Do market research for a small business
Do market research for a small business
1. Identify your target audience. Survey your consumers online or in person to learn their age, gender, location, profession, interests, and education level.
2. Conduct a focus group. Ask people in your target demographic for opinions on your brand’s value and pricing structure, user-friendliness, how they discover products and services similar to yours, and related pain points.
3. Interview customers to learn what needs your business meets, what they like about it, what frustrations they have, and how they use your product or service.
4. Create personas that represent the various groups within your audience.
5. Identify prospects who have visited your site but have not yet purchased. Ask about their buying habits and what hesitations they have before buying your product or service.
6. Look at social media, public records, and news media resources, including sales data, trend reports, and market statistics. Identify the volume of demand, typical pricing structures, pricing sensitivity, your primary competitors, and any seasonal trends.
7. Conduct a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Strengths: what your business does well, your unique selling points, strategic resources. Weaknesses: resource gaps, areas your competitors outperform you. Opportunities: market trends to take advantage of, new ways to leverage your strengths. Threats: potential competitors, supply chain risks, trends that could affect demand.
8. Look at your competitors' policies, pricing, advertising, marketing, and packaging. Identify the audience and keywords they’re targeting, where they differ from your business, and where they overlap.
Assess where your business sits in relation to them with regard to price and quality.