In such a highly competitive market, it is essential that you know the market trends and understand how your competitors are doing before you launch a new product or extend a particular service. Market research surveys can give you the right information, so that you can make an informed decision. You can either use your marketing team to conduct the survey or outsource data validation services to ensure an unbiased survey is conducted.
Here are a few tips that you need to keep in mind before deploying a market research survey.
- Define the purpose of the survey
Before you start the survey, you need to clearly define the goals of the survey. Do you want to do a survey to find out what the customers are thinking about your products/services? Do you want to survey the market to identify gaps that you can capitalize on?
- Define the respondents of your survey
If you need the right answers, then you should ask the right people. Clearly define the demographics so that the questions are addressed to the right group of people. Determining the respondents depends on your products/services end users.
- Define the questions that you want to ask
There are two types of researches – quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative research helps you get data in numbers or percentages while qualitative research gets you information and feedback. You need to frame the questions based on the type of information you want to collect.
- Determine the modes to use to reach out to the respondents
The most commonly used modes of market research are emails, telephones, online forms, and face-to-face. The mode of data collection that you decide on depends on the demographics, time limit, and of course, your budget.
- Determine the process you will use to analyze the survey results
After you have collected all the data, you need to have a scientific method for data analysis. You can use data validation services of an expert or big data tools to analyze the data. This part is very important as it determines the success of your market survey.
- Determine how you would like to showcase your results
After you have gathered data and analyzed them, you need to use the right modes to showcase the results of your market research. You can publish a white paper or an infographic outlining the research and results. If you are submitting a report to the top management, then use graph and charts to illustrate your findings.