How to Use Marketing Research to Improve Your Product and Marketing Success Rate

In today's business world, the cost of making decisions based solely on "experience" or "gut feel" can be life threatening. A decision that is only close or nearly correct can cause a product or business to fail.

This is especially true if the competition has done its research and is only a little more knowledgeable at solving a marketing problem than you are.

Primary marketing research can be particularly useful in providing information to help solve marketing problems falling into one or more of the following categories:

• Market Planning
• Problem Solving
• Monitoring

Once the marketing problem and the specific information needs have been defined, then the marketing research objectives can be identified and the methodology fine-tuned.

How Marketing Research Can Drive Market Planning

Market Planning: constructing a product or a marketing or advertising plan to help ensure success.

This type of marketing problem may involve the following types of information needs:

• Is there a need for the product?
• Who will buy the product, and how will they be reached?
• How much should the product cost?
• How will the product be distributed, and how should the market/trade areas be defined?
• What types of promotion will be required?
• Who are the competitors?
• What is the market potential of the product?

How Marketing Research Solves Problems

Do you need to resolve specific marketing problems? These might include:

• Why are sales low or down from previous measurements?
• If sales could be higher, why isn’t advertising bringing in new customers?
• Why haven’t previous or current advertising or promotional activities been successful?
• Why is the current customer base diminishing?
• Why aren’t our existing distribution channels sufficient?
• Why are customers dissatisfied?
• How can the product be improved?
• Should product lines be increased/decreased?
• How can market share be increased?
• What are customer expectations?

How to Use Market Research to Monitor Products, Markets, and Advertising

What is Monitoring?  It’s measuring the status quo to understand the current environment -- identifying changes and potential problems:

• Where does the product stand in the market today?
• Are customers satisfied?
• Is the product meeting customer expectations?
• What is the current market share?
• Is advertising reaching potential customers?

It's then that marketing research can truly begin to solve marketing problems.

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