To learn more about their target audience’s needs and preferences, companies invest in various market research tools and techniques. Ideally, market research will empower them with the insights they need to understand, serve, and even grow their customer base. The trouble is, these tools and techniques are not all created equally—far from it, in fact.
When an organization’s market research is off, their ability to cultivate, nurture, and preserve customer relationships can be jeopardized. Fortunately, there are innovative and forward-thinking market research tools available for companies who want to better understand their audience. These range from the relatively informal (social media observation) to things like a highly-evolved market research insights platform.
What role can these tools—like the PureSpectrum Insights Platform and Marketplace Platform—play in developing customer relationships and driving businesses forward? How do you select the best market research tools, and why should you look no further than PureSpectrum? You’ve come to the right place, as we’ll answer these questions and more in this short blog.
What Are the Four Common Market Research Methods?
Whether you’re in a B2C or B2B industry, there are four particularly well-known, commonly-adopted market research techniques:
Surveys
Surveys are ideal for getting to know a target audience’s expectations, needs, priorities, preferences, and more. As market audience research tools, the best surveys are focused and ask precise questions of respondents. Survey data can be easily reviewed, correlated, and analyzed to derive actionable insights to develop stronger, longer-lasting, and more productive customer relationships.
Focus Groups
Focus groups are moderated discussions that include specific, selected members of one or more audience segments. Focus groups can be a bit of a wild card since they introduce more variables (participants) into the mix. Still, when they are well-moderated and stay focused on the important topics, they can be illuminating.
Interviews
Interviewing customers in a one-to-one setting and using a more open-ended, discussion-based format is a great way to learn more about a specific audience. The usefulness of the information you can derive from interviews will be closely related to the quality of the questions you ask, as well as the general tone and structure of the interview itself.
Observation
In the context of market research, “observation” can refer to a number of activities, such as monitoring how customers discuss your products/services and engage with your brand on social media. While observation can certainly lead to some eye-opening insights, its main drawback is that observation, by its very nature, is a one-way interactio
Particularly if they’re just developing their market research program, many organizations find value in mixing and matching different types of market research as part of a comprehensive approach.
What Are the Biggest Challenges in the Market Research Process?
While knowledge is power, that’s only really true if that knowledge is accurate, up-to-date, and complete.
- Inaccurate market research can lead companies to misunderstand what their target audience truly cares about. This can result in poorly-aligned marketing campaigns, product/service offerings, customer support initiatives, and more.
- Incomplete market research only tells part of the customer engagement and satisfaction story. Without well-rounded and comprehensive market research, companies may again find themselves coming up short with their target market.
- Out-of-date market research is both inaccurate and incomplete, especially when you consider that 75% of consumers’ buying behaviors are actively changing as their priorities shift (according to McKinsey research).
While these challenges are worth taking seriously, PureSpectrum makes it much easier to identify, understand, and derive core insights from your target audience. Our PureScore™ helps vet survey respondents so organizations can ensure accuracy and eliminate bias in their data while minimizing a wide range of potential risks. We’ll explore PureSpectrum’s tools—and the difference they can make—next.
What Are Market Research Tools?
The right tools can make a world of difference in how accurate, complete, and up-to-date an organization’s market research proves to be. To that end, PureSpectrum offers not one but two powerful market research platforms:
- Our Insights Platform provides an end-to-end survey solution for collecting instant, actionable insights and is powered by a modern, agile toolset. It makes gathering—and visualizing—high-quality, impactful data simple.
- Our Marketplace Platform empowers organizations with advanced and automated market research technologies for targeting specific respondents, measuring/ensuring survey respondent quality, and more.
When these two target market research tools are used in tandem, they enable users to:
- Target specific respondents.
- Build methodologically sound surveys.
- Reach a global pool of respondents at scale.
- Measure individual respondent quality on each survey.
- Monitor project progress and make changes while the study is in field.
- Gather real-time consumer answers.
- Quickly evaluate responses based on respondent psychographics, demographics, and geolocation.
- Access easy-to-understand data visualizations for analyses.
PureSpectrum: Your Source for Accurate, Actionable Data
In this blog, we’ve only scratched the surface of everything our products are capable of. If you’re ready to take your market research to the next level, you’re ready to learn more about PureSpectrum.
If you still have questions, feel free to contact us or schedule a demo.