Conducting market research is an effective way for companies to obtain a realistic overview of their marketplace and helps you to make informed decisions about how to move your business forward.
You should consider what you want the outcome of your survey to be, or what sort of information you’d like from your survey, as this will help shape your research. It will give you an idea of what questions to ask, who you should be asking and most importantly, why you are doing the research.
There are broadly four main reasons why businesses conduct surveys:
- To find answers – There may be certain questions that no one actually knows the answer too, the answer can sometimes be a ‘guestimate’ or based on gut-feel and it’s often important to have a more accurate figure, so undertaking market research is a way to source this information.
- To generate discussion – Conducting potentially controversial research is great for generating discussion and raising awareness of your brand. If you highlight data which people haven’t seen before, or in areas where your business hasn’t necessarily worked before, it can encourage your market to start talking to you, or about you.
- To make informed decisions – Market research can help you make decisions. Using unbiased and objective data is a helpful tool to shed new light on your business, enabling you to see your market in a different way. Data is invaluable and helps you to make more balanced decisions.
- To be seen as the expert – Once completed, the survey results can be published and pushed out through many different channels, including social media, online news sites, newspapers, magazines and through influencers. This way, whenever the research is referred to, they will also be crediting your business. Win-win!
If you would like to pick our brains about conducting market research for your business or undertaking a survey for PR purposes, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us on hello@adpr.co.uk.