences of its target market, it may not be able to effectively meet those needs and may lose customers as a result.
Wasting Resources:
Without proper market research, a business may invest time, money, and other resources in initiatives that do not align with the needs or preferences of its target market. This can lead to wasted resources and reduced profitability.
Missing Opportunities:
Proper market research can help a business identify opportunities for growth and expansion. Failing to conduct market research may result in a business missing out on these opportunities.
Decreased Competitiveness:
If a business does not have a strong understanding of its competitors and the market in which it operates, it may struggle to remain competitive. This can lead to decreased profitability and market share.
In summary, not conducting proper market research can lead to poor business decisions, lost customers, wasted resources, missed opportunities, and decreased competitiveness.
Read more: How Businesses Can Leverage The Benefits of Market Research?
Conclusion:
Hence, this was pretty much about the importance of market research and ways for doing impeccable market research. There are a lot of intricacies and groundwork required in market research. So, it is best if you opt for outsourcing marketing research services.
Just like you outsource outbound call center service, you can outsource market research service as well. Everything that we have discussed so far entails not only the importance of market research but also the ways of doing it. You either outsource it or do it yourself, it is imperative that you assign the best people for it.
