Research For Marketing – Useless Or Profitable?
Market research, defined as the systematic, objective collection and analysis of information about your prospects, customers, competition, and or marketplace is important to establish business success. From multi-national omnibus research to informally asking a few existing customers why they buy – all research provides practical information because however it is gathered it will guide your opinions and business decisions.
But in today’s cutthroat marketplace the pursuit of intelligence is has no real worth in and of itself, it is the actions that are influenced by it and implemented to provide greater efficiency or profit that give it worth. The value or effectiveness of market research could only be determined when the decisions that it spawns show a return on investment that exceeds the cost of the research itself. For example, in a marketing context the return on investment or ROI is the difference between the cost of the research and the extra profit generated. So if you spend $500 on market research that leads to actions that produce a revenue increase of $1,250, the research returned a ROI of 1:1.5. Think of it as for every research dollar spent created an additional $1.50 in profit.
There are plenty of different types of market research so this article will concentrate on one that is specifically used to boost bottom line profitability – Research for Marketing. Successful businesses do the same things, they are good at attracting more customers and to keeping them loyal for longer. In many ways the quality of the product is secondary to the quality of the marketing. Great marketing makes and breaks companies and that marketing is guided by research.
Research for Marketing can boost customer acquisition.
This category of research has been specially developed to help you understand why people might purchase from you. More importantly it will provide specific instruction to direct your advertising efforts. This allows you to formulate more effective and targeted advertising campaigns that better connect with people that are most likely to purchase and in a way that interests them. This style of research is also used to predict the likely response from advertising before it is ever used – saving both the time and money of expensive testing.
Use Research for Marketing to amplify customer loyalty
People say that delighted customers are profitable customers for the reason that they are more likely to repeat purchase or become advocates for your brand, product or service. That’s why research for marketing is used for this essential aspect of business profitability. Because it elicits the buying motivations of customers you know exactly why people stay loyal and why they might not. By using motivational maps to guide communication content this type of research ensures that all interactions with customers reinforce their original purchase decision. But is this method effective? Head to head tests show that customer retention rates can be increased by over 22% using this method.
To find out more just Google ‘research for marketing’ and you’ll find a number of companies offering the kind of research that will improve your customer gathering and retention rates.
A free booklet on market research is available to all marketing professionals who wish to improve their response rates from espconsultancy.com the research for marketing specialists.
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