Market research is crucial to the success of a small business, but in order to implement a successful strategy you need to avoid making these five simple mistakes.
In order to implement a successful marketing strategy, small business owners must learn a few key things such as:
- How are market trends impacting my business?
- How does our target market make buying decisions?
- How does customer satisfaction with our products or services measure up to that of the competition?
- How will our existing customers respond to a new product or service?
- How can we attract new customer segment?
- What marketing strategies will work best?
However, small business owners tend to make few mistakes when it comes to conducting a market research. Some of the common mistakes are:
Using only secondary research: It makes so much sense to use secondary research as a small business owner. Secondary research is easy, time efficient, and mostly free. It’s great to find information about the industry trends but primary research will allow you to specifically target your research and understand the customers’ attitudes. Plus, some primary research is easy to use and free such as social media. Your customers would love to give their opinion on your business too!
Not doing it because it’s costly: Small businesses tend to not have the luxurious budget enjoyed by big enterprises, but market research should never be neglected. A good market research result is invaluable. Since a failure of marketing effort could also end up costly, a cost effective market research is a smart move for small business owners.
Using only web searching: The internet revolution has opened up a pool of business information for everyone and no doubt it is the best method of conducting a secondary research. However, most of the best information need to be paid or searched deep in the web. Small business owners should try visiting local library to gain quality information at no cost.
Knowing it all attitude: Business owners who have been around a long time in the industry tend to downplay the importance of conducting a market research due to their expertise and knowledge about the customers and the industry. However customers and industries do evolve and it is important to keep up-to-date with the information to gain competitive advantage.
Easily giving up: Market research is often not easy to do and the information may take some time to be collected. Small business owners tend to give up the second their market research hit the wall. Remember a market research is essential to any business and with a little persistence, the result could be worthwhile.
