Researching your target market is a crucial step in developing a successful brand strategy. It helps you understand who your customers are, what they need, and how they perceive your brand. But how can you conduct effective market research without wasting time, money, or resources? Here are some tips to help you get started.
Before you dive into data collection, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your research. What are the specific questions you want to answer? How will you use the insights to inform your brand strategy? How will you measure the success of your research? Having a well-defined research goal will help you focus your efforts and avoid irrelevant or redundant information.
Having clarity in your research goals is more than just knowing what you want - it's about understanding what you need to explore. It's common for students and professionals to experience confusion, knowing what they want to achieve but unsure about the kind of research they should conduct. To address this, I always advise them to start by asking themselves, "What do I need to know to reach my goal?" This approach helps create an effective strategy, saving valuable time by focusing only on relevant and necessary information.
From a positioning standpoint. Defining your research goal is a top priority. The research serves as an input that feeds the rest of the work that you’ll be doing toward setting and meeting your business goals. I work with minority and small business owners and one struggle is knowing where to start. If you’re not clear on your business goals, your definition of success, and the results you want to deliver. You’ll have no clue where to look for people in need of your solution. Defining your research goals is important no matter the stage of your business journey. Be clear on the results that you want and who can provide them regardless of whether it is the business journey or mapping out the customer journey.
Depending on your research goals, you can use different methods to gather data about your target market. Surveys are useful for collecting quantitative data, such as demographics, preferences, satisfaction, or feedback. Interviews can be conducted to gain deeper insights into motivations, challenges, opinions, or emotions. Observation is useful for collecting behavioral data, such as actions, reactions, or patterns. Additionally, secondary research can provide contextual data, such as trends, competitors, or best practices. All of these methods are effective for collecting valuable information about your target market.
Small businesses, solopreneurs, and side hustles tend to have less money and more time. In these cases, my recommendation is to research competitors available online. There's a wealth of information as long as you are clear on what you're looking for. When performing your audience research a common mistake is to look for what to copy instead what to do differently. Identify the differentiators and compile a list of strengths and weaknesses. This can be accomplished on a budget. What you're paying is an investment of your time. Check online reviews, social media interactions, as well as companies' FAQs. This will give you insight into the questions that are being asked and answered.
I always find it helpful to have both qualitative and quantitative data. The quantitative data helps to set clear and measurable goals while the qualitative data gives great insight for creative and message development.
Once you have collected enough data, it's important to analyze it and identify the different segments or groups within your target market. Segmentation helps you to comprehend the diversity and complexity of your customers, allowing you to tailor your brand strategy accordingly. You can segment your target market based on a variety of criteria, such as demographic (age, gender, income, education, location, etc.), psychographic (personality, values, interests, lifestyle, etc.), behavioral (usage, loyalty, purchase, response, etc.), and needs (problems, goals, desires, expectations, etc.).
Audience segmentation is equally important as audience research. Be clear on the differences between your audience segments. The reason we segment audiences is to be clear and concise with our messaging. Audience segmentation done well will have your audience saying “You get me!” and establish credibility and trust. A person talking to everyone is talking to no one. Segment your audience to map out the customer journey and the best way to remove obstacles from it for a smooth experience. Moving the audience segments from the introduction to conversion and on to becoming brand champions, rewarding you for the research you’ve done by singing your praised to other like-minded consumers/businesses.
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on research data. It allows you to better understand and communicate with your target market. To create a buyer persona, you should include a name and photo, background and demographic details, needs and goals, challenges and pain points, motivations and values, brand perception and preferences, as well as communication channels and sources of information. This will help you humanize your target market and communicate with them more effectively.
A lot of small businesses struggle with buyer personas because they look at the free templates out there and get overwhelmed. Start with what you know and confirm about the ideal customer and build out the persona from there. Is the ideal customer based on a current existing customer? If so, it would make sense to ask follow-up questions of them and incentivize their participation if need be with discounts, etc. If it's not a current customer and it is more of a wishlist persona. Take your time filling it in with what you learn during your audience research. Look beyond the standard demographics. Personas speak to personalities and that's something that can be observed online and in person. You're filling in pieces to a puzzle.
Finally, you need to validate and update your research regularly to ensure its accuracy and relevance. You can validate your research by testing your assumptions and hypotheses with your target market, using methods such as feedback forms, A/B testing, or pilot projects. You can update your research by monitoring changes and trends in your target market, using methods such as surveys, interviews, or secondary research.
Researching your target market effectively is not a one-time task, but an ongoing process that requires planning, execution, analysis, and iteration. By following these tips, you can improve your brand strategy and create a stronger connection with your customers.
Buyer personas and audience research aren’t a one-and-done type of thing. You can’t just create it and think that it’s going to remain accurate. People evolve based on their circumstances and experiences. You’ll want to re-evaluate your buyer personas and research as you move through your business journey for accuracy in each stage. Create and revise as needed. You can validate your research by interacting with audience segments be it your customers or audiences on your wishlist. People tend to be free with their responses to people asking the right questions. Businesses paying attention and looking for ways to improve upon results that add value and shelf life to things they have or will be investing in along the way.