Learn about your market in 1 hour with these 6 steps

There is a lot of talk about using social media to carry out marketing and to increase sales. There is less talk about using social media to carry out market research. At an early stage of your company or before you have set up your company, social media can help you learn more about your market, find out who the key individuals are and help you be more effective in your market visits.

As with everything in business nothing comes for free and the rewards you reap will be directly related to the time and effort you invest. One site in particular can help you build a clearer picture. LinkedIn is still often seen as a website for people looking for a job. However, look a bit closer and you will find a treasure trove of marketing information.

Here are six things you can do to boost your market research in 60 minutes this week.

1. Create a profile for yourself. When you contact people they will want to view your profile to get a quick idea of who you are. Are you a real person? Does it look like your expertise is relevant? This profile is your instant credibility and you should take your time to complete it. Make sure you include a good picture of yourself.

2. Using LinkedIn you can carry out an advanced search. This means you can specify country, even city, job title, key words and even by company. Using this type of search you can quickly identify the key people you need to speak to.

3. Send a short introduction message directly to ten individuals you find through your search. Getting that message right is another skill, which we will leave for another day. The most successful inmails are short and clear. Stick to the 3x3 rule. Three paragraphs with no more than 3 sentence each.

4. Now that you are (hopefully) connected to relevant people from your industry it is time to use this as a starting point for your market research. Who do most people connect with? Usually it is their own colleagues, customers and suppliers and all three are incredibly useful contacts for you.

Having more than one contact within a company you are planning to target is key since you will have to get on board technical experts, operational staff, finance department and business development managers before you get a purchase order

5. Your connections’ customers could be potential customers for you. You can also learn about the market needs and demands customers make and learn about commercial and operational structures in your industry.

6. Your connection’s suppliers could be your competition. They could also be your potential customers or channels to market. Here is where you find out who is supplying who and who is working with who.

A paid for LinkedIn subscription costs a small amount of money. From personal experience I can assure you that flying to a far off destination and spending a week running around talking to the wrong people costs a lot more money.

Buying in expensive market research reports that costs thousands of dollars and only give high level information is normally not possible for a startup company.

You can increase your market knowledge and exposure to potential customers by spending 1 hour each week on LinkedIn. Small effort, big payback.