E-Commerce capability – 12 ways to drive success
July 21, 2021 No Comments
Snapshot : Great e-Commerce businesses put the right skills, processes and systems in place to support their operations. These skills, processes and systems are come
Level up your market research skills
In marketing, you use market research skills to identify customers, understand their needs and wants, and to define how to persuade them to become loyal customers. Market research is a foundational requirement for marketing. If you don’t carry out some sort of market research, then you are not really doing marketing.
Read our skill guides to find out how to level up your market research skills. Learn about the overall market research process, the key ways to carry out market research and how to find and use market research companies. And most importantly, learn how to convert your market research into an action plan to grow your business.
Level up your market research skills
New to market research or just need a refresher on how to start? Why do you need market research to grow your business? What are the key steps of the market research process and what can you start to do right away?
- Why market research makes you more competitive.
- The main steps of the market research process.
- Three simple market research techniques you can start to use right away.
The answer to your research question may already exist via external or internal data sources. Read our skill guide on secondary research and learn to use online tools like Google Trends and Adwords to identify potential opportunities in the market
- Understand benefits and challenges of secondary research.
- Identify sources of secondary research.
- Examples of how you can apply secondary research to marketing activity.
Qualitative market research drives deep understanding of a particular consumer behaviour or attitude. Read our skill guide to find out how to use it to develop ideas and understand meanings and concepts.
- How to use qualitative research to explore innovation ideas, purchase decisions and brand perception.
- Understand qualitative research methods.
- How to use qualitative research results to shape marketing activities.
Quantitative market research takes a more statistical approach to give a broad understanding of a market. Read our skill guide on how to use it to quantify the appeal of products and campaigns and validate forecasts.
- Identify how quantitive research measures past, current and future behaviour.
- Understand sampling and questionnaire terms used by quantitative researchers.
- How to use quantitative research to drive marketing decisions and actions.
If you have more budget and time, you will hire a market research company to meet your research needs. But how do you find the ideal type of market research company that best fits your business needs? Read our skill guide to learn more.
- Identify sources of where to find market research companies.
- Ways to filter market research companies to a shortlist.
- Identify challenging and ideal attributes in a research partner.
Read this guide to understand the three key areas of the marketing mix where market research drives your decisions. Learn how to build a story and drive actions from your market research into your marketing strategy and plan.
- Understand market research in the demand forecast, new product development and communication plans.
- How to identify key insights to build your brand story.
- How to use market research in the marketing mix.
Three-brains and market research skills
We coach and consult on market research and often include market research skills development and market research project delivery as part of our services. We help businesses commission, manage and apply market research.
If you’d like to raise your game in market research, check out our coaching and consulting services, or contact us directly to build your market research skills.
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Use this market research brief template when working with your market research agency to brief them on market research related tasks.
3 pages including a blank template, a guide to completing each section and an example brief from the vegan ice cream case study in our secondary research skill guide.
Download it here or from our resources section.
Powerpoint and Keynote versions of this document available on request.
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