Market Research can be an invaluable tool for gaining clarity and direction in your marketing efforts and overall business plan. Whether your intention is to understand the needs and desires or your audience, gauge brand awareness and perceptions, or test the waters of new product development – sound qualitative research can provide the insights and confidence needed to make strong business decisions.

As important as market research can be, we often find that most organizations either aren’t setting themselves up to take full advantage of the opportunity they have to speak with customers, or they aren’t fully utilizing the data they are collecting from their research.

Below are some of the most common missed opportunities we see in market research:

Introducing Your Brand

Many companies totally hide their identity when conducting research, which makes a ton of sense. Sending a survey from BRAND X and then asking a customer if they’ve ever heard of BRAND X can be counterintuitive. Also, announcing right off the bat that a survey is being paid for by a specific company can create unplanned biases from the respondent.

This all makes sense, but there are ways to introduce your company at the appropriate time of a survey, which allows you to deliver an important brand message directly to an engaged and targeted audience.

What we often like to do is send our surveys anonymously, so there is no prior knowledge of the brand when answering general questions about the industry, and specifically which companies you may be familiar with. But after that point, we will often reveal our client, define who they are (specifically how they are different from their competitors) and ask a series of questions about customer feelings towards “our” specific approach or mission.

This keeps the important market insight questions unbiased, but also allows for you to gauge the brand awareness and perceptions. And although research is not intended to be a lead generation tool – this approach also allows for you to sneak in a little sales pitch.

Feeding the Content Monster

All too often, companies will conduct their research, extract the information they need to make necessary business or marketing decisions, and then move on. What many neglect is the treasure trove of content hidden within that research data. In a marketing era where content is king, market research is an untapped well of insights and information that companies can use to stay relevant, keep audiences engaged, and feed the SEO beast.

Establish Yourself as an Industry Leader

Keeping research data all to yourself may seem like the smart approach. You don’t want to share your findings with the whole world and make them smarter, right? Wrong.

Finding ways to share your market research insights with the rest of your industry positions your company as a thought leader. Again, there is infinite value in the data you have collected, and it would be a waste to let it be lost behind closed doors. That’s not to say you need to share every little detail. But find some key points that would be valuable to growing your industry as a whole – and share them with your brand clearly identified as the source of this valuable knowledge. This could be executed through a whitepaper, a webinar or even as a trade show presentation. Media partners in your industry will be more than happy to partner in getting this information out to the masses because it makes them look like thought leaders as well.

While many organizations miss opportunities to take advantage of market research, digital marketing agencies have the resources to help. Working with a digital marketing agency to assist in collecting and analyzing data can help guide your company make strong business decisions. Successfully gauging brand awareness and creating interesting and relevant content shouldn’t be overlooked in your business plan.

Our team at Mascola Group, a trusted digital marketing agency, can help your organization gain the insights needed for your business strategy through market research.  Contact us today.