There are millions of businesses competing for the attention of your ideal customer. So, it’s vital to keep conducting market research and keep your ear to the ground. Many think doing market research for their e-commerce brand is purely an academic exercise. But It’s not.
By gathering and analyzing information about a market, you can use these insights to make better business decisions. You’ll understand what products to sell, how to price them, and where to best spend your marketing budget.
If you’re not actively researching your market, you’ll miss opportunities, fail to see potential threats on the horizon, and spot trends too late. So, market research is not only an essential tool but also a crucial strategy that ecommerce brands should utilize.
Collecting market research for your ecommerce brand is simple and something you can do weekly with amazing results. Plus, your competitors are probably busy with other tasks, and the insights you gather could be a competitive advantage!
Here’s a simple process to do market research for your ecommerce brand.
What Is Market Research?
Let’s start with the fundamental question: what is market research?
It’s the process of gathering and analyzing information about a group of consumers. You can use the insights gathered from this information to improve your business decisions.
There are 3 main types of market research: Primary, Secondary, and Competitive. And we can use all three to better understand the customers we serve and how our offering fits within the competitive landscape.
Why Is Market Research Important For Ecommerce Brands?
I often tell our clients, your customers will tell you what problems they think you can solve; if only you’d ask them! They’ll talk about the other solutions they’ve tried that didn’t completely work.
Market research will help you identify new opportunities to grow sales, develop new products, and spot new trends before every other business jumps on them.
By talking to your customers, you’ll better understand their needs, wants, and preferences, which can help you improve your business and customer experience.
Another reason we conduct market research is to test ideas and reduce the risk of poor decision-making. You might find there’s no demand for a product you’ve been thinking about for 6 months, and so can avoid wasting time, money, and effort developing it.
Types Of Market Research
You’ll want to use a few different types of market research to help you build a better understanding of your customers and the competitive landscape. Don’t just rely on a single method.
Primary research
Primary research is information you collect through surveys, interviews, or focus groups. This type of research can be very valuable as it gives you direct insights into your target market. However, it can also be expensive and time-consuming.
I recommend talking with your customers as much as possible. You don’t need to set up a formal interview or have an extensive list of questions. But you do need to actively listen and use what you learn.
Secondary research
If someone else collects the research, we call it secondary research. You could find data and insights from government reports, academic journals, and industry publications, for example.
Secondary research is a good way to get a general overview of a market, but it is important to be aware of its limitations. Secondary research may not be up-to-date or may not be specific to your target market.
You could think of secondary research as big picture stuff that gives a great context to your primary research.
Competitive analysis
You should study your competitors, not ignore them as much advice states! Competitive analysis can help you understand your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, their products and services, and their marketing strategies.
Competitive analysis can help you develop strategies to compete more effectively. So don’t snooze on monitoring the other businesses that are directly competing for your customer’s attention, or they might eat your lunch.
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