How to do market research
I know that so many business owners are not doing market research, then they're creating products and services that tank that do not sell, and they wonder why you have to do market research.
I don't care that you think your product or service is a great idea. I don't care that you think it's going to be so helpful and people are going to love it. I don't care. You have to be doing market research because literally just taking a little bit of time to do market research, when you're building a new business, when you're creating a new product, service or package is going to pay dividends in the future.
Doing market research is going to enable you to answer questions like:
What should I charge?
What should the price point for this be?
Do people want this thing?
How should I talk about this thing that's going to help it to sell?
How do I talk about the value of this thing?
Who wants this thing?
Where can I connect with the people that would buy this thing?
Those are just a couple of questions that you can answer with market research, but they're huge, they're the only questions that matter. But so many people don't actually do market research - you might think you're doing market research but you're really not.
How to start your market research
So there's a couple of components to market research that are going to be the most impactful for you. The first and easiest thing is going to be doing a competitive analysis.
This means looking up people who are offering similar products and services. Check out their website, how are they talking about the thing that they're selling, who does it seem like they're targeting, what are their price points. I aim to look at 3-5 of these (preferably five) because this is really easy thing to do.
Make sure when you're doing this competitive analysis, you're looking at people who are delivering a product or service at a similar level as you. What I mean by that is if you are a social media manager and you've really just started out - don't do a competitive analysis based on an agency that's been around for 10 years and who's extremely experienced at it, because that's not your direct competitor. Yes, they're offering something that's similar, but they're not your direct competitor because I guarantee that person, or that business, is commanding a higher price point than you're going to be able to command.
That's not a bad thing. it's just the truth.
So when you're doing a competitive analysis, you can look at those people because that's something to reach for and something to work towards. But your direct competitors are going to be people who are delivering a similar product or service at a similar level as you and who are offering that product or service to a similar target audience. So these are all things to keep in mind.
Once you do your competitive analysis, now it's time to talk to real people. And I know this is the step that a lot of people skip because you don't want to talk to a real person or you don't know how to get on the phone with a real person. But getting on some phone calls, is going to pay dividends in the future. It's going to be so so impactful for your business, because you get so much value from those conversations!
When I'm doing market research, what I like to do is I like to try and get on calls with two different types of people:
My target customer.
My competitors.
Okay, so let's talk about the second one really quick - competitors or peers in your space. So, if you can get on a call with someone who is offering a similar product or service as you at a similar price point to what you're thinking about, maybe you can get on a call with a couple of those people. You can also get on calls with people who are or businesses who are offering a similar product and service to you, but it might be at a higher level, a higher service level offering. So it might be someone who started their business and has been offering that thing for 10 years already, but you can still get on a call with them because everybody started somewhere, and they can give you a lot of help and information around that.. They might even give you some advice around that. But we really want to communicate to those people that we really value their time and we really value their feedback. And that's the key here is really showing that value in that appreciation. So how do we do that?
Again, some of you some people out there are not going to be willing to do this for you, they're not going to be willing to help you. And that's okay. We want to look for the people who are willing to help, who are willing to give us that value. And we want to offer something for them that really shows them I value your time.
First of all, you're going to make these calls 15-20 minutes max! Any longer than that is just not acceptable. It's not valuing their time, they're doing this for you. They don't need to do this for you. It's a favor. Second, what I typically do is I offer to buy them a coffee so I'll either send them like a $10 Digital Starbucks gift card or maybe a $10 amazon gift card. This just is an extra indication of like, “Wow, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”.
Next, your target customer calls.
Okay, so you want to identify who's a target customer. Ask them to get on those calls, you can either give them that digital gift card for a coffee or you can even offer them something for free. So if you're a social media manager, you might offer them a free social media audit in exchange for this call, or a few templates that they can use - something that they would find valuable, something that they would get value out of getting for free, and this is not just something you're giving out anyone for free you can offer them your lead magnet that anybody can go to your website and get for free, there's something that needs to be a value there. If you don't have that thing if you're not sure what that thing could be, offer that gift card - easy, not a big deal. There's going to be some people that are like “No I can't do it.” That's okay, you will find people who will be willing to do it.
This part is key - you will not pitch them at the end of these calls.
Because they are getting on these calls purely as “this is market research I want to ask you some questions.”
If you then pitch them at the end of this call, you are totally breaking their trust. They did not come onto this call to be sold to. You will sometimes end the market research call and someone will want to work with you or will ask how they can work with you. I really recommend saying like, yes, 100%, we can do that. Let's schedule a discovery call specifically where we can talk about that.
When you get on these calls, make sure you prepare questions ahead of time as well. Again this is indicating to them that you really value your their time. So, you are preparing questions around what are their problems, what are the problems they're looking for solutions on, how would your product or service benefit them. Use this time to really dig into what are their needs, what's the problem, how can you solve that problem via your product or service, how can you help them, how can you make their life easier? Ask them about pricing and you could say so for this type of package, what would you be willing to pay for this type of package? Ask if you can either record the call or take very very diligent notes as well, because you really want to pay attention to the words that they're using and how they're describing these things, because you can then go and use that in your content and you can get really great content ideas, because it's coming straight from the horse's mouth.
If you go through this market research process and you do all these things, you are going to have so much information that you are able to use to make so many decisions. And, information backed decisions, you're not just pulling your pricing out of the air, you're not just pulling your packages out of the air, you've actually talked to people, you've actually figured out what they needed, and you're able to provide that no more, no less. And you're able to use their words and solve their problems as they've identified them. So this has huge impacts for your business but it's something that a lot of people don’t do. They're not having this wealth of information because they're not doing that market research.
If you are struggling to figure out how to do these things and you really just want someone to be able to hold your hand and walk you through how to do these things or you've done some market research but you're really struggling to understand what all that information is telling you, you probably want to book a digital strategy intensive! This is a 90 minute call where we deep dive into answering all of your questions and you get a really specific actionable plan after that call so that you can move forward and know exactly what you need to do to proceed.
