“Research.”
That word sounded boring enough to make me delay doing my market research for the longest time possible.
Is that the case with you?
Are you a brand owner? Business owner? Or writer?
Do you know your audience? Their desires? Problems?
Conducting market research for business can be daunting and time-consuming, especially if you don’t know where to begin. But it helps to identify your target audience better. It may appear to be a complex process, but it can be broken down into some simple steps.
In this article, I’ll share how I simplified my research process and teach you how to identify your target audience effectively.
Table of Contents
What is Market Research?
Market research is the process of gathering information about consumers’ needs and preferences.
It can be used to identify new market opportunities and assess the feasibility of new products or services.
Why Should you Conduct Market Research?
I wasted so much time targeting the wrong people and blaming other things for my brand’s stunted growth.
Why? I was too lazy to perform market research.
Here are some reasons why performing market research for your business is important.
- It is used to ascertain customer requirements.
- Market research is essential for developing marketing plans and strategies.
- It helps you analyze your competitors.
- With market research, you can produce only relevant products your customers will need and love.
Now you know why you need to perform market research, the question is WHERE?
Where Should you Perform Market Research?
The answer to this question depends largely on the type of business you run. If it’s an online business, you perform market research online. Traditional business? You can conduct market research in person.
As an overview, here are two places you can conduct your market research.
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Online
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Offline
- In-person
- On a phone call
Read also: OFFLINE OR ONLINE BUSINESS IN NIGERIA
How to Perform Market Research
The first step to performing market research is erasing the mindset that it’s complex. The research process can simply mean watching some YouTube videos, reading articles on Google, and testing some tools.
Let’s dive in.
Use Market Research Tools.
To slash your research time by half, you can use available tools to perform your market research. There are abundant market research tools online that you can use to conduct market research. The good news is most of them are FREE! Or they have basic plans you can utilize without buying the PREMIUM offer.
Here are some tools you can use. I’ve used some, and others I’m yet to explore. You can try them and pick the one that works best for you.
Google Trends
This tool shows you what your customers are searching for. In addition, you can use the filter feature to analyze what’s trending over a period of time.
Ubersuggest
This tool uses your focus keyword to produce new keyword ideas. It also gives you a peep into what your competitors are doing, and you can use the data to step up your game.
Make my persona
Instead of using the traditional way of making a buyer persona, make-my-persona (a free tool by HubSpot) allows you to create professional buyer personas for your business.
Statista
According to Wikipedia, Statista contains more than 1,000,000 statistics on more than 80,000 topics. This business intelligence tool can access data about your target market.
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Other Ways to Perform Market Research
Observation
You can follow experts in your niche just to see the kind of people that follow them and the type of content they post. Take notice of the comments. What are they saying?
Use Amazon
Check out the book reviews in your niche. The positive reviews show you what you should be doing, and the negative reviews show you what to avoid and the gap to fill.
Surveys
You can use Google or Cognito forms to send out survey questions online (using Facebook ads, Instagram ads, or even posts), while hoping people will be sincere with their answers.
The reason is this. If there’s a promise of a reward (which sometimes there is), many people jump on the surveys for the REWARD. Hence, they tend to give random answers and move on to the next thing.
Focus groups
This market research method involves gathering people with similar interests or demographics in a group. You can use a WhatsApp group, Facebook group, or telegram group if it’s online. In the group, you interview them, ask questions, and they give their reviews on a product or service or their opinions about a topic. If conducted correctly, it can be engaging and one of the most profitable market research methods.
Read also: HOW TO USE WHATSAPP MARKETING FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS
I’ve shared where and how to perform market research. What about your target audience? Do you know them?
How to Identify your Target Audience
Your target audience is a group of people with similar interests who need your service or product. For example, if you must make revenue from your business, you need to identify your target audience.
Here are some ways you can identify your target audience.
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Use your intuition
This is by far the most common method. Just think of people who will naturally need what you offer. Let’s say you sell exercise books and stationeries; your target audience will commonly be students and office workers.
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Watch your competitors
Notice the kind of people who usually buy and interact with your competitors. They’re your audience too. Think about what gaps you can fill in your market. And don’t be afraid to niche down when hosting target market campaigns.
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Check insights and demographics
With the “professional mode” feature on Facebook, you can check post insights from your profile.
Pay Meta influencers to advertise for you. For the most profitable ads, ask the influencer kindly if you can see their post insight. That way, you get to see the people who bought your offer, whether male or female, where they live, their ages, etc.
These are some methods you can use to identify your target audience. But, if you still need clarity, consider these questions.
- How old is my target audience?
- Where does my target audience live?
- What kind of content does my target audience like? Videos? Written content?
- Where does my audience spend most of their time online? Video section? Reels? Facebook groups?
- What’s my audience’s most common gender?
- What gives my audience sleepless nights?
- What scares them about the future?
- What are they enthusiastic about?
- How do they spend their free time?
- What are their hobbies? Favorite activities?
These questions should give you more clarity about who needs your offer.
To wrap up, take these PRO tips.
- Target the people with the money.
This shouldn’t be your priority when starting, but after you’ve become specific about your target audience. For instance, your target audience is teenagers. When targeting people to buy your product/offer, you target teen parents, guardians, grandparents, or adults closer to teens, like aunts and uncles. Most teenagers don’t have money of their own. So your product should be shown to their parents.
Sho get?
- Visualize your target as one person.
Understand your target audience is a group of people with different personalities. But seeing them as a person will make it easier to connect with them on a deeper level.
Conclusion
Having a well-defined target audience is one of the most important factors in succeeding with your marketing campaign. We hope you enjoyed our blog post on how to perform market research for businesses and identify your target audience.
We are always excited to see how our content is helping businesses, so please be sure to reach out to us anytime if you have any questions or concerns.
Thanks for reading!
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About Author
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My name is Jessica Eni. I am a content writer. I write content for social media pages, brands, blogs, and websites. I'll help you make sales with words.
I am a social media enthusiast, teen aide, and mental health and personal development advocate.
Let's connect on: Facebook, LinkedIn, or WhatsApp.
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