Whether you want to introduce a new product or service, or you want to make some targeted adjustments to your current offerings, you’ll need to engage in a market research process to determine what your customers are really looking for. If you’re operating a franchise, you can gain access to valuable market data by leveraging tools from Vetted Biz! Furthermore, here’s how to nail down your buyer persona, conduct primary and secondary research, and plan specific product changes with helpful tools.

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Basic Market Research Process – Define Your Buyer Persona

First, you need to outline your buyer persona. Evenbound states that you’ll need to determine the demographics of your existing clients, as well as look into your competitors’ clients. Next, you’ll need to segment your customers based on their specific pain points and defining characteristics – you may need to segment them by industry, job titles, or demographic characteristics. One company’s buyer persona might be other businesses, while another might be individuals.

Conduct Primary Research

You’ve developed a couple of clear buyer personas to target, and you can get started with primary research. Primary research involves interviewing and surveying customers, as well as assembling focus groups to glean their opinions. To persuade customers to participate, you’ll want to offer incentives – Virtual Incentives recommends giving out coupon codes or gift cards. You should schedule research interviews with at least 10 prospective or current customers per segment.

How can you best design surveys and interview questionnaires to get actionable insights from your customers? When it comes to surveys, you can ask questions that will have your customers answer with a measurement scale, like ranking their satisfaction with a particular product. If you’re interviewing customers, you’ll want to collect specific answers. This means actively listening and asking probing, follow-up questions. If you’re only receiving vague answers from customers, you’ll need to revise your surveys and interview questions.

Focus on Secondary Research

Secondary research is just as important as primary research! This phase of research involves gathering data from secondary sources, like white papers and published reports, market surveys conducted by other businesses or outside agencies, marketing content published by competitors, trade publications, government data, and even news reports, especially pertaining to your industry or customer base.

As you start perusing potential sources, you’ll need to ensure that every source you utilize for your research was published by a credible institution or outlet. Furthermore, make sure that you’re delving into data that answers your specific questions. Sources that cover broad, generalized information might not be particularly useful, so you don’t want to waste time analyzing these sources.

Implement Product Changes

You’ve gathered insights from your customers, you’ve thoroughly researched your competitors, and now, you’re ready to implement changes to your product ideas based on your findings. It’s easier to experiment with potential changes with the right tools and software. For example, you can conveniently apply different textures and materials to your product designs with a 3D texturing tool, which will let you fine-tune future versions of your product well before you launch. A good software solution like this will also allow you to draw from complex color palettes and test out different combinations of hues that could inspire varying customer opinions.

You don’t want to launch a new offering or tweak your current line without investing time in market research first. When you gather accurate data, you’ll feel confident in your product design choices. By following this guide, you can gain insights from the right customer segments, spearhead primary and secondary research, and adjust your offerings based on concrete data.

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