As market becomes more and more competitive with each passing day, it has become integral to understand the factors that may affect your business profitability. To make sure that your idea is worth turning into a successful business in this competitive market, you need to answer a few questions about your competitors, market, customers, and economic shifts, more details has been given in a previously published article entitled “Is Your Idea worth a Startup?“.
Market research will let you know if there is an opportunity out there that you can make an advantage to run your business. It is a process to gather detailed information about potential customers and businesses already operating in the area and gain insights about the latest market trends, consumer buying patterns, and demographics, also, analyze and interpret information to assess the viability of your business idea, and make sound business decisions.
It is of immense importance to entrepreneurs and startup owners to evaluate the feasibility of running their business before making the final decision about committing further resources to the venture.
Regardless of the type or size of your business, there are plenty of reasons why you should take market research serious prior to going any further steps in your business:
Know your target market
Your business idea can be generated based on problems that already exist in the market. A valuable idea is the one that can solve existing market problems, minimize them, or present futuristic solutions. The only way that you can make sure about this, is by conducting market research. By market research, you can evaluate the size and status of the market for your particular product or service. It will broaden your horizons to the real market status, challenges, and demands. So you can make sure whether you are providing a wise solution that would be welcomed in the market or not.
Understand the needs of potential customers
If you want to be a smart business owner you will need to walk in your customers’ shoes. You should know the needs of your potential customers, what satisfies them, and what expectations they already have that other businesses have not met. Market research as an effective tool helps you to move in alignment with your customers and understand whether they will pay for your solutions or not.
Build a picture of consumer buying behavior
After understanding customers’ needs, it is also insightful to learn about customer buying behavior. Consumer buying behavior is the way that people make decisions to buy a product or service that may satisfy their needs. Consumer buying behavior helps startup owners and entrepreneurs understand what do consumers buy, why do they buy, when do they buy, how often do consumers buy, for what reason do they buy, and much more.
Answering these questions may lead to specific patterns and is considered as a wise approach to understand the likes and dislikes of consumers and finally design future sales and marketing plans or market segmentation based on the findings.
Identifying major competitors
Starting a business without understanding your competitors is risky. Market research can prepare you to assess where you stand in your market in relation to your competitors and can prevent your business from being left behind by the competition. Research your competitors by simply collecting information from their advertisements, website, social media channels, and reviews written by their customers. Read their online material, price lists that they produce for their customers, or even buy their products and services. Observation of your competitors can often give you a good picture of their market positioning and will equip you by providing realistic comparisons.
Keeping an eye on your competitors will help you to avoid wasting time and money on projects that have been fully accomplished by others formerly. You can instead innovate and break new ground in order to stand out from the noise and facilitate the growth of your startup.
Identify market trends
Business is ever-changing and in order to stay ahead of the curve and avoid competitors passing you by, you need to keep pace with market trends and move with the times for short-term and long-term benefits. You need to analyze market trends to recognize any consistent trends, patterns or results that could be used to map your business plan in alignment with the general direction of your startup. By carrying out market trend analysis, you will be able to determine general moves that may affect the success or failure of your business as well as understanding the right timing to launch.
There is a wide variety of analytical tools and systems available at your fingertips to help you understand the bigger picture of your marketplace. You should also read relevant reports readily accessible to you.
Set achievable targets for your business
You might say that you want to have a specific amount of monthly sales. But without knowing the size of your target market and the impact of your competitors on the market you will not be able to know if your goal is achievable and how to achieve it in the first place. Market research enables you to determine your specific directions to grow and set feasible goals.
Minimize the chance of loss in your business
Before spending your pennies and hesitating whether there will be any gain or not, you can identify potential opportunities and threats that already exist in the market and determine solutions to make a profit in this market. You need to know what are customers’ needs, what makes your potential customers’ satisfied as well as learning about the market trends and competitors that can be considered as obstacles or catalyzers for the success of your business. Researching the market helps you to start your business with a realistic attitude and establish a unique value proposition that sets your startup apart from competitors.
Many entrepreneurs and startups tend to make the mistake of diving into the market without first conducting thorough market research because they think that they know the market. This may lead a business to make costly mistakes and is often a recipe for failure.
Market research makes the decision-making process simple and lies at the heart of some of the most important decisions any business can make. But research is hard to conduct competently. Small businesses may simply not have a team ready to take on a research project and deliver high-quality market research and may consider letting a professional team conduct market research for their business. Ahoora ltd is a trusted partner that can support you by conducting market research and providing you with understandable reports that help you make wise decisions based on the data.
