Research - SME Marketing
Research - Analyse everything you can
Research is a crucial part of all marketing activity, whatever the size of a company. At the outset of a new business or a new product, research into the target market needs to take place to determine:
- What media this market consumes and when
- What it is that they are looking for in your product
- What messages resonate with them
- What colours, designs and logos work with them
This research can be carried out in very sophisticated ways or more crudely. What is important is that you try to back up any assumptions you make about your target market with some research. Otherwise you are in danger of wasting both time and money. People’s tastes and market trends change all of the time so it’s important to keep doing this sort of research.
As well as this, research is a crucial way of measuring the success of a marketing campaign, be that advertising or PR. You must first be clear about what a marketing campaign is trying to achieve. This could be a sharp increase in sales among a key demographic and over a particular time period. Or, the aim of a campaign could be to associate your brand more closely with something – for example, Body Shop and ethical trading or Cobra Beer and Indian restaurants.
Once you know what you want to achieve though a campaign you can measure whether you are achieving it. This can be done in a variety of ways: quantitatively though a survey or qualitatively though some focus groups or on the street canvassing of opinion. Campaign measurement does take time and money, but as a golden rule, any measurement of a campaign is better than none as you will find it hard to justify your investment to the business or decide what marketing you should be doing in the future. Make sure you are getting the most bang for your buck.