73.6% of statistics are made up—including this one. Yet a quick Google search on data accuracy will yield a variety of fabricated answers for how much data is inaccurate. Although the numbers aren’t all the same or even accurate, they share a goal: to illustrate that you can’t trust everything you learn through secondary research.
Accurate data is critical to creating and executing effective strategies. This isn’t just important for bottom lines, it’s also essential for job security. After all, businesses will often cut non-revenue generating budgets like marketing and advertising first during troubling times, according to The Wall Street Journal, and that can have a strategic ripple effect throughout the organization.
Fortunately, a reliable market research insights platform can provide a solution for your marketing team by providing high-quality, real-time actionable insights. In this blog, we’ll cover:
- How startups conduct market research and analysis
- Which market research tools are essential in a platform, especially for startups
How To Do Market Research for a Startup Business
The process of market research for software companies and other startup businesses is mostly the same as that of established companies. As a startup, you still want to have a thorough understanding of your market and target audience. However, there are a few key differences between startups and established businesses when it comes to market research:
- Primary Data: This type of data comes from research that an organization has conducted itself, generally having grown over time. Established businesses typically have a catalog of primary market research that they can analyze when considering a new strategy and can evaluate what has worked in the past as well as how the market has changed over time. Startups have less history, so they’ll have to expend more effort initially in gathering data before finding patterns.
- Secondary Data: This type of data comes from research that external sources have conducted. Established businesses often have higher budgets than startups for market research, so they can more easily invest in detailed market studies. Startups may have to rely on secondary data to inform decisions. This can be beneficial as the costs are lower but it may also cause strategical problems if the data is collected with poor methodology, outdated or aimed at a different target audience.
- Motivations: Established businesses are more likely to approach a market that they already have experience in when looking at growth opportunities. In contrast, startups are more likely to break into new markets. This means that startups will face more risk and should spend more time on research and analysis before making decisions.
What Are the Three Steps of Market Research for a Startup?
The three steps of the market research process for startups are:
- Set goals to determine what you need to discover during your research. Do you need to determine whether a market is worth entering or not? Are you trying to narrow down who your ideal customer is? What price point could you sell your product for?
- Conduct secondary research to establish a baseline. This is where you can find out information like market trends, the competitive landscape, and how customers have behaved in the past.
- Conduct primary research to tailor data to your specific needs. Secondary research, while helpful to start with, doesn’t always match up with exactly what you want to know. In these cases, you need to create and facilitate your own surveys and other research methods. The PureSpectrum Marketplace Platform makes it easy to access high-quality respondents globally, so you can make the most of your primary market research.
Once you have your data, you can analyze it for patterns to guide decision making. The PureSpectrum Insights Platform gathers your data in one place and presents it in a variety of formats. That way, you have all the information you need to make critical decisions.
What Are Market Research Tools?
Market research tools help your team collect data more efficiently and accurately. Certain tools likely come to mind, such as survey generators and social media polls. When deciding which tools to add to your tech stack, it’s important to take a function-first approach. Which tools are used for market research? Here are some must-have features for market research and analytics:
Market Research Tools
These features help ensure that your team is gathering useful information while still having resources for other projects.
- Survey Design: Creating surveys can consume a lot of time; Having a company design a survey for you, either customized or from a template frees up your team to work on your primary responsibilities
- Panel De-Duplication: Primary data can be inaccurate if you aren’t sure who is responding to your surveys. This tool checks for duplicate IDs, so you can ensure each participant is offering a unique perspective.
- Broad Reach: Don’t let your research tools limit which markets you consider. PureSpectrum connects you with survey respondents in 60+ countries.
- Powerful Location Targeting: Location data is critical when you want a competitive edge in a specific market. PureSpectrum’s targeting provides geographic data as specific as zip codes.
Market Analysis Tools
These tools make it easier to draw insightful connections, so you identify more challenges and opportunities while you still have time to act on them.
- Real-Time Data: Startups move quickly, so you don’t want to wait for the last respondent to submit their answers before you start analyzing data. PureSpectrum makes information available in real-time, so you do not need to wait for fielding to complete before identifying trends, building models, and reviewing open-ended responses.
- Customizable Visuals: People aren’t machines, and we don’t interpret data the same way. PureSpectrum presents data the way it makes sense to humans: in graphs, charts, and will provide the raw data, in case you have a little machine in you after all.
- Quality Checks: PureSpectrum’s PureScore™ system not only prevents duplicate, fraudulent, and irrelevant responses but also tracks respondent behavior to ensure you have the highest quality data.
- Analytics: See all of your data side-by-side in one location. Automated crosstabs, data cuts, and significance testing help your team decipher the true story behind the numbers.
PureSpectrum’s research and analytics platform provides all these functionalities and more.
Market Research Tools from All Across the Spectrum: PureSpectrum
The more tools you use, the easier it is for the communication of key data to break down. That’s why it’s so important to use an all-in-one market research platform like PureSpectrum. That way, all of your tools, functions, data, and reports are contained within a single location. Market research doesn’t need to be a headache.
Schedule a demo today to see how.