Kara Taylor is Executive Vice President of Marketing at ATTOM Data Solutions, where she oversees marketing, creative and public relations.
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Not everybody wants or needs what you’re selling. So, the initial question any marketer should ask themselves is: Who exactly will benefit from your product or service? Some marketing teams might draw a gigantic circle around the entire United States, launch the product and see what resonates with whom. It’s like throwing a big batch of spaghetti at the wall and hoping some of it sticks. But in the business world, that metaphorical spaghetti can be expensive and time-consuming, and at the end of the day, nobody consumes it.
I believe the most important first step to launching any new brand, product or service is conducting market research. Doing it the right way usually means an investment in time, money and resources. It can require a lot of planning and patience. It can mean asking difficult questions, listening to unfavorable feedback and having hard conversations. However, I’ve found in all the years I’ve implemented corporate strategies through brand acquisitions and product launches that prioritizing research can better streamline a go-to-market strategy, accelerate consumer conversion and exponentially increase revenue.
An example from the past of how the right research can culminate in the right product offering is when ATTOM was initially interested in acquiring a product—until we dove into the research. We determined that the market size and demand were too low to make the economics work. The total addressable market (TAM) was small, and the number of accounts in the marketplace that made up the TAM had only five industry segments that were niche and were mostly small and midsized companies. This meant lower product pricing, lower conversion rates and a deal that was not worth the cost of the acquisition. We were able to get to this conclusion by using the company’s current accounts and pipeline, which we segmented by industry, and then sizing each of the various industries. The research guided our decision not to acquire the product.
Here are some best practices I have learned throughout my 20 years of creating and implementing growth strategies fueled by marketing research.
1. Set The Market Research Goals
Figure out exactly what you want to discover or learn in your market research. Typically, companies use it to better understand target markets (consumer behaviors, values and so on) and determine product viability. Goals can range from learning more about consumers to identifying potential product usability issues. When you’re setting the goals, make sure to factor in market size, market saturation and demand for the product. The more specific your goals are, the more effective you will be with aligning the research, survey and focus group content.
2. Identify The Target Audiences
Who will buy the product? At ATTOM, our marketing team always makes sure to home in on our primary target market (customers) while also doing secondary industry research. Typically, there is more than one target audience and multiple segmentations, so it is important to identify them and build out personas for each. For B2B companies, the target audiences might be partners, providers, distributors, investors and so on. Sometimes companies make the mistake of interviewing only internal stakeholders or people in their own network in order to get insights, but I have found that this is not the most impactful strategy. The more you understand your intended audiences, the more effectively you can market to them.
3. Research The Competitors
Consumers always have options, so you will need to identify, and eventually respond to, anything that might complement, compete with or detract from your product. This means also conducting research on the entire product competitive landscape, which includes a strategic analysis on competitor market share, product strengths and weaknesses, indirect or secondary competitors, and price points. A good tactic is to build questions around audiences’ perceptions on competitor brands and products into your consumer research strategy.
4. Diversify The Data Sources
Utilize a 360-degree approach so that you can understand audiences, competitors and product value from all angles. At ATTOM, we use a combination of primary and secondary research in the form of quantitative data, analytics, industry trends, interviews, focus groups and customer surveys.
Customer and market research is so vital to understanding the capabilities of marketing and selling a product. It helps inform that go-to-market strategy and ensure you are most effectively delivering the right product to the right customer at the right time.
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