Learning Market Research

Learning market research can be easy. Especially if you stick to doing real-world, basic stuff that works for regular businesses - that’s what you’ll find here.

What is Market Research?

Learning marketing research is the process of gathering data about the customer personas of your business's customers to understand if your products and services might succeed in the market. 

What Do You Get Out of Doing Market Research?

• Find out where your customers do their research on products and services (Hint: It’s Amazon and Google).
• Study and discover your competition.
• Monitor and uncover trends.
• Learn who might make-up your market.
• Recognize problems people in your market are trying to solve.
• Find profitable customers and avoid discounting.

Primary and Secondary Customer Market Research

When you begin learning Marketing research, you’ll hear about the term primary and secondary customers. Don’t let this scare you.

Think about it as two people in a marriage. For certain decisions, one person is the leader and primary decision-maker. And the other has influence, so understanding them both is important. And like a marriage, the dynamic is not always what it appears!

What are Personas and Avatars?

Personas and Avatars are words to describe the characteristics of your ideal customers. When you begin learning market research, start with your overall market, and then build your customer Personas (That’s the term I prefer, but Avatar works, too!)

What I mean, is that the work you do here is important. The more detailed and thoughtful you are about developing these personas will save you many headaches later.

Adele Revella wrote an excellent book called, “Buyer Perona’s” (Affiliate Link) that will help you do this work.  Most importantly, she teaches a concept called, “The Five Rings of Buyer Insights.”

Learning Market Research and The Buying Process

In learning market research, first, you are seeking to understand the market. Second, you are assembling the personas of the people who make up the market.

Remember, buying is a people to people process. You’ll read and hear the terms B2C and B2B, but to me, it is all P2P. Sure, there are nuances, but after that, you’re a person helping another person get what they want.

You just need to find them. And at the right time!

Don’t Skip The Surveys

I first learned about the power of surveys after reading Ryan Levesque’s book, “Ask.” (Affiliate Link) This is a book I highly recommend if you wish to understand your customers and how you might engage with them. 

He calls it the “Ask Formula,” and you’ll have to buy his book to get it. If you do, you’ll be happy you did because everything he teaches works.

In Conclusion

Learning market research can be incredibly complex. There are software firms like Qualtrics and  Medallia that have lots of terrific tools and reports. But for me, a survey and my Avatars will get me where I want to go.

Similarly, I think they might work well for you, too. Remember, sometimes simple is easy!

There are blog posts below where you can learn more. 

If you’d like a free pdf that I put together about how to make your customers and prospects feel special, fill out the form below.

Or, if you’d like to schedule a time to discuss something you’re working on, email me at Joel@makemarketingeasy.com.

Good luck and good marketing and selling!