Art of Marketing!
Chapter 4. Market research and market information
Often, in the real world,
it’s not the smart that get ahead but the bold. — Robert Kiyosaki
There are many similarities between marketing strategy and military strategy.
The goal of both of these strategies is to win,
in the marketplace and on the battlefield.
Every successful campaign is based on outstanding intelligence
and understanding of the opponent.
Every successful marketing campaign
is based on effective market research and market intelligence:
knowing what your competitors are doing
and what’s going on in the market.
Remember you are not Steve Jobs.
It’s not a good idea to rely on your own feelings
or opinions about your customers’ needs and tastes.
You need to base your thoughts,
feelings
and ideas on the harsh reality of market research
and the opinions of others.
Never give up.
Today is hard,
tomorrow will be worse,
but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine. ― Jack Ma(Alibaba)
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Ask question
Market research can now be done in a variety
of cost-effective ways.
Maybe your first choice is to survey customers through the Internet.
Our favorite site is SurveyMonkey.com,
a free service that allows you to ask a series of questions
to quickly survey a large number of potential customers
and gather accurate answers
to those questions about your marketing.
You can create an e-mail list of customers
and non-customers from the past.
As I introduced in the previous chapter,
another way of doing market research is
to call one of your loyal customers directly
and ask for their opinion and advice on your new product or service.
Begin, be bold and venture to be wise. — Horace
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Friend.
You can invite them to lunch or meet up after dinner.
Their frank opinions and objective observations can be very helpful to you.
Another way to do market research,
one of the oldest and most popular methods,
is to use focus groups.
Get a group of your customers or prospects together
and ask as many questions
as you can about their thoughts on your new product or service idea.
They’ll tell you the product’s strengths and weaknesses,
their thoughts on pricing,
packaging,
and pretty much everything else
— including your competitors.
Persistence pushes me to be bold
and seek out the opportunities I’ve wanted.
It starts by envisioning what you want,
no matter how big or small,
and believing that you can achieve it. — Belinda Johnson
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4 questions
Successful market research is based on careful analysis
and precise answers to the right questions.
There are four important questions described just below
that need your attention.
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Who are your customers?
Who are your current,
past,
and future customers?
What are your age,
education,
income,
current tastes or consumption patterns,
occupation, family structure?
These are demographic studies of your customers,
observable factors in a customer,
and they are the starting point for all market research.
You also need to know about customer psychology,
or their thoughts,
feelings,
values,
attitudes,
desires,
needs,
hopes,
dreams,
passions,
and inspirations.
Before you can become a millionaire,
you must learn to think like one. ― Thomas J. Stanleyt
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Where are your customers?
Geography is extremely important in determining
when and how you market your product or service.
Are your customers mainly urban or rural,
living in an affluent neighborhood or in a middle-class area?
The first cookie shop Debbi Fields opened was a flop.
She was indifferent to retail marketing,
placing the store a few steps away from
the main intersection where people normally pass.
Of course,
no one walked past her shop
and she only sold a few cakes.
When opening the second store,
Mrs. Fields,
she had to pay a pretty high rent for the space,
but it was on the main sidewalk,
where people frequented the front of the store
and couldn’t help
but see the cakes displayed in the glass cases.
Eventually, Debbi Fields opened more than 300 stores
and made a fortune of $500 million.
“The wealthy know big money requires thinking about it in non-linear terms,” ― Steve Siebold
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How do your customers buy?
The third question focuses on whether your customers usually buy products
through direct mail,
wholesale,
retail or online?
Napoleon Hill once wrote:
“Never try to invade human nature and win.”
He meant that everyone is a habitual entity.
They are used to buying things a certain way.
It may take them a long time to get used to buying a product
or using a service in a way
that is different from the way they know it.
Of course,
there are many exceptions.
Amazon is an example.
People who are busy with work
and family responsibilities can get a product
or service faster by ordering them from Amazon
instead of having to go directly to the store to shop in their free time.
“The bigger the solution,
the bigger the paycheck,” ― Steve Siebold
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What is its effect?
The final question is:
“For what purpose is the product used or purchased?”
What do your customers intend to do
with the products and services they purchase?
They are not buying the products and services themselves,
they are buying the benefits,
changes,
improvements,
or outcomes that they expect to enjoy
from the purchasing decision.
You must understand
about how and why your customers benefit from buying
or using your products or services rather than
if they did not buy them from you or from competitors.
We are all in the gutter,
but some of us are looking at the stars. ― Oscar Wilde
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A simple discovery
In my business career,
I’ve gone through all the challenges of market research.
A good example is when we started importing Suzuki cars from Japan.
We have 65 distributors across Western Canada
and get a lot of sales results,
some very good and some bad.
We hired a market research firm to do some preliminary research
to learn about our customer segment
and the area with the highest revenue potential.
The company called several hundred of our customers
and found that those who buy usable vehicles in complex terrain
they often live near mountains
and other areas that are convenient for car use.
People who live in flat areas
and in cities where cars are less valuable are not potential customers.
When we got our hands on this study,
the results made more sense to us.
But until we did the research,
we didn’t realize that was important.
In light of these findings,
we changed advertising budgets,
promotional activities,
and vehicle allocations to dealerships.
Our sales skyrocketed.
We stopped trying to sell cars to non-potential customers
and focused all our efforts on those most likely to buy.
Go the extra mile,
there’s no one on it. ― Grant Cardone
