Market Mastery: How In-Depth Understanding Propels Your Events Business Ahead

Do you really understand your market? Everybody always says that knowing your market is everything. Saying it is one thing, but understanding why it is so important will help you stay ahead of the pack in the Events Industry.

Your market includes your customers, your suppliers and your competitors, and these three are pivotal characters that define the success of your business.

Customers

Wondering how to get into the mind of your customers and tap into what they need – or better yet, solve a problem they didn’t know they had? Understanding what your customers want is at the heart of creating a successful business strategy.

Whether you’re just starting out or you’re developing a new product or service for an existing business, market research is an essential part of how you plan, market, and grow.

Market research is when you find out what your target audience and markets are looking for in a product or service. It’s a way of gathering data and information about what customers want, need, and buy.

Why is market research important?

When we start working with a new client in the 2-Day Business Review a great deal of time is taken up conducting an in-depth SWOT analysis and interrogating their business plan (if they have one!).? One of the crucial aspects of putting together your business plan is really understanding the marketplace and market research is obviously the best way to find out as much as you can about your customers, your competitors and your suppliers.

There are many reasons why it is vital to conduct market research, for example

1. To test to see whether people are going to buy what you sell
2. To understand the pain points of your target market
3. To identify any gaps in the market to exploit
4. Keep up to date with market trends
5. Make sure you are positioned properly, i.e. is it priced competitively
6. Learn from your competitors to get ahead of them

Whether you’re a caterer trying to find out whether Asian Fusion food is appropriate for weddings, or a venue wanting to know if your space is suitable for conferences market research can help you understand whether consumers will be interested in your idea.

And it doesn’t have to be costly or time consuming!

Here are 6 tips to understand more about your market.

1. Talk to your customers – It’s really as simple as that, it is always worth talking to your customers to hear their feedback and opinions. Hearing from people who are representative of your target audience can help you to know if you’re getting it right – whatever the size of your business.

Having a mailing list is one way to keep in touch with your customers and you could use this channel to send out a survey using a free platform like?Survey Monkey.

2. Social media listening - With an estimated?3.6 billion social media users worldwide?you’re bound to learn something about your customers by heading to pages and groups across different social networks.

Digging into existing conversations and engaging with discussions on LinkedIn or Facebook groups, for example, can help you understand different opinions and issues related to your industry.

3. Analyse search trends - Find out if prospects are actually looking for what you are selling?? Go to somewhere like Google Trends and type in your event service and see if people are actually looking for your type of business.

4. Competitor analysis - Stay on top of what your competitors are doing by regularly reviewing their marketing materials. While you won’t necessarily be able to know if their market research is any better than yours, it’s still useful to compare strategies.

Competitor analysis might involve:

• reviewing their website and social channels
• signing up for their marketing list so you can see how they talk to customers
• collecting any flyers and marketing materials
• reading customer reviews
• being a mystery shopper (this is when you anonymously visit a business as a customer to experience what they do)

5. Track website data - If you have a website this is a great way to access first-hand data on your customers.

Platforms like Squarespace and WordPress have analytics built in, or you can set up Google Analytics for a monthly fee. Even just tracking page views can help you understand the most popular pages on your site and see how customers engage with other pages.

6. Product testing - It’s never a bad idea to get real time feedback from potential customers on your product or service.? If you have a food truck business, for example, consider offering it for free at an event and get opinions from your customers in person.

It is too easy to believe that you have an amazing business idea and to go to market without really understanding who wants to buy it.? Trust me, I have been there.? Even if you have been running a business for years you should continually be conducting market research – markets adapt, trend change, and what was popular today may not be so good tomorrow.

What has been your experience of Marketing?

Let me know how your market research has gone?

To your success,

David

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