Market Research Vs Market Reality – A #DigitalMarketing Insight

I am focusing on Consumer #Marketing Research, its traditional methodologies and how it has evolved in the digital era.

Why do we need to do market research?  #MarketResearch can enable one to identify the target consumer, find out what they think about on certain ideas, products or brand and gather insights to help you target the right market. Through market research we gather information to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process.  (Source: Wikipedia)

Traditional #Marketers may recall every time we intend to do all or some of the activities mentioned above, we used to spend precious time in meeting couple of market research agencies and short listing the best (?) Then you go through those briefing, discussions, brainstorming sessions with the internal and market research team. Going back and forth the questionnaire, identifying the target audience so on and so forth… finally you will probably get some results 3-4 months down the line and even more. When the results shows up… some agree some doesn’t; some are satisfied and some are not. In some cases by the time the results are out the data and information may become irrelevant. Then we are not quite sure whether the research results and samples were accurate or not. We spend lot of time and money and yet remain skeptical on the results…

In my opinion in this digital era the relevance of traditional consumer market research and its methodologies have significantly reduced. Those cumbersome methods for collecting information, managing and implementing the data collection process, analyzing the results etc seems to be thing of the past…

What is Market Reality?

Constraints of market research are that it is hypothetical and not real. In Digital space all the data and information on what customers actually doing online is captured. Thus Digital marketing relies on market reality. Entire process starts with the consumer and start backwards. There are many analytical tools available to understand, know and gauge the market reality. Digital analytical tool such as #KeywordResearch tool, listening tools for #SocialMedia channels and Analytical tools enables you gather enormous data and information about your prospective consumers and what they think about your product, brand and business. Marketers can gather ocean of valuable market information across various #digitalmarketing channels. The variety and kind of data we can gather is humongous and mindboggling. Very briefly, I have attempted to give you a flavor of what on how we can make use of Market Reality.

Through keyword Research find out which are the #keywords that are driving traffic to your site, it throws invaluable information on audience interest. Generating content around what audience need increases the engagement levels. Relevant content drives more traffic thus increasing engagement levels which leads to conversions. Keyword analysis can offer you insights into marketing behavior and trends. Keywords tell you what is on the mind of your current and potential customers. You will be finding out what is important and popular among your audience and you may use this information to stay relevant. You will be able to grasp the trends that are constantly changing and use this opportunity for your business.

#SocialAnalytics lets you track the performance on each social network (#Facebook, #Twitter, Pinterest, #Google Plus, #LinkedIn etc) all in single dashboard. This saves you a lot of time and efforts. You will be able to track the ROI from of social media marketing campaigns, measure the impact of your social engagement, Find out which social networking site is giving you good results and which are not. Modify your social marketing plan accordingly while making necessary changes to your activities in social channels which were not yielding good results. #SocialMedia analysis throws out tremendous information on perceptions of the brand, favorable or otherwise. Monitoring conversations about product/brand/organization will provide sentiments of consumers. You will be able to get better insights about your target market and possible new markets. What next? Identify new product/service opportunities. Get the feedback about potential product or service problems.

You will be able to track various advertising channels (search, social, Banner and display ads), affiliate networks, and email campaigns through analytics. You can see the conversion rates of different ads placement and the conversion rate of your landing pages. The data provides useful information for remarketing campaigns. You will be able effectively target prospects who have shown signs of interests on your products through your ads with appropriate alignment to their interests.

I have not even scratched the surface on the possibilities of data and information we can gather.

Summary:

Thus, it is time to tap in to ‘Market Reality’ and make best use of it for marketing. Your consumers are talking about your brand, product and organization. And it is all online. The digital space and age has given them more power to speak their mind. This is good news for marketers… you can collect, process and analyze this invaluable information. It is more accurate, Real Time, fast and in some cases does not cost money. There are many analytical tools available some are basic and some advanced, paid and free. #GoogleAnalytics is one amazing tool one can explore. No matter what tool you use, key is using them effectively and realizing the fact that ‘Market Reality’ provides great opportunity for marketer how marketers can capitalize on this goldmine of information. 

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