how to do a market research uk

How to Do Market Research: The Complete Guide

Learn how to do market research with this step-by-step guide, complete with templates, tools and real-world examples.

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Market research is the systematic process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a specific market or industry.

What are your customers’ needs? How does your product compare to the competition? What are the emerging trends and opportunities in your industry? If these questions keep you up at night, it’s time to conduct market research.

Market research plays a pivotal role in your ability to stay competitive and relevant, helping you anticipate shifts in consumer behavior and industry dynamics. It involves gathering these insights using a wide range of techniques, from surveys and interviews to data analysis and observational studies.

In this guide, we’ll explore why market research is crucial, the various types of market research, the methods used in data collection, and how to effectively conduct market research to drive informed decision-making and success.

What is market research?

The purpose of market research is to offer valuable insight into the preferences and behaviors of your target audience, and anticipate shifts in market trends and the competitive landscape. This information helps you make data-driven decisions, develop effective strategies for your business, and maximize your chances of long-term growth.

Why is market research important? 

By understanding the significance of market research, you can make sure you’re asking the right questions and using the process to your advantage. Some of the benefits of market research include:

• Informed decision-making: Market research provides you with the data and insights you need to make smart decisions for your business. It helps you identify opportunities, assess risks and tailor your strategies to meet the demands of the market. Without market research, decisions are often based on assumptions or guesswork, leading to costly mistakes.
• Customer-centric approach: A cornerstone of market research involves developing a deep understanding of customer needs and preferences. This gives you valuable insights into your target audience, helping you develop products, services and marketing campaigns that resonate with your customers.
• Competitive advantage: By conducting market research, you’ll gain a competitive edge. You’ll be able to identify gaps in the market, analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses, and position your business strategically. This enables you to create unique value propositions, differentiate yourself from competitors, and seize opportunities that others may overlook.
• Risk mitigation: Market research helps you anticipate market shifts and potential challenges. By identifying threats early, you can proactively adjust their strategies to mitigate risks and respond effectively to changing circumstances. This proactive approach is particularly valuable in volatile industries.
• Resource optimization: Conducting market research allows organizations to allocate their time, money and resources more efficiently. It ensures that investments are made in areas with the highest potential return on investment, reducing wasted resources and improving overall business performance.
• Adaptation to market trends: Markets evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements, cultural shifts and changing consumer attitudes. Market research ensures that you stay ahead of these trends and adapt your offerings accordingly so you can avoid becoming obsolete. 

As you can see, market research empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, cater to customer needs, outperform competitors, mitigate risks, optimize resources and stay agile in a dynamic marketplace. These benefits make it a huge industry; the global market research services market is expected to grow from $76.37 billion in 2021 to $108.57 billion in 2026 . Now, let’s dig into the different types of market research that can help you achieve these benefits.

Types of market research 

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Exploratory research
• Descriptive research
• Causal research
• Cross-sectional research
• Longitudinal research

Despite its advantages, 23% of organizations don’t have a clear market research strategy. Part of developing a strategy involves choosing the right type of market research for your business goals. The most commonly used approaches include:

1. Qualitative research

Qualitative research focuses on understanding the underlying motivations, attitudes and perceptions of individuals or groups. It is typically conducted through techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups and content analysis — methods we’ll discuss further in the sections below. Qualitative research provides rich, nuanced insights that can inform product development, marketing strategies and brand positioning.

2. Quantitative research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, involves the collection and analysis of numerical data, often through surveys, experiments and structured questionnaires. This approach allows for statistical analysis and the measurement of trends, making it suitable for large-scale market studies and hypothesis testing. While it’s worthwhile using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research, most businesses prioritize the latter because it is scientific, measurable and easily replicated across different experiments.

3. Exploratory research

Whether you’re conducting qualitative or quantitative research or a mix of both, exploratory research is often the first step. Its primary goal is to help you understand a market or problem so you can gain insights and identify potential issues or opportunities. This type of market research is less structured and is typically conducted through open-ended interviews, focus groups or secondary data analysis. Exploratory research is valuable when entering new markets or exploring new product ideas.

4. Descriptive research

As its name implies, descriptive research seeks to describe a market, population or phenomenon in detail. It involves collecting and summarizing data to answer questions about audience demographics and behaviors, market size, and current trends. Surveys, observational studies and content analysis are common methods used in descriptive research. 

5. Causal research

Causal research aims to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. It investigates whether changes in one variable result in changes in another. Experimental designs, A/B testing and regression analysis are common causal research methods. This sheds light on how specific marketing strategies or product changes impact consumer behavior.

6. Cross-sectional research

Cross-sectional market research involves collecting data from a sample of the population at a single point in time. It is used to analyze differences, relationships or trends among various groups within a population. Cross-sectional studies are helpful for market segmentation, identifying target audiences and assessing market trends at a specific moment.

7. Longitudinal research

Longitudinal research, in contrast to cross-sectional research, collects data from the same subjects over an extended period. This allows for the analysis of trends, changes and developments over time. Longitudinal studies are useful for tracking long-term developments in consumer preferences, brand loyalty and market dynamics.

Each type of market research has its strengths and weaknesses, and the method you choose depends on your specific research goals and the depth of understanding you’re aiming to achieve. In the following sections, we’ll delve into primary and secondary research approaches and specific research methods.

Primary vs. secondary market research

Market research of all types can be broadly categorized into two main approaches: primary research and secondary research. By understanding the differences between these approaches, you can better determine the most appropriate research method for your specific goals.

Primary market research 

Primary research involves the collection of original data straight from the source. Typically, this involves communicating directly with your target audience — through surveys, interviews, focus groups and more — to gather information. Here are some key attributes of primary market research:

• Customized data: Primary research provides data that is tailored to your research needs. You design a custom research study and gather information specific to your goals.
• Up-to-date insights: Because primary research involves communicating with customers, the data you collect reflects the most current market conditions and consumer behaviors.
• Time-consuming and resource-intensive: Despite its advantages, primary research can be labor-intensive and costly, especially when dealing with large sample sizes or complex study designs. Whether you hire a market research consultant, agency or use an in-house team, primary research studies consume a large amount of resources and time.

Secondary market research 

Secondary research, on the other hand, involves analyzing data that has already been compiled by third-party sources, such as online research tools, databases, news sites, industry reports and academic studies.

Here are the main characteristics of secondary market research:

• Cost-effective: Secondary research is generally more cost-effective than primary research since it doesn’t require building a research plan from scratch. You and your team can look at databases, websites and publications on an ongoing basis, without needing to design a custom experiment or hire a consultant. 
• Leverages multiple sources: Data tools and software extract data from multiple places across the web, and then consolidate that information within a single platform. This means you’ll get a greater amount of data and a wider scope from secondary research.
• Quick to access: You can access a wide range of information rapidly — often in seconds — if you’re using online research tools and databases. Because of this, you can act on insights sooner, rather than taking the time to develop an experiment. 

So, when should you use primary vs. secondary research? In practice, many market research projects incorporate both primary and secondary research to take advantage of the strengths of each approach.

One rule of thumb is to focus on secondary research to obtain background information, market trends or industry benchmarks. It is especially valuable for conducting preliminary research, competitor analysis, or when time and budget constraints are tight. Then, if you still have knowledge gaps or need to answer specific questions unique to your business model, use primary research to create a custom experiment. 

Market research methods

• Surveys and questionnaires
• Focus groups
• Observational research
• Online research tools
• Experiments
• Content analysis
• Ethnographic research

How do primary and secondary research approaches translate into specific research methods? Let’s take a look at the different ways you can gather data: 

1. Surveys and questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are popular methods for collecting structured data from a large number of respondents. They involve a set of predetermined questions that participants answer. Surveys can be conducted through various channels, including online tools, telephone interviews and in-person or online questionnaires. They are useful for gathering quantitative data and assessing customer demographics, opinions, preferences and needs. On average, customer surveys have a 33% response rate , so keep that in mind as you consider your sample size.

2. Interviews

Interviews are in-depth conversations with individuals or groups to gather qualitative insights. They can be structured (with predefined questions) or unstructured (with open-ended discussions). Interviews are valuable for exploring complex topics, uncovering motivations and obtaining detailed feedback. 

3. Focus groups

The most common primary research methods are in-depth webcam interviews and focus groups. Focus groups are a small gathering of participants who discuss a specific topic or product under the guidance of a moderator. These discussions are valuable for primary market research because they reveal insights into consumer attitudes, perceptions and emotions. Focus groups are especially useful for idea generation, concept testing and understanding group dynamics within your target audience.

4. Observational research

Observational research involves observing and recording participant behavior in a natural setting. This method is particularly valuable when studying consumer behavior in physical spaces, such as retail stores or public places. In some types of observational research, participants are aware you’re watching them; in other cases, you discreetly watch consumers without their knowledge, as they use your product. Either way, observational research provides firsthand insights into how people interact with products or environments.

5. Online research tools

You and your team can do your own secondary market research using online tools. These tools include data prospecting platforms and databases, as well as online surveys, social media listening, web analytics and sentiment analysis platforms. They help you gather data from online sources, monitor industry trends, track competitors, understand consumer preferences and keep tabs on online behavior. We’ll talk more about choosing the right market research tools in the sections that follow.

6. Experiments

Market research experiments are controlled tests of variables to determine causal relationships. While experiments are often associated with scientific research, they are also used in market research to assess the impact of specific marketing strategies, product features, or pricing and packaging changes.

7. Content analysis

Content analysis involves the systematic examination of textual, visual or audio content to identify patterns, themes and trends. It’s commonly applied to customer reviews, social media posts and other forms of online content to analyze consumer opinions and sentiments.

8. Ethnographic research

Ethnographic research immerses researchers into the daily lives of consumers to understand their behavior and culture. This method is particularly valuable when studying niche markets or exploring the cultural context of consumer choices.

How to do market research

• Set clear objectives
• Identify your target audience
• Choose your research methods
• Use the right market research tools
• Collect data
• Analyze data 
• Interpret your findings
• Identify opportunities and challenges
• Make informed business decisions
• Monitor and adapt

Now that you have gained insights into the various market research methods at your disposal, let’s delve into the practical aspects of how to conduct market research effectively. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview, from defining objectives to monitoring market shifts.

1. Set clear objectives

When you set clear and specific goals, you’re essentially creating a compass to guide your research questions and methodology. Start by precisely defining what you want to achieve. Are you launching a new product and want to understand its viability in the market? Are you evaluating customer satisfaction with a product redesign? 

Start by creating SMART goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Not only will this clarify your research focus from the outset, but it will also help you track progress and benchmark your success throughout the process. 

You should also consult with key stakeholders and team members to ensure alignment on your research objectives before diving into data collecting. This will help you gain diverse perspectives and insights that will shape your research approach.

2. Identify your target audience

Next, you’ll need to pinpoint your target audience to determine who should be included in your research. Begin by creating detailed buyer personas or stakeholder profiles. Consider demographic factors like age, gender, income and location, but also delve into psychographics, such as interests, values and pain points.

The more specific your target audience, the more accurate and actionable your research will be. Additionally, segment your audience if your research objectives involve studying different groups, such as current customers and potential leads.

If you already have existing customers, you can also hold conversations with them to better understand your target market. From there, you can refine your buyer personas and tailor your research methods accordingly.

3. Choose your research methods

Selecting the right research methods is crucial for gathering high-quality data. Start by considering the nature of your research objectives. If you’re exploring consumer preferences, surveys and interviews can provide valuable insights. For in-depth understanding, focus groups or observational research might be suitable. Consider using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain a well-rounded perspective. 

You’ll also need to consider your budget. Think about what you can realistically achieve using the time and resources available to you. If you have a fairly generous budget, you may want to try a mix of primary and secondary research approaches. If you’re doing market research for a startup , on the other hand, chances are your budget is somewhat limited. If that’s the case, try addressing your goals with secondary research tools before investing time and effort in a primary research study. 

4. Use the right market research tools

Whether you’re conducting primary or secondary research, you’ll need to choose the right tools. These can help you do anything from sending surveys to customers to monitoring trends and analyzing data. Here are some examples of popular market research tools:

• Market research software: Crunchbase is a platform that provides best-in-class company data, making it valuable for market research on growing companies and industries. You can use Crunchbase to access trusted, first-party funding data, revenue data, news and firmographics, enabling you to monitor industry trends and understand customer needs.

• Survey and questionnaire tools: SurveyMonkey is a widely used online survey platform that allows you to create, distribute and analyze surveys. Google Forms is a free tool that lets you create surveys and collect responses through Google Drive.
• Data analysis software: Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are useful for conducting statistical analyses. SPSS is a powerful statistical analysis software used for data processing, analysis and reporting.
• Social listening tools: Brandwatch is a social listening and analytics platform that helps you monitor social media conversations, track sentiment and analyze trends. Mention is a media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand, competitors and keywords across various online sources.
• Data visualization platforms: Tableau is a data visualization tool that helps you create interactive and shareable dashboards and reports. Power BI by Microsoft is a business analytics tool for creating interactive visualizations and reports.

5. Collect data

There’s an infinite amount of data you could be collecting using these tools, so you’ll need to be intentional about going after the data that aligns with your research goals. Implement your chosen research methods, whether it’s distributing surveys, conducting interviews or pulling from secondary research platforms. Pay close attention to data quality and accuracy, and stick to a standardized process to streamline data capture and reduce errors. 

6. Analyze data

Once data is collected, you’ll need to analyze it systematically. Use statistical software or analysis tools to identify patterns, trends and correlations. For qualitative data, employ thematic analysis to extract common themes and insights. Visualize your findings with charts, graphs and tables to make complex data more understandable.

If you’re not proficient in data analysis, consider outsourcing or collaborating with a data analyst who can assist in processing and interpreting your data accurately.

7. Interpret your findings

Interpreting your market research findings involves understanding what the data means in the context of your objectives. Are there significant trends that uncover the answers to your initial research questions? Consider the implications of your findings on your business strategy. It’s essential to move beyond raw data and extract actionable insights that inform decision-making.

Hold a cross-functional meeting or workshop with relevant team members to collectively interpret the findings. Different perspectives can lead to more comprehensive insights and innovative solutions.

8. Identify opportunities and challenges

Use your research findings to identify potential growth opportunities and challenges within your market. What segments of your audience are underserved or overlooked? Are there emerging trends you can capitalize on? Conversely, what obstacles or competitors could hinder your progress?

Lay out this information in a clear and organized way by conducting a SWOT analysis, which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Jot down notes for each of these areas to provide a structured overview of gaps and hurdles in the market.

9. Make informed business decisions

Market research is only valuable if it leads to informed decisions for your company. Based on your insights, devise actionable strategies and initiatives that align with your research objectives. Whether it’s refining your product, targeting new customer segments or adjusting pricing, ensure your decisions are rooted in the data.

At this point, it’s also crucial to keep your team aligned and accountable. Create an action plan that outlines specific steps, responsibilities and timelines for implementing the recommendations derived from your research. 

10. Monitor and adapt

Market research isn’t a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process. Continuously monitor market conditions, customer behaviors and industry trends. Set up mechanisms to collect real-time data and feedback. As you gather new information, be prepared to adapt your strategies and tactics accordingly. Regularly revisiting your research ensures your business remains agile and reflects changing market dynamics and consumer preferences.

Online market research sources

As you go through the steps above, you’ll want to turn to trusted, reputable sources to gather your data. Here’s a list to get you started:

• Crunchbase: As mentioned above, Crunchbase is an online platform with an extensive dataset, allowing you to access in-depth insights on market trends, consumer behavior and competitive analysis. You can also customize your search options to tailor your research to specific industries, geographic regions or customer personas.

• Academic databases: Academic databases, such as ProQuest and JSTOR , are treasure troves of scholarly research papers, studies and academic journals. They offer in-depth analyses of various subjects, including market trends, consumer preferences and industry-specific insights. Researchers can access a wealth of peer-reviewed publications to gain a deeper understanding of their research topics.
• Government and NGO databases: Government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and other institutions frequently maintain databases containing valuable economic, demographic and industry-related data. These sources offer credible statistics and reports on a wide range of topics, making them essential for market researchers. Examples include the U.S. Census Bureau , the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Pew Research Center .
• Industry reports: Industry reports and market studies are comprehensive documents prepared by research firms, industry associations and consulting companies. They provide in-depth insights into specific markets, including market size, trends, competitive analysis and consumer behavior. You can find this information by looking at relevant industry association databases; examples include the American Marketing Association and the National Retail Federation .
• Social media and online communities: Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter (X) , forums such as Reddit and Quora , and review platforms such as G2 can provide real-time insights into consumer sentiment, opinions and trends. 

Market research examples

At this point, you have market research tools and data sources — but how do you act on the data you gather? Let’s go over some real-world examples that illustrate the practical application of market research across various industries. These examples showcase how market research can lead to smart decision-making and successful business decisions.

Example 1: Apple’s iPhone launch

Apple ’s iconic iPhone launch in 2007 serves as a prime example of market research driving product innovation in tech. Before the iPhone’s release, Apple conducted extensive market research to understand consumer preferences, pain points and unmet needs in the mobile phone industry. This research led to the development of a touchscreen smartphone with a user-friendly interface, addressing consumer demands for a more intuitive and versatile device. The result was a revolutionary product that disrupted the market and redefined the smartphone industry.

Example 2: McDonald’s global expansion

McDonald’s successful global expansion strategy demonstrates the importance of market research when expanding into new territories. Before entering a new market, McDonald’s conducts thorough research to understand local tastes, preferences and cultural nuances. This research informs menu customization, marketing strategies and store design. For instance, in India, McDonald’s offers a menu tailored to local preferences, including vegetarian options. This market-specific approach has enabled McDonald’s to adapt and thrive in diverse global markets.

Example 3: Organic and sustainable farming

The shift toward organic and sustainable farming practices in the food industry is driven by market research that indicates increased consumer demand for healthier and environmentally friendly food options. As a result, food producers and retailers invest in sustainable sourcing and organic product lines — such as with these sustainable seafood startups — to align with this shift in consumer values. 

The bottom line? Market research has multiple use cases and is a critical practice for any industry. Whether it’s launching groundbreaking products, entering new markets or responding to changing consumer preferences, you can use market research to shape successful strategies and outcomes.

Market research templates

You finally have a strong understanding of how to do market research and apply it in the real world. Before we wrap up, here are some market research templates that you can use as a starting point for your projects:

• Smartsheet competitive analysis templates : These spreadsheets can serve as a framework for gathering information about the competitive landscape and obtaining valuable lessons to apply to your business strategy.
• SurveyMonkey product survey template : Customize the questions on this survey based on what you want to learn from your target customers.
• HubSpot templates : HubSpot offers a wide range of free templates you can use for market research, business planning and more.
• SCORE templates : SCORE is a nonprofit organization that provides templates for business plans, market analysis and financial projections.
• SBA.gov : The U.S. Small Business Administration offers templates for every aspect of your business, including market research, and is particularly valuable for new startups. 

Strengthen your business with market research

When conducted effectively, market research is like a guiding star. Equipped with the right tools and techniques, you can uncover valuable insights, stay competitive, foster innovation and navigate the complexities of your industry.

Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed the definition of market research, different research methods, and how to conduct it effectively. We’ve also explored various types of market research and shared practical insights and templates for getting started. 

Now, it’s time to start the research process. Trust in data, listen to the market and make informed decisions that guide your company toward lasting success.

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Market research definition

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26 min read Wondering how to do market research? Or even where to start learning about it? Use our ultimate guide to understand the basics and discover how you can use market research to help your business.

Market research is the action or activity of gathering information about market needs and preferences. This affects every aspect of the business – including  brand ,  product ,  customer service , marketing and sales. By understanding how your audience feels and behaves, you can then take steps to meet those needs and mitigate the risk of an experience gap – which is what your audience expects you deliver versus what you actually deliver.

Market research helps marketers look like rock stars by helping them avoid mistakes, stay on message, and predict customer needs . It’s marketing’s job to leverage research to reach the best possible solution based on the research available. Then, they must implement the solution, modify the solution, and successfully deliver that solution to the market.

Market research often focuses on understanding:

• The consumer  (current customers, past customers, non-customers, influencers))
• The company  (product or service design, promotion, pricing, placement, service, sales)
• The competitors  (and how their market offerings interact in the market environment)
• The industry overall  (whether it’s growing or moving in a certain direction)

Why is market research important?

A successful business relies on understanding what like, what they dislike, what they need and what messaging they will respond to. Businesses also need to understand their competition to identify opportunities to differentiate their products and services from other companies.

Today’s business leaders face an endless stream of decisions around target markets, pricing, promotion, distribution channels, and  product features and benefits . They must account for all the factors involved, and there are market research studies and methodologies strategically designed to capture meaningful data to inform every choice. It can be a daunting task.

Market research allows companies to make data-driven decisions to drive growth and innovation.

What happens when you don’t do market research?

Without market research, business decisions are based at best on past consumer behavior, economic indicators, or at worst, on gut feel. Decisions are made in a bubble without thought to what the competition is doing. An important aim of market research is to remove subjective opinions when making business decisions. As a brand you are there to serve your customers, not personal preferences within the company. You are far more likely to be successful if you know the difference, and market research will help make sure your decisions are insight-driven.

eBook: Guide to unlocking research efficiency with AI and automation

Traditionally there have been specialist market researchers who are very good at what they do, and businesses have been reliant on their ability to do it. Market research specialists will always be an important part of the industry, as most brands are limited by their internal capacity, expertise and budgets and need to outsource at least some aspects of the work.

However, the market research external agency model has meant that brands struggled to keep up with the pace of change. Their customers would suffer because their needs were not being wholly met with point-in-time market research.

Businesses looking to conduct market research have to tackle many questions –

• Who are my consumers, and how should I  segment and prioritize  them?
• What are they looking for within my category?
• How much are they buying, and what are their purchase triggers, barriers, and buying habits?
• Will my marketing and communications efforts resonate?
• Is my  brand healthy ?
• What  product features  matter most?
• Is my product or service ready for launch?
• Are my  pricing  and  packaging plans  optimized?

They all need to be answered, but many businesses have found the process of data collection daunting, time-consuming and expensive. The hardest battle is often knowing where to begin and short-term demands have often taken priority over longer-term projects that require patience to offer return on investment.

Today however, the industry is making huge strides, driven by quickening product cycles, tighter competition and business imperatives around more data-driven decision making. With the emergence of simple,  easy to use tools , some degree of in-house market research is now seen as essential, with fewer excuses not to use data to inform your decisions. With greater accessibility to such software, everyone can be an expert regardless of level or experience.

How is this possible?

The art of research hasn’t gone away. It is still a complex job and the volume of data that needs to be analyzed is huge. However with the right tools and support,  sophisticated research can look very simple  – allowing you to focus on taking action on what matters.

If you’re not yet using technology to augment your in-house market research, now is the time to start.

The most successful brands rely on multiple sources of data to inform their strategy and decision making, from their  marketing segmentation  to the  product features  they develop to comments on social media. In fact, there’s  tools out there  that use machine learning and AI to automate the tracking of what’s people are saying about your brand across all sites.

The emergence of newer and more sophisticated tools and platforms gives brands access to more data sources than ever and how the data is analyzed and used to make decisions. This also increases the speed at which they operate, with minimal lead time allowing brands to be responsive to business conditions and take an agile approach to improvements and opportunities.

Expert partners have an important role in getting the best data, particularly giving access to additional market research know-how, helping you  find respondents , fielding  surveys  and reporting on results.

How do you measure success?

Business activities are usually measured on how well they deliver return on investment (ROI). Since market research doesn’t generate any revenue directly, its success has to be measured by looking at the positive outcomes it drives – happier customers, a healthier brand, and so on.

When changes to your products or your marketing strategy are made as a result of your market research findings, you can compare on a before-and-after basis to see if the knowledge you acted on has delivered value.

Regardless of the function you work within, understanding the consumer is the goal of any market research. To do this, we have to  understand what their needs are  in order to effectively meet them. If we do that, we are more likely to drive  customer satisfaction , and in turn, increase  customer retention .

Several metrics and KPIs are used to gauge the success of decisions made from market research results, including

• Brand awareness within the target market
• Share of wallet
• CSAT (customer satisfaction)
• NPS (Net Promoter Score)

You can use market research for almost anything related to your current customers, potential customer base or target market. If you want to find something out from your target audience, it’s likely market research is the answer.

Here are a few of the most common uses:

Buyer segmentation and profiling

Segmentation is a popular technique that separates your target market according to key characteristics, such as behavior, demographic information and social attitudes. Segmentation allows you to create relevant content for your different segments, ideally helping you to better connect with all of them.

Buyer personas are profiles of fictional customers – with real attributes. Buyer personas help you develop products and communications that are right for your different audiences, and can also guide your decision-making process. Buyer personas capture the key characteristics of your customer segments, along with meaningful insights about what they want or need from you. They provide a powerful reminder of consumer attitudes when developing a product or service, a marketing campaign or a new brand direction.

By understanding your buyers and potential customers, including their motivations, needs, and pain points, you can optimize everything from your marketing communications to your products to make sure the right people get the relevant content, at the right time, and  via the right channel .

Attitudes and Usage surveys

Attitude & Usage research helps you to grow your brand by providing a detailed understanding of consumers. It helps you understand how consumers use certain products and why, what their needs are, what their preferences are, and what their pain points are. It helps you to find gaps in the market, anticipate future category needs, identify barriers to entry and build accurate go-to-market strategies and business plans.

Marketing strategy

Effective market research is a crucial tool for developing an effective marketing strategy – a company’s plan for how they will promote their products.

It helps marketers look like rock stars by helping them understand the target market to avoid mistakes, stay on message, and predict  customer needs . It’s marketing’s job to leverage relevant data to reach the best possible solution  based on the research available. Then, they can implement the solution, modify the solution, and successfully deliver that solution to the market.

Product development

You can conduct market research into how a select group of consumers use and perceive your product – from how they use it through to what they like and dislike about it. Evaluating your strengths and weaknesses early on allows you to focus resources on ideas with the most potential and to gear your product or service design to a specific market.

Chobani’s yogurt pouches are a product optimized through great market research . Using product concept testing – a form of market research – Chobani identified that packaging could negatively impact consumer purchase decisions. The brand made a subtle change, ensuring the item satisfied the needs of consumers. This ability to constantly refine its products for customer needs and preferences has helped Chobani become Australia’s #1 yogurt brand and increase market share.

Pricing decisions

Market research provides businesses with insights to guide pricing decisions too. One of the most powerful tools available to market researchers is conjoint analysis, a form of market research study that uses choice modeling to help brands identify the perfect set of features and price for customers. Another useful tool is the Gabor-Granger method, which helps you identify the highest price consumers are willing to pay for a given product or service.

Brand tracking studies

A company’s brand is one of its most important assets. But unlike other metrics like product sales, it’s not a tangible measure you can simply pull from your system. Regular market research that  tracks consumer perceptions of your brand  allows you to monitor and optimize your brand strategy in real time, then respond to consumer feedback to help maintain or build your brand with your target customers.

Advertising and communications testing

Advertising campaigns can be expensive, and without pre-testing, they carry risk of falling flat with your target audience. By testing your campaigns, whether it’s the message or the creative, you can understand how consumers respond to your communications before you deploy them so you can make changes in response to consumer feedback before you go live.

Finder, which is one of the world’s fastest-growing online comparison websites, is  an example of a brand using market research to inject some analytical rigor into the business . Fueled by great market research, the business lifted  brand awareness  by 23 percent, boosted  NPS  by 8 points, and scored record profits – all within 10 weeks.

Competitive analysis

Another key part of developing the right product and communications is understanding your main competitors and how consumers perceive them. You may have looked at their websites and tried out their product or service, but unless you know how consumers perceive them, you won’t have an accurate view of where you stack up in comparison. Understanding their position in the market allows you to identify the strengths you can exploit, as well as any weaknesses you can address to help you compete better.

Customer Story

See How Yamaha Does Product Research

Although there are many types market research, all methods can be sorted into one of two categories: primary and secondary.

Primary research

Primary research  is market research data that you collect yourself. This is raw data collected through a range of different means –  surveys , focus groups,  , observation and interviews being among the most popular.

Primary information is fresh, unused data, giving you a perspective that is current or perhaps extra confidence when confirming hypotheses you already had. It can also be very targeted to your exact needs. Primary information can be extremely valuable. Tools for collecting primary information are increasingly sophisticated and the market is growing rapidly.

Historically, conducting market research in-house has been a daunting concept for brands because they don’t quite know where to begin, or how to handle vast volumes of data. Now, the emergence of technology has meant that brands have access to simple, easy to use tools to help with exactly that problem. As a result, brands are more confident about their own projects and data with the added benefit of seeing the insights emerge in real-time.

Secondary research

Secondary research  is the use of data that has already been collected, analyzed and published – typically it’s data you don’t own and that hasn’t been conducted with your business specifically in mind, although there are forms of internal secondary data like old reports or figures from past financial years that come from within your business. Secondary research can be used to support the use of primary research.

Secondary research can be beneficial to small businesses because it is sometimes easier to obtain, often through research companies. Although the rise of primary research tools are challenging this trend by allowing businesses to conduct their own market research more cheaply, secondary research is often a cheaper alternative for businesses who need to spend money carefully. Some forms of secondary research have been described as ‘lean market research’ because they are fast and pragmatic, building on what’s already there.

Because it’s not specific to your business, secondary research may be less relevant, and you’ll need to be careful to make sure it applies to your exact research question. It may also not be owned, which means your competitors and other parties also have access to it.

Primary or secondary research – which to choose?

Both primary and secondary research have their advantages, but they are often best used when paired together, giving you the confidence to act knowing that the hypothesis you have is robust.

Secondary research is sometimes preferred because there is a misunderstanding of the feasibility of primary research. Thanks to advances in technology, brands have far greater accessibility to primary research, but this isn’t always known.

If you’ve decided to gather your own primary information, there are many different data collection methods that you may consider. For example:

• Customer surveys
• Focus groups
• Observation

Think carefully about what you’re trying to accomplish before picking the data collection method(s) you’re going to use. Each one has its pros and cons. Asking someone a simple, multiple-choice survey question will generate a different type of data than you might obtain with an in-depth interview. Determine if your primary research is exploratory or specific, and if you’ll need qualitative research, quantitative research, or both.

Qualitative vs quantitative

Another way of categorizing different types of market research is according to whether they are qualitative or quantitative.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research  is the collection of data that is non-numerical in nature. It summarizes and infers, rather than pin-points an exact truth. It is exploratory and can lead to the generation of a hypothesis.

Market research techniques that would gather qualitative data include:

• Interviews (face to face / telephone)
• Open-ended survey questions

Researchers use these types of market research technique because they can add more depth to the data. So for example, in focus groups or interviews, rather than being limited to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ for a certain question, you can start to understand why someone might feel a certain way.

Quantitative research

Quantitative research  is the collection of data that is numerical in nature. It is much more black and white in comparison to qualitative data, although you need to make sure there is a representative sample if you want the results to be reflective of reality.

Quantitative researchers often start with a hypothesis and then collect data which can be used to determine whether empirical evidence to support that hypothesis exists.

Quantitative research methods include:

• Questionnaires
• Review scores

Exploratory and specific research

Exploratory research is the approach to take if you don’t know what you don’t know. It can give you broad insights about your customers, product, brand, and market. If you want to answer a specific question, then you’ll be conducting specific research.

• Exploratory . This research is general and open-ended, and typically involves lengthy interviews with an individual or small focus group.
• Specific . This research is often used to solve a problem identified in exploratory research. It involves more structured, formal interviews.

Exploratory primary research is generally conducted by collecting qualitative data. Specific research usually finds its insights through quantitative data.

Primary research can be qualitative or quantitative, large-scale or focused and specific. You’ll carry it out using methods like surveys – which can be used for both qualitative and quantitative studies – focus groups, observation of consumer behavior, interviews, or online tools.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

Research topics could include:

• Product features
• Product or service launch
• Understanding a new target audience (or updating an existing audience)
• Brand identity
• Marketing campaign concepts
• Customer experience

Step 2: Draft a research hypothesis

A hypothesis is the assumption you’re starting out with. Since you can disprove a negative much more easily than prove a positive, a hypothesis is a negative statement such as ‘price has no effect on brand perception’.

Step 3: Determine which research methods are most effective

Your choice of methods depends on budget, time constraints, and the type of question you’re trying to answer. You could combine surveys, interviews and focus groups to get a mix of qualitative and quantitative data.

Step 4: Determine how you will collect and analyze your data.

Primary research can generate a huge amount of data, and when the goal is to uncover actionable insight, it can be difficult to know where to begin or what to pay attention to.

The rise in brands taking their market research and data analysis in-house has coincided with the rise of technology simplifying the process. These tools pull through large volumes of data and outline significant information that will help you make the most important decisions.

Step 5: Conduct your research!

This is how you can run your research using Qualtrics CoreXM

• Pre-launch  – Here you want to ensure that the survey/ other research methods conform to the project specifications (what you want to achieve/research)
• Soft launch  – Collect a small fraction of the total data before you fully launch. This means you can  check that everything is working  as it should and you can correct any data quality issues.
• Full launch  – You’ve done the hard work to get to this point. If you’re using a tool, you can sit back and relax, or if you get curious you can check on the data in your account.
• Review  – review your data for any issues or low-quality responses. You may need to remove this in order not to impact the analysis of the data.

A helping hand

If you are missing the skills, capacity or inclination to manage your research internally,  Qualtrics Research Services  can help. From design, to writing the survey based on your needs, to help with survey programming, to handling the reporting, Research Services acts as an extension of the team and can help wherever necessary.

Secondary market research can be taken from a variety of places. Some data is completely free to access – other information could end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are three broad categories of secondary research sources:

• Public sources  – these sources are accessible to anyone who asks for them. They include census data, market statistics, library catalogs, university libraries and more. Other organizations may also put out free data from time to time with the goal of advancing a cause, or catching people’s attention.
• Internal sources  – sometimes the most valuable sources of data already exist somewhere within your organization. Internal sources can be preferable for secondary research on account of their price (free) and unique findings. Since internal sources are not accessible by competitors, using them can provide a distinct competitive advantage.
• Commercial sources  – if you have money for it, the easiest way to acquire secondary market research is to simply buy it from private companies. Many organizations exist for the sole purpose of doing market research and can provide reliable, in-depth, industry-specific reports.

No matter where your research is coming from, it is important to ensure that the source is reputable and reliable so you can be confident in the conclusions you draw from it.

How do you know if a source is reliable?

Use established and well-known research publishers, such as  the XM Institute ,  Forrester  and  McKinsey . Government websites also publish research and this is free of charge. By taking the information directly from the source (rather than a third party) you are minimizing the risk of the data being misinterpreted and the message or insights being acted on out of context.

How to apply secondary research

The purpose and application of secondary research will vary depending on your circumstances. Often, secondary research is used to support primary research and therefore give you greater confidence in your conclusions. However, there may be circumstances that prevent this – such as the timeframe and budget of the project.

Keep an open mind when collecting all the relevant research so that there isn’t any collection bias. Then begin analyzing the conclusions formed to see if any trends start to appear. This will help you to draw a consensus from the secondary research overall.

Market research success is defined by the impact it has on your business’s success. Make sure it’s not discarded or ignored by communicating your findings effectively. Here are some tips on how to do it.

• Less is more  – Preface your market research report with executive summaries that highlight your key discoveries and their implications
• Lead with the basic information  – Share the top 4-5 recommendations in bullet-point form, rather than requiring your readers to go through pages of analysis and data
• Model the impact  – Provide examples and model the impact of any changes you put in place based on your findings
• Show, don’t tell  – Add illustrative examples that relate directly to the research findings and emphasize specific points
• Speed is of the essence  – Make data available in real-time so it can be rapidly incorporated into strategies and acted upon to maximize value
• Work with experts  – Make sure you’ve access to a dedicated team of experts ready to help you design and launch successful projects

Trusted by 8,500 brands for everything from product testing to competitor analysis,  DesignXM  is the world’s most powerful and flexible  research platform . With over 100 question types and advanced logic, you can build out your  surveys  and see real-time data you can share across the organization. Plus, you’ll be able to turn data into insights with iQ, our  predictive intelligence engine  that runs complicated analysis at the click of a button.

Get started with our free survey software

Related resources

Market intelligence 9 min read, qualitative research questions 11 min read, ethnographic research 11 min read, business research methods 12 min read, qualitative research design 12 min read, business research 10 min read, qualitative research interviews 11 min read, request demo.

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How to conduct thorough market research for your startup or small business, market research empowers and helps you make the best decisions for you and your business..

Starting a new business venture is exciting. When you’re thinking about launching and promoting your service, it can be easy to get caught up in the fun details, like creating your website, getting the word out, building your social media presence, and making sales.

Before you get to the fun, though, you need to do some homework. Market research must be done for your company to know your competition — and beat it.

Market research is gathering consumer feedback on your product or service and collecting pertinent information on the marketplace. This information includes what your competitors are doing and how they’re pricing themselves. It’s an essential step when putting together your business plan .

You need to have a clear idea of your customers and competitors, as well as the landscape . After all, if there isn’t a demand for your product or service, or the space is too crowded, you may decide to pivot before entering the market.

Before you move forward with your small business or startup , you need to do the behind-the-scenes work.

How to make a success of your first steps with a CRM?

Why you need to conduct market research.

You can’t operate a business based on a ‘gut feeling’ or ‘passion’ and hope for the best. That’s not a plan.

Market research helps you determine whether there’s a fit for your idea and whether it’s something people will pay you for. You want to get a lay of the land and address the following questions:

• Who is your customer?
• What are their spending habits?
• What is the market like?
• Who are your competitors?
• What are your opportunities to grow, build out and possibly shift your business?

Those questions are just the start. Where should you open a brick-and-mortar location? Should you have one at all? What about pricing? Where is the market for your offering headed?

The more information you have upfront, the better off you’ll be and the better business decisions you can make.

How to Do Market Research for a Startup or Small Business

Jumping off the questions in the previous section, you want to get clear on a couple more items before getting started.

Figure out a budget. You don’t need a large budget, but you always want to be mindful of where and how you spend your money.

Inform your team. If you have a staff, get them on board and make sure everyone knows their role in any market research task. Consider appointing a lead person or team to manage and store all related data.

Get specific about next steps. You want to act on market research quickly, not several months after you collect it, because consumer insights could change. For example, you probably shouldn’t use January survey results to make decisions about the next peak winter shopping season, which starts as early as November in the UK. Determine how and when you will use this data, then use it promptly. Consider building out a  V2MOM , an organisational system for creating and executing goals, to help nail down the specifics.

There are lots of ways you can conduct market research. It doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. For instance, you can use social media for cost-effective analysis, such as gathering feedback on a new product with Twitter polls, testing ads on Facebook, and even finding brand ambassadors on Instagram.

What about conducting market research for your business idea?

If you’re in the very early stages of planning an operation — perhaps you’ve mentioned your idea over drinks with friends or you’ve started scouring the internet for 101-types of articles to find out how to get it off the ground — market research is key. You may find that your idea is not something worth pursuing before you invest too much time or money. Your market research may also lead you to pivot one idea into an even better one.

The bottom line: Market research is important for your business plan and execution.

Gather Data on Your Business and Industry

Before going to market, gather data on everything from your ideal customer to the competitive landscape. According to  Startup Nation , you want to collect primary data and secondary data.

Primary data: This is new data you gather from prospective customers, the general public or a mixture of both. For example, you can use focus groups and field trials, such as A/B testing two similar but different product options and recording the participants’ preferences. Primary data can help you determine your product’s plusses and minuses, as well as serve as a guide for how to price it.

Secondary data: This is existing data you can use to retrieve customer information. It can include government census data and surveys done by other companies and organisations. Secondary data serves as a larger view of the marketplace, but bear in mind that some data may be older and therefore outdated or a little misleading.

Here are three additional popular methods used to conduct market research.

Interviews: Can include conversations in the idea phase or after other analysis exercises, such as post-focus group or survey research

Experiments: Controlled testing to prove or disprove theories about your product’s utility

Observation: Monitor and record consumer behaviour and reactions

Different types of market research result in different timeframes — anywhere from an hour to months at a time — and have varying price points.

As you consider the methods you want to use, be respectful of people’s time. Look into ways to perform your research correctly and without bias. Make sure to clear any potential payments, cash or otherwise, with your legal and finance teams to stay on top of any tax liabilities.

How Much It Costs to Conduct Market Research

According to  Vernon Research Group , generally speaking, you can expect to spend between £3,000 and £5,000 per focus group, between £10,000 and £25,000 on consumer research, and up to £40,000 for business-to-business research.

Market research typically isn’t inexpensive. It’s a budget section that can be worth hundreds to thousands of pounds. The actual amount can vary greatly depending on your industry, budget and personal preference; if you prioritise market research, you’ll likely spend more resources on it. You can pay a company that specialises in market research to collect and report on this data for you, or you can organise market research initiatives on your own.

When it comes to activities like focus groups and surveys, you can incentivise people to help with your research efforts in a number of ways. Some participants will offer their input without compensation, while others will be happy to contribute information in exchange for gift cards, financial rewards, discounts or a free product or trial of your service. Regardless of what you offer, it’s important to be upfront with what participants will receive. Be specific. Don’t tell participants they’ll get £20 if you’re offering a £20 Amazon gift card, for example.

Free and Cost-Effective Ways to Do Market Analysis

You can find free and inexpensive ways to collect customer and competitive insights, too.

GOV.UK has a roundup of  business and consumer statistics  on its website. You can also see if your city offers grants or assistance for small businesses that you can apply toward market research. Your local library or industry trade association may offer free or low-cost opportunities for you to conduct analysis through books and online databases.

When it comes to software, you can often sign up for free trials of many content research, SEO analysis and survey tools. Experiment with different ones and see what suits your business best, then convert to a subscription for the tools you rely on most. It’s worth making an  investment in software that supports your growth , after all.

Once you have a business website, install  Google Analytics . It’s a free tool that enables you to access information on your site visitors — demographics, location, the type of device they're viewing your site on and more — and get insights on the types of pages and content on your website that they’re consuming most or least. If you run an ecommerce business, Google Analytics can help you see if and where you may be losing people during the conversion process. The availability of reports (there are many you can set up) can also help you improve your landing pages, behaviour flow and more.

Don’t Skip Market Research

Your company’s success depends on how well you know and can serve your customers, and this starts before your business makes its first sale. It can be tempting to spend less time on this part of building your business, but it’s crucial that you invest the time and energy to perform quality market research.

Good market research empowers you and helps you make the best decisions for you and your business. Guesswork can cost you valuable time and money, while data-based decisions can drive your business in the right direction.

Find leads, close deals, and simplify sales with a CRM for Small Business.

Small business market research faqs, why conduct market research for your small business, how to conduct market research for your small business.

You want to get a lay of the land and address the following questions:

How to gather data for your small business or industry?

You want to gather both primary data (This is new data you gather from prospective customers) and secondary data (existing data you can use to retrieve customer information). 3 popular methods used to conduct market research are interviews, experiments and observations.

More Resources

How to Attract Customers to Your Small Business

How to Conduct Market Research for Your Startup or Small Business

How to Create a Small Business Marketing Strategy

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How to do market research

Your business idea is clearly inspired. But it helps to check you’re not the only one who thinks so.

Types of market research for new businesses

As a startup, you need to figure out who’s going to buy from you (customer research), and who you have to beat to get that sale (competitor analysis).

Why do customer research

By understanding your customer, you can:

• build better products and services
• learn how people make purchase decisions

Why do competitor analysis

By understanding your competitors, you can:

• copy what they do well
• work out what you can do better

It’s a good idea to figure out your customers first. That is the most important relationship for your business.

• Create a customer profile: Describe the person or business that will buy from you. For consumers, think of things like their age, location and interests. For business customers, think of things like their industry, size and location. Stuck? Start by checking out who buys from known competitors.
• Hit the internet: Search for information on the group you’ve just described. There may be existing studies into those types of people or businesses which you can use as a starting point.
• Start asking questions: Find real-life people who fit your customer description and ask them questions like: what do they need from a business like yours? where do they get that product or service now? what’s good about that current solution? and what could be better?

Read our guide to understand more about market research .

Market research methods

So how do you get information about people and their preferences? There are a few proven market research methods to try.

• Search the internet (desk research): Search for public studies into your customer group. And follow what those people say on social media and community groups.
• Have one-to-one conversations: Ask open-ended questions and let respondents do the talking.
• Host workshops or focus groups: Ask questions to a whole group of customers at once. You’ll get deeper answers because people will spark off each other.
• Run surveys: Ask tons of people the exact same questions to generate really solid insights and statistics.
• Start a community: If your customers are enthusiasts, bring them on your startup journey. Share updates, ask questions, and invite them to be beta testers.

Give something to get something

Free catering or swag will get people to your focus group. A random prize draw will encourage people to fill out your survey. A little sweetener goes a long way when doing market research.

How to do competitor analysis

Customers can tell you a lot about your competitors. So you’ll use many of the same market research methods to find out who you’re up against.

• Identify your competitors: Some competitors will be obvious from the get go. But you will find more by asking customers who they buy from now. Spare a thought for indirect competitors, which sell different things but go after the same dollar (they might sell cupcakes versus your doughnuts).
• Compare them to each other: Competing businesses often go after different parts of the market. One will be the premium option, while another will compete on price. Or perhaps they will target different age groups or locations. Map how they relate to each other.
• Find where you fit: Where on the map will you go? Measure your strengths and weaknesses against your competitors and figure out where you can give them a run for their money.

Read our guide to understand more about competitor analysis .

That’s how to do market research

You don’t need a big budget or a stats degree to go do some market research. Asking a few key questions of a few target customers and doing some competitor analysis can give you the smarts to build a winning business.

Xero does not provide accounting, tax, business or legal advice. This guide has been provided for information purposes only. You should consult your own professional advisors for advice directly relating to your business or before taking action in relation to any of the content provided.

How to start a business

Thousands of new businesses open every day. If all those people can do it, why not you? Here’s what to do, and when.

Writing a business plan will help nail down your idea and give you a blueprint for executing it.

It’s time to run some numbers on your business idea. Budgeting and forecasting help with that.

Your prices can influence the number of sales you make and the profit you earn on each transaction.

Your business structure can affect how much tax you pay, and how you're treated by the law.

If you’re starting a business, then you’ll need to get familiar with some accounting basics.

After all the excitement of deciding to start a business, you’ll have some paperwork to do.

Treat your website like an online version of a storefront. It’s the first impression for many customers and prospects.

Now that you’re in business, you want to stay there. Xero’s got resources and solutions to help.

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How to do market research: The complete guide for your brand

Written by by Jacqueline Zote

Published on  April 13, 2023

Reading time  10 minutes

Blindly putting out content or products and hoping for the best is a thing of the past. Not only is it a waste of time and energy, but you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars in the process. Now you have a wealth of tools and data at your disposal, allowing you to develop data-driven marketing strategies . That’s where market research comes in, allowing you to uncover valuable insights to inform your business decisions.

Conducting market research not only helps you better understand how to sell to customers but also stand out from your competition. In this guide, we break down everything you need to know about market research and how doing your homework can help you grow your business.

Table of contents:

What is market research?

Why is market research important, types of market research, where to conduct market research.

• Steps for conducting market research
• Tools to use for market research

Market research is the process of gathering information surrounding your business opportunities. It identifies key information to better understand your audience. This includes insights related to customer personas and even trends shaping your industry.

Taking time out of your schedule to conduct research is crucial for your brand health. Here are some of the key benefits of market research:

Understand your customers’ motivations and pain points

Most marketers are out of touch with what their customers want. Moreover, these marketers are missing key information on what products their audience wants to buy.

Simply put, you can’t run a business if you don’t know what motivates your customers.

And spoiler alert: Your customers’ wants and needs change. Your customers’ behaviors today might be night and day from what they were a few years ago.

Market research holds the key to understanding your customers better. It helps you uncover their key pain points and motivations and understand how they shape their interests and behavior.

Figure out how to position your brand

Positioning is becoming increasingly important as more and more brands enter the marketplace. Market research enables you to spot opportunities to define yourself against your competitors.

Maybe you’re able to emphasize a lower price point. Perhaps your product has a feature that’s one of a kind. Finding those opportunities goes hand in hand with researching your market.

Maintain a strong pulse on your industry at large

Today’s marketing world evolves at a rate that’s difficult to keep up with.

Fresh products. Up-and-coming brands. New marketing tools. Consumers get bombarded with sales messages from all angles. This can be confusing and overwhelming.

By monitoring market trends, you can figure out the best tactics for reaching your target audience.

Not everyone conducts market research for the same reason. While some may want to understand their audience better, others may want to see how their competitors are doing. As such, there are different types of market research you can conduct depending on your goal.

Interview-based market research allows for one-on-one interactions. This helps the conversation to flow naturally, making it easier to add context. Whether this takes place in person or virtually, it enables you to gather more in-depth qualitative data.

Buyer persona research

Buyer persona research lets you take a closer look at the people who make up your target audience. You can discover the needs, challenges and pain points of each buyer persona to understand what they need from your business. This will then allow you to craft products or campaigns to resonate better with each persona.

Pricing research

In this type of research, brands compare similar products or services with a particular focus on pricing. They look at how much those products or services typically sell for so they can get more competitive with their pricing strategy.

Competitive analysis research

Competitor analysis gives you a realistic understanding of where you stand in the market and how your competitors are doing. You can use this analysis to find out what’s working in your industry and which competitors to watch out for. It even gives you an idea of how well those competitors are meeting consumer needs.

Depending on the competitor analysis tool you use, you can get as granular as you need with your research. For instance, Sprout Social lets you analyze your competitors’ social strategies. You can see what types of content they’re posting and even benchmark your growth against theirs.

Brand awareness research

Conducting brand awareness research allows you to assess your brand’s standing in the market. It tells you how well-known your brand is among your target audience and what they associate with it. This can help you gauge people’s sentiments toward your brand and whether you need to rebrand or reposition.

If you don’t know where to start with your research, you’re in the right place.

There’s no shortage of market research methods out there. In this section, we’ve highlighted research channels for small and big businesses alike.

Considering that Google sees a staggering 8.5 billion searches each day, there’s perhaps no better place to start.

A quick Google search is a potential goldmine for all sorts of questions to kick off your market research. Who’s ranking for keywords related to your industry? Which products and pieces of content are the hottest right now? Who’s running ads related to your business?

For example, Google Product Listing Ads can help highlight all of the above for B2C brands.

The same applies to B2B brands looking to keep tabs on who’s running industry-related ads and ranking for keyword terms too.

There’s no denying that email represents both an aggressive and effective marketing channel for marketers today. Case in point, 44% of online shoppers consider email as the most influential channel in their buying decisions.

Looking through industry and competitor emails is a brilliant way to learn more about your market. For example, what types of offers and deals are your competitors running? How often are they sending emails?

Email is also invaluable for gathering information directly from your customers. This survey message from Asana is a great example of how to pick your customers’ brains to figure out how you can improve your quality of service.

Industry journals, reports and blogs

Don’t neglect the importance of big-picture market research when it comes to tactics and marketing channels to explore. Look to marketing resources such as reports and blogs as well as industry journals

Keeping your ear to the ground on new trends and technologies is a smart move for any business. Sites such as Statista, Marketing Charts, AdWeek and Emarketer are treasure troves of up-to-date data and news for marketers.

And of course, there’s the  Sprout Insights blog . And invaluable resources like The Sprout Social Index™  can keep you updated on the latest social trends.

Social media

If you want to learn more about your target market, look no further than social media. Social offers a place to discover what your customers want to see in future products or which brands are killin’ it. In fact, social media is become more important for businesses than ever with the level of data available.

It represents a massive repository of real-time data and insights that are instantly accessible. Brand monitoring and social listening are effective ways to conduct social media research . You can even be more direct with your approach. Ask questions directly or even poll your audience to understand their needs and preferences.

The 5 steps for how to do market research

Now that we’ve covered the why and where, it’s time to get into the practical aspects of market research. Here are five essential steps on how to do market research effectively.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

First off, what are you researching about? What do you want to find out? Narrow down on a specific research topic so you can start with a clear idea of what to look for.

For example, you may want to learn more about how well your product features are satisfying the needs of existing users. This might potentially lead to feature updates and improvements. Or it might even result in new feature introductions.

Similarly, your research topic may be related to your product or service launch or customer experience. Or you may want to conduct research for an upcoming marketing campaign.

Step 2: Choose a buyer persona to engage

If you’re planning to focus your research on a specific type of audience, decide which buyer persona you want to engage. This persona group will serve as a representative sample of your target audience.

Engaging a specific group of audience lets you streamline your research efforts. As such, it can be a much more effective and organized approach than researching thousands (if not millions) of individuals.

You may be directing your research toward existing users of your product. To get even more granular, you may want to focus on users who have been familiar with the product for at least a year, for example.

Step 3: Start collecting data

The next step is one of the most critical as it involves collecting the data you need for your research. Before you begin, make sure you’ve chosen the right research methods that will uncover the type of data you need. This largely depends on your research topic and goals.

Remember that you don’t necessarily have to stick to one research method. You may use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. So for example, you could use interviews to supplement the data from your surveys. Or you may stick to insights from your social listening efforts.

To keep things consistent, let’s look at this in the context of the example from earlier. Perhaps you can send out a survey to your existing users asking them a bunch of questions. This might include questions like which features they use the most and how often they use them. You can get them to choose an answer from one to five and collect quantitative data.

Plus, for qualitative insights, you could even include a few open-ended questions with the option to write their answers. For instance, you might ask them if there’s any improvement they wish to see in your product.

Step 4: Analyze results

Once you have all the data you need, it’s time to analyze it keeping your research topic in mind. This involves trying to interpret the data to look for a wider meaning, particularly in relation to your research goal.

So let’s say a large percentage of responses were four or five in the satisfaction rating. This means your existing users are mostly satisfied with your current product features. On the other hand, if the responses were mostly ones and twos, you may look for opportunities to improve. The responses to your open-ended questions can give you further context as to why people are disappointed.

Step 5: Make decisions for your business

Now it’s time to take your findings and turn them into actionable insights for your business. In this final step, you need to decide how you want to move forward with your new market insight.

What did you find in your research that would require action? How can you put those findings to good use?

The market research tools you should be using

To wrap things up, let’s talk about the various tools available to conduct speedy, in-depth market research. These tools are essential for conducting market research faster and more efficiently.

Social listening and analytics

Social analytics tools like Sprout can help you keep track of engagement across social media. This goes beyond your own engagement data but also includes that of your competitors. Considering how quickly social media moves, using a third-party analytics tool is ideal. It allows you to make sense of your social data at a glance and ensure that you’re never missing out on important trends.

Email marketing research tools

Keeping track of brand emails is a good idea for any brand looking to stand out in its audience’s inbox.

Tools such as MailCharts ,  Really Good Emails  and  Milled  can show you how different brands run their email campaigns.

Meanwhile, tools like  Owletter  allow you to monitor metrics such as frequency and send-timing. These metrics can help you understand email marketing strategies among competing brands.

Content marketing research

If you’re looking to conduct research on content marketing, tools such as  BuzzSumo  can be of great help. This tool shows you the top-performing industry content based on keywords. Here you can see relevant industry sites and influencers as well as which brands in your industry are scoring the most buzz. It shows you exactly which pieces of content are ranking well in terms of engagements and shares and on which social networks.

SEO and keyword tracking

Monitoring industry keywords is a great way to uncover competitors. It can also help you discover opportunities to advertise your products via organic search. Tools such as  Ahrefs  provide a comprehensive keyword report to help you see how your search efforts stack up against the competition.

Competitor comparison template

For the sake of organizing your market research, consider creating a competitive matrix. The idea is to highlight how you stack up side-by-side against others in your market. Use a  social media competitive analysis template  to track your competitors’ social presence. That way, you can easily compare tactics, messaging and performance. Once you understand your strengths and weaknesses next to your competitors, you’ll find opportunities as well.

Customer persona creator

Finally, customer personas represent a place where all of your market research comes together. You’d need to create a profile of your ideal customer that you can easily refer to. Tools like  Xtensio  can help in outlining your customer motivations and demographics as you zero in on your target market.

Build a solid market research strategy

Having a deeper understanding of the market gives you leverage in a sea of competitors. Use the steps and market research tools we shared above to build an effective market research strategy.

But keep in mind that the accuracy of your research findings depends on the quality of data collected. Turn to Sprout’s social media analytics tools to uncover heaps of high-quality data across social networks.

• Marketing Disciplines
• Social Media Strategy

Social media RFPs: The best questions to include (plus a template)

Template: Essential Questions to Ask in Your Social Media Management Software RFP

• Team Collaboration

How to build a marketing tech stack that scales your business

• Customer Experience

Brand trust: What it is and why it matters

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12 leading market research companies in the UK for in-depth consumer insights

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If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve some idea of what market research companies in the UK do, and how research is the rocket fuel that powers your most effective campaigns, product developments, and marketing strategies. 

But for the avoidance of doubt and to make sure we’re all on the same page, market research is about gathering and analyzing data on customers, competitors, distributors, and other actors and forces in the marketplace.

That’s important because market research companies take the guesswork out of getting through to audiences. By studying consumers and gathering information on their likes, dislikes and so on, a brand can make evidence-based decisions rather than relying on instinct or experience.

If a business wants to know – really know – what sort of products or services consumers want to buy, through to where, when, and how those products and services should be marketed, then it makes total sense to ask the prospective audience. 

Without the certainty that market research companies provides, a business is basically hoping for the best, and while we salute their optimism, that’s not exactly a reliable strategy for success. The point is, research matters . To help you take advantage of this, here’s what this blog covers:

How to choose the right market research company for you

• Meet the major players: market research companies in the UK

Market research FAQs

Different market research companies are not created equal. Behind the snazzy websites and persuasive pitching, individual research companies can vary pretty dramatically in terms of what they do and how they do it – all of which can radically alter the benefit their service provides. How do you pick the right research partner for you? Some key things to consider are:

• Does the market research company you’re considering work with or know about your audience?
• Does the company have expertise in your industry and category?
• Do they have a history of success with businesses like yours?
• What’s their capacity? Can they actually do the job you need doing?
• Does the company conduct the right sort of research to answer your questions? 
• Are they transparent about where their data comes from and how they ensure quality?
• Does the company have a track record of providing actionable insights?
• What’s their process for collecting and analyzing data?
• How do they communicate with their clients?
• Will the market research company provide results in a timely manner?
• Will their work add value for your business? 

While there are hundreds of market research companies in London out there, these questions should help you narrow the field to a handful of promising candidates. On that topic, let’s meet 12 of the UK’s major players, starting – unashamedly – with us, GWI, but otherwise in no particular order.

Meet the major players 

The world’s largest ongoing study of online audiences, with a powerful, intuitive platform that instantly puts high impact insights at your fingertips.

Locations: London, UK (with additional offices in the US, Greece, Czech Republic, and Singapore)

Specialisms: Every business has questions about its audiences; GWI has the answers. Powered by consistent, global research, our market research platform is an on-demand window into their world, giving GWI customers on-demand insights into the lives of billions of digital consumers in 53 world markets. As well as our flagship Core data set we’ve equally compelling additional data sets and add-ons that zero in on the USA, kids, gaming, sport, alcohol, B2B buying and work, consumer tech, and travel. Need even deeper insights into your target audiences? We’ve got you covered. Ask any question you like with our custom surveys , analytics and solutions, all tailored to your exact needs. Whatever the topic, whatever the question, GWI has the answer.

Clients: Publicis, Google, Spotify, Microsoft, WPP, Amazon, LinkedIn, and The Guardian.

Use cases: These fall into three intuitive buckets: marketing strategy, including media planning , content marketing, brand health, and ads targeting; product development, including product expansion and improvements, and partnership and collaboration opportunities, and competitive advantage, which includes market differentiation, winning pitches and retaining clients, sponsorship opps and market sizing/expansion.

If you’re looking for a market research company in the UK and you’d like to find out how GWI can help you uncover and maximize opportunities, book a discovery call .

Kantar TGI Consumer Data

Relevant and robust data about global and local audiences in an increasingly connected world.

Locations: London, UK ( with additional global as part of Kantar Group)

Specialisms: TGI Consumer Data specializes in media consumption (across print, TV, radio and online), as well as product and brand usage, attitudes, motivations, and beliefs, all under the banner of “connected consumer intelligence”. TGI uses Kantar’s data – they’re a subsidiary after all – based on a representative sample of over 700,000 consumers in 50 markets. Data is collected online, while offline panels of consumers provide detail on what each consumer does and how those activities are connected to each other. 

Use cases: TGI enables marketing and research teams to enhance strategic planning by segmenting customers and identifying gaps in the market. They help media agencies optimize media planning by identifying the most relevant target audiences against the right advertising activation choices. TGI works with media owners’ sales teams to understand their audience in lifestyle, attitudinal or consumer terms, and uses this to create competitive value.

A global leader in audience measurement, data and analytics, Nielsen empowers clients with trusted intelligence.

Locations: London, UK (with additional global offices)

Specialisms: For Nielsen, “audience is everything”. They describe themselves as “Connecting clients to audiences, growth and new opportunities”, while “shaping the future of media” so their clients can “stay ahead of media’s evolution with our timely insight” by measuring behavior across different channels and platforms. They’re perhaps best known for their Nielsen ratings, an audience measurement system of television viewership that for many years has been the deciding factor in canceling or renewing television shows.

Use cases: Specific services include audience measurement (including cross media, digital, streaming and TV), media planning (including audience segmentation, competitor intelligence and scenario planning), market optimization (including marketing outcomes and sports/games), and content metadata (covering audio, sports, and video).

YouGov 

A global online community of 24 million people sharing their views daily. Clients can explore public opinion “about anything and everything”.

Specialisms: YouGov’s mission is to supply a continuous stream of accurate data and insight into what the world thinks, so that companies, governments, and institutions can make informed decisions. Describing what they do as “Living Consumer Intelligence”, YouGov enables some of the world’s most recognised brands, media owners, and agencies to understand their customers using consumer data on 24 million+ registered panel members in 55+ markets.

Use cases: These fall into four buckets: Tracking, by continuously monitoring what an audience thinks about brands, campaigns, and the competition creates a powerful feedback loop for clients. Planning, with over a million data points to help users unlock the most complete profile of their audience and use it to plan marketing campaigns. Exploring, by allowing clients to get answers from their chosen audience using syndicated data products or customized surveys. Activating, enabling advertisers to optimize their ad spend by using research-based audiences to activate ad campaigns.

Attest pairs the expertise of a research agency with the speed (and price) of a self-serve tool for the best of both worlds.

Locations: London, UK

Specialisms: Attest is a consumer research platform that puts trustworthy insights in more people’s hands to minimize risk, increase decision-making confidence, and grow without guesswork. Based on the views of 125 million people across 58 countries, and combining the best bits of research technology and human expertise, Attest makes it simple for anyone to uncover opportunities with consumer data, continuously, at a global scale. They call it “growth without guesswork”. 

Use cases: Brand tracking (including brand health and performance), consumer profiling (for example finding audiences and building personas), creative testing (in terms of validating creative impact and qualifying campaign uplift), market analysis (like identifying new markets and de-risking expansion), and product development (including innovation and uplift).

Empowering bold sustainable action, GfK earns the trust of clients around the world by solving critical questions in their decision-making process.

Specializms: As GfK puts it, “We specializes in solving critical questions in our clients’ decision-making process. We fuel their growth by providing a complete understanding of their consumers’ buying behavior, and the dynamics impacting their markets, brands and media trends.” With a holistic retail read and the most comprehensive consumer insights – delivered with advanced analytics through state-of-the-art platforms – GfK drives “growth from knowledge”.

Use cases: GfK divides these into 5 areas: Brand and marketing performance (including improving brand strength, optimizing marketing, and driving ROI), Sales and marketing growth, Consumer and shopper intelligence (in terms of consumer and shopper intelligence, and how customers think, act and buy), Media measurement (covering an audience’s media consumption and behavior, and understanding who’s consuming which media, when, how often, and on which platforms and devices).

Fieldwork Hub

Participant recruitment and project management experts, FieldworkHub delivers market research services in the UK, Europe and beyond.

Specializms: FieldworkHub specialize in both qualitative and quantitative research fieldwork. Their qualitative expertise covers focus groups, in-depth interviews, ethnographies, online bulletin boards, market research online communities, and user experience testing. FieldworkHub’s quantitative specialisms cover online surveys, telephone interviews, and face-to-face interviews. As their name implies, their ultimate specialism is providing high-quality focus group recruitment as part of the full range of qualitative and quantitative fieldwork services.

Use cases: Recruiting audiences for consumer understanding (to highlight opinions, behaviors, and preferences in relation to a market, product, or service), B2B market research (using a combination of their own panel, specialist databases, social networking, and recruiters), tech professionals and users (focussing on consumers who use particular apps or hardware, and B2B technology decision makers), and healthcare professionals and patients (to provide insights on everything from branding to new product testing).

Statista is a leading provider of market and consumer data, constantly developing successful new products and business models.

Specializms: Statista divides its offer into four specialisms: Content & Design focuses on research and information design, eCommerce Insights provides market analyses, benchmarking and lead generation, Consumer Insights analyzes consumer behavior and media usage on- and offline, based on the data of 1,700,000 consumers from 56 countries, while Market Insights covers market sizing and forecasts.

Use cases: Market Insights (covering a broad range of topics, from consumer goods to technology to automobiles), Consumer insights (highlighting consumer attitudes and behavior worldwide), Company insights (providing business information on 70m+ public and private companies), and eCommerce insights (offering detailed information for 39,000+ online stores and marketplaces).

Gartner  

Delivering actionable, objective insights to executives and their teams to help them make faster, smarter decisions.

Specializms: From benchmarks to frameworks to rankings, Gartner provides the practical solutions that transform mission-critical priorities into measurable business results. Benchmarking leverages their best-in-class diagnostics to excel where it matters most, budget smarter, and make function more effective. Cost Optimisation identifies where to reduce, protect and invest to drive growth and efficiency, while Strategic Planning creates a clear and streamlined road map to meet business goals.

Use cases: Audit and risk, customer service and support, finance, human resources, information technology, legal and compliance, marketing and communications, product management, sales, strategy, and supply chain.

Dynata  

The world’s largest first-party data company, covering 70 million consumers and professionals, fully permissioned with billions of verified data points.

Specializms: Dynata divides its specialisms into two broad categories: data and insight solutions, uncovering accurate and actionable insights to drive smarter decision-making, and advertising solutions designed to measure & optimize your cross-channel campaigns to improve your marketing ROI. Use cases: Dynata’s use cases cover a broad sweep of market research tasks, including finding and selecting your ideal audience, building surveys to get you closer to your consumers, connecting data across silos, audience and campaign activation to drive better campaign results, creative testing to produce memorable adverts that maximize ROI, and sharing reports and analytics.

A pioneering audience measurement company, accurately measuring audiences in an increasingly cross-platform world.

Specializms: Automotive, FMCG, retail and travel (planning, transacting, and evaluating advertising across platforms to increase engagement and ROI), digital (accurate measurement across all platforms), financial (comprehensive reporting of competitive performance across acquisition and retention KPIs), pharma (privacy-focused, holistic measurement of campaign outcomes), and tech (understanding emerging consumer trends, device usage, and platforms). 

Use cases: Advertising (measuring and evaluating effectiveness across platforms), marketing impact (maximizing effectiveness), programmatic targeting (for cross platform audiences), TV audiences (measuring size and makeup), digital audiences (measuring all content types), movies (measuring global box office performance), social (understanding value of social audiences).

The world’s first “human intelligence platform”, Streetbees captures real life moments, at scale, and in people’s own words.

Locations: London and Lisbon

Specializms: Streetbees currently has two flagship solutions that reflect their area of specialization. Streetbees GO captures and communicates the context and emotion of 4.5m lives so brands can make the right growth decisions in terms of demand spaces, category development, market trends and brand growth. Its Cost of Living Monitor helps brands create winning strategies to combat inflation by observing how consumers’ spending is changing in their category.

Use cases: Observing the moment of truth, by capturing real life behavior at the moment a consumer makes a decision. Never rely on claims again. Getting closer to consumers at scale, by accessing rich data with photos and videos from millions of consumers around the world. Growth through AI also allows you to spot hidden growth opportunities by applying AI to millions of real life observations from real consumers.

Twelve different market research companies, with twelve different ways to help brands by taking the gut feel out of decision-making. 

The cost of accessing a market research company’s platform – assuming they offer one – varies considerably between providers. LinkedIn suggests some ballpark figures for custom research projects, although obviously this can vary dramatically.

Using market research, a process that starts with collecting data on your customers, followed by qualitative and quantitative methods like focus groups, surveys and customer behavior data. The aim is to analyze the data to look for trends and patterns.

Market research provides critical information about your market and your business landscape. It can tell you how your company is perceived by the target customers and clients you want to reach. It can also give you the consumer insights you need to refine your product, ace your marketing plans, and size up new markets.

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HELPING SMALL BUSINESSES SUCCEED

MORE DONUTS:

What do you need to know about marketing your small business?

• Marketing essentials
• Online marketing
• Social media
• Advertising
• Customer care
• Market research
• PR and promotion
• Your marketing plan
• Your target market
• Create a brand
• Do a SWOT analysis
• Your website
• Search engine optimisation
• Online and PPC advertising
• Email marketing
• Apps and online tools
• Content marketing

Learn how to use the main social networks to connect with customers and build relationships.

• Social media strategy
• Media advertising
• Understanding your customers
• Customer loyalty
• Customer service
• Selling more to existing customers
• Customer complaints
• Sales strategy
• Getting customers
• Negotiating
• Managing sales staff
• New product research
• Sector trends
• Questionnaires, surveys and focus groups
• Market analysis
• Benchmarking
• Choosing a market research agency
• Exhibitions

Essential guide to market research

Market research helps you understand your business' competitive position, spot opportunities, reduce risks and make better business decisions.

Existing sources of data, your own research and, if necessary, expert input can help you find the market information you need.

Market research - what you need to know

Qualitative vs quantitative research

Desk research - finding existing market research

Field research - doing your own market research

Can you do market research yourself?

Using a market research agency

1. Market research - what you need to know

Be clear what decisions you want to make before you undertake any market research. Identify the crucial data that you will be able to act on.

Who your customers and potential customers are

• If you sell to individuals, you need to know their sex, age, marital status, occupation, income, aspirations, wants, needs, lifestyle habits, etc.
• If you sell to businesses, you need to know their size, sector, buying patterns and service requirements. Which individuals make or influence the buying decision?
• How large is the overall market? What are the main market segments of similar customers?

What their purchasing behaviour is

• What products do they buy, in what quantities, how often?
• When do they buy? For example, any variations at different times of day or seasonal trends.
• Where and how do they buy? For example, do they buy online or at outlets? Do they buy direct or through intermediaries such as retailers?

What influences customer behaviour

• What are the key factors that make them choose one product or service over another?
• How much are they prepared to pay? How price-sensitive are they?
• Which media and online information reach them?
• Where else do they get  product information and recommendations ?
• How effective are your current marketing and sales campaigns? What is your brand image?
• How satisfied are potential customers with their existing suppliers and what would it take to get them to change? How satisfied are your customers?

What your competitors offer

• Who are your competitors?
• What products and services do they sell? How do they market them? How do their pricing and positioning compare with yours?
• What are their strengths and weaknesses? What is the  unique selling proposition (USP)  that makes customers choose you?

How the market might change and evolve

• What are the key market trends? What changes can you expect in external factors such as new regulations or technologies?
• How is the competition likely to change? For example, improvements in existing products, new technology, or the emergence of new competitors altogether.
• Watch for product or service breakthroughs that solve the same problem as your offering, but in an innovative way.

2. Qualitative vs quantitative research

Use quantitative research to find hard facts.

• For example, how many people or businesses you can target and how they spend their money.
• If you are carrying out your own market research (or employing a market research agency), you need to use a large enough sample to give statistically reliable data.

Use qualitative research to assess attitudes

• This focuses on how potential customers think and behave. The aim is generally to cover a few issues in depth.
• Participants are encouraged to give detailed answers and discuss their opinions, rather than just replying to specific questions. Qualitative research is often done in small groups, known as focus groups.
• Allow plenty of time for qualitative work. It always takes longer than you expect.
• Qualitative research is harder to analyse than quantitative research.
• Talking to customers and keeping your ear to the ground are familiar, low-key forms of qualitative research.

Decide how in-depth you need the research to be

• Exploratory research can provide quick clues to aid real-time decision-making.
• More detailed research can put flesh on the bones, helping to inform your planning.
• Knowing what you hope to achieve helps you decide how much it is worth investing in the research.

Identify the most reliable and cost-effective ways to obtain the information

• Desk research , using information that is already available, is the cheapest and quickest. It can be very useful for broad-brush sector research.
• You may need your own  field research  to get detailed information relevant to your business.

You may already have valuable information in your business

• Key sources are account records, sales reports, customer records and records of queries and complaints. These can yield valuable data about sales volumes, buying patterns, customer size and causes of dissatisfaction.
• Do not ignore informal feedback from your employees but beware of personal bias.
• Your internal sources may not be set up to make access to this kind of data easy. You may need to consider using a  customer relationship management (CRM)  system.

Two quick questions

Micro-businesses often cannot afford extensive marketing research. But they can carry out some quick and useful DIY research. Half a day on the phone to your customers can make a big difference to your chances of success.

Identify 20 top customers and ask them two questions

• "Who do you see as my competitors?"
• "What makes you use us, rather than the others?"

See what you discover

• The answers to these simple questions may indicate new possible target markets.
• They may also lead you to shift the emphasis of your marketing to promote the benefits perceived by your existing customers that you hadn't previously considered.

3. Desk research - finding existing market research

A lot of information is available at little or no cost from public sources.

Check with relevant trade associations

• Trade associations often collect data from their members, which could give you a good insight into your industry.

Use libraries and universities

• Some libraries and universities have industry statistics.
• Experts in your field may have data they can provide free of charge (or at low cost).

Find official figures

• Government databases are a useful source of statistics. The Government-run  Office for National Statistics  provides free data on various issues.

Search online

• You can find a wealth of freely available information online. Make sure the data is recent and from a reliable source.

Use trade publications and websites

• Many specialist trade publications offer free subscriptions or unrestricted access to their websites.
• Check business magazines and the business pages of national newspapers.

Consider buying existing research

• You can purchase market reports and research on your industry or potential customers from specialist research companies. For example,  GlobalData , the  Economist Intelligence Unit ,  Euromonitor  or  Mintel .
• A wide range of data is available, with detailed, highly specialised reports costing a few hundred pounds each. Always check survey dates, though, as old data can be dangerously misleading.

4. Field research - doing your own market research

Field research is more expensive and difficult to organise than desk research. The usefulness of field research depends on the sample, the researcher's skill and the interpretation of the data that is collected.

Use questions to reveal what people think

• The best form of questioning is usually face-to-face (one-to-one or in groups).
• Interviewing by phone is cheaper, but demands good technique. People may resent the call, or you may not have their full attention.
• Postal questionnaires are cheap and can be included in existing mailings. Email is even cheaper. Make questionnaires easy to respond to.
• All postal and online surveys produce low response rates, and those who reply will be a self-selecting group, which may be untypical.

Use observation to reveal what people do, rather than what they say or think they do

• Use experiments to see what people will do in a particular, controlled situation. For example, will people choose your cakes in blind tasting tests?

5. Can you do market research yourself?

Non-specialist desk research can be handled in house. DIY field research will only work if it is set up properly, right from the start.

You must be clear what data you require

• If you are carrying out your own research, it is likely to be qualitative. You are less likely to have the time or budget for statistically valid field research (for example, uncovering the size of your potential market).
• See  Market research - what you need to know  and  Qualilitative vs quantitative research .

You will need the right skills

• For example, in designing questionnaires and running focus group discussions about new products or advertising.
• If you and your employees do not have relevant experience, it may be a false economy to complete the research in-house.
• You need to be aware of  data protection rules  and other legislation relating to research. Street interviewers need local authority licences and identity cards.

There must be a realistic budget to cover the costs involved

• You may have to pay for the design, printing and mailing of questionnaires.
• You may have to pay to hire a hall or even a research lab, where you can video the discussion and observe people's reactions through one-way mirrors.
• You may have to pay focus group participants' travel expenses. Participants are often paid a small incentive.
• Input and analysis of the data you collect takes time and skill and may need to be outsourced.

Plan your questions carefully

• Avoid leading questions and questions that people can answer without any real commitment. For example, people may well say that they would be interested in a new product - but that doesn't mean they would actually become customers.
• Questions that require more thought may be more revealing. For example, asking potential customers how often they would buy, rather than whether they would be interested.
• Open-ended questions that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no are likely to get a more detailed response.
• For face-to-face or phone interviews, use a script so that all the participants in the study are asked the same questions.

Use research fairly and accurately

• Choose a realistic sample for your research. Do not base market research on the opinions of your friends and family. You risk hearing what they think you want to hear - rather than their honest opinions.
• Don't take negative responses personally. You can often  learn more from criticism  and improve your business because of it.
• If possible, ask someone you trust who isn't connected to your business to analyse the data.
• Be ready to act on what you learn. If your research delivers a clear negative signal, don't ignore it. Change your plans to take into account what you have learned.

Common market research mistakes

• Failing to do any market research.
• Carrying out market research once - and never looking into how things changed afterwards.
• Being unclear about what you are trying to find out, or asking questions in the wrong way - and getting the wrong information.
• Cutting costs by using small samples or just asking a couple of friends - and getting misleading results.
• Interpreting statistical information wrongly and failing to see when one or two opinions distort the overall picture.
• Analysing information too optimistically - and then kidding yourself that it supports your preconceptions.

6. Using a market research agency

Consider using a specialist, especially for surveys.

• Market research specialists , such as market research companies or consultants, have the time and the expertise to do a thorough job.
• Customers sometimes find it difficult to voice concerns or complaints directly to a business. Some might also suspect that you're trying to sell them something.
• You may find it difficult to be impartial if you do the research yourself.

Find an agency

• Ask for recommendations, or find a market research agency through the  Research Buyer's Guide  published by the Market Research Society.
• Find out what kind of reputation the agency you are considering has, both in general and for the kind of research you want. What do previous clients say?
• Decide how comfortable you would feel about working with the research agency. Do you trust the people you have met? What relevant experience and qualifications do its employees have?

Be realistic about the likely scale of fees

• Using an agency may only be a realistic option if your budget is at least £3,000 to £5,000.
• A freelance researcher may be a more affordable option.
• Find details of your  trade association  through the Trade Association Forum directory.
• Search for Government statistics from the  Office for National Statistics .
• Search for market reports and research from  GlobalData , the  Economist Intelligence Unit ,  Euromonitor  or  Mintel .
• Find a  market research agency  through the Research Buyer's Guide published by the Market Research Society.
• Find out more about market research and working with market research agencies by downloading the  ISBA Guide to Market Research  from the Market Research Society.
• Find out about  your data protection obligations  and email regulations from the Information Commissioner's Office.

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Market Research in the United Kingdom

Market research in the United Kingdom is more than just a strategic move—it is an essential practice that unveils the complex landscape of one of the world’s most dynamic and influential markets. From its deep-rooted history and diverse consumer base to its forward-looking industries and sectors, understanding the UK market goes beyond mere numbers.

What drives successful market strategies in the diverse and ever-changing United Kingdom market? Explore market research in the UK to uncover actionable insights that can drive business success and market penetration strategies.

What Is Market Research in the UK?

Market research in the United Kingdom analyzes data related to consumer preferences, market trends, and competitive landscapes within the UK market context. It involves exploring demographic profiles, purchasing behaviors, and psychographic characteristics of consumers to inform business decisions and marketing strategies.

Why is Market Research in the United Kingdom Important?

Market research in the UK helps businesses understand shifting consumer preferences, industry disruptions, and evolving economic landscapes. As the UK continues to play a pivotal role on the global stage, market research in the United Kingdom remains the cornerstone for any enterprise hoping to make a mark or adapt within its business ecosystem.

For instance, with Brexit and other policy changes, the regulatory environment in the UK has been in flux – and market research in the United Kingdom helps businesses navigate these complexities, ensuring compliance and forecasting potential future shifts. In addition, the UK is a hub for innovation, especially in sectors like fintech, biotech, and AI. Firms looking to innovate need market research to understand where the opportunities lie and where investments are most likely to yield returns.

What Are the Benefits of Conducting Market Research in the United Kingdom?

Undertaking market research in the United Kingdom has several benefits that can redefine a business’s trajectory. Here’s a deep dive into the main advantages:

• Informed Decision Making: With market research, businesses are equipped with actionable insights, ensuring decisions are backed by data and not just intuition. This reduces uncertainties and increases the probability of success.

• Understanding Market Dynamics: The UK market is influenced by various factors, from geopolitical shifts like Brexit to cultural festivals and events. Market research in the United Kingdom provides a lens into these dynamics, enabling businesses to adapt and align their strategies accordingly.

• Spotting Emerging Trends: With industries like technology, fashion, and media thriving in the UK, trends emerge rapidly. Businesses can identify these trends early on through market research in the UK, positioning themselves advantageously.

• Mitigating Risks: Market research in the United Kingdom plays a pivotal role in identifying potential risks, whether they’re associated with entering a new sector, launching a product, or navigating post-pandemic market realities.

• Tailoring Offerings: The UK consumer base has diverse preferences, needs, and buying behaviors. Market research in the UK offers in-depth insights, allowing businesses to customize their offerings and ensure they resonate with the target audience.

• Gaining Competitive Advantage: In the fiercely competitive UK market landscape, comprehensive insights are a tool for gaining an edge, offering deep insights into competitors’ strategies, strengths, and weaknesses.

When to Conduct Market Research in the United Kingdom

Determining the optimal time to conduct market research in the UK is key for businesses seeking accurate and actionable insights. With its diverse consumer base and dynamic economic environment, the UK market presents various ideal moments for market research.

• Product Development and Innovation : When developing new products or services or modifying existing ones for the UK market, market research in the UK can provide crucial consumer insights, helping to tailor offerings to local preferences and needs.

• During Economic Shifts : The UK’s economic climate can impact consumer spending and behavior. Conducting market research during or anticipating these shifts can help businesses adapt their strategies accordingly.

• Following Major Political or Social Changes : Events like Brexit significantly impact market conditions. Researching post-event consumer sentiments and market trends is crucial for staying relevant and competitive.

• Customer Satisfaction and Feedback : Post-launch of products or services, market research is critical to gather customer feedback, measure satisfaction, and identify areas for improvement.

Main Tourist Attractions and Cities

One cannot delve into market research in the United Kingdom without acknowledging the nation’s vast and diverse appeal for tourists. The tourism industry, an economic pillar, reveals varied interests from visitors worldwide. Here’s an exploration of some iconic sites and attractions:

• London: The vibrant capital is a treasure trove of attractions, from the historic Tower of London and Buckingham Palace to the modern Shard and London Eye. Any market research in the United Kingdom will affirm the city’s magnetic allure for tourists.

• Stonehenge: This prehistoric monument in Wiltshire remains one of the world’s great mysteries. Captivating millions annually, market research in the United Kingdom often highlights Stonehenge as a favorite attraction.

• Stratford-upon-Avon: The birthplace of William Shakespeare, this town offers a deep dive into Elizabethan England. Any comprehensive market research in the United Kingdom acknowledges its importance in literary tourism.

• Belfast and the Titanic Quarter: Northern Ireland’s capital blends history and modernity. The Titanic Belfast museum, dedicated to the ship’s legacy, is a prime example. Researchers in the UK highlight the city’s evolving appeal to international visitors.

• Cornwall and Devon : Popular for their beaches and coastal scenery, these regions impact market research in leisure, coastal tourism, and seasonal consumer behavior.

Leading Players in the UK Market

The UK market is characterized by prominent brands, companies, and institutions across various sectors. Here are some notable players and their contributions to the UK market:

• Retail Sector: Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Asda dominate the retail industry, offering diverse product offerings and omnichannel shopping experiences to UK consumers.
• Technology and Innovation: Companies like British Telecom (BT), Vodafone, and ARM Holdings lead the technology sector, driving innovation in telecommunications, mobile technologies, and semiconductor design.
• Financial Services: HSBC, Barclays, and Lloyds Banking Group are significant players in the UK’s financial services industry, providing banking, insurance, and investment solutions to businesses and individuals.
• Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare: GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and AstraZeneca are renowned pharmaceutical giants conducting cutting-edge research and development in healthcare solutions and medications.
• Automotive Industry: Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, and Mini (BMW Group) are prominent names in the UK automotive sector, known for luxury vehicles and engineering excellence.
• Energy and Utilities: BP, Shell, and National Grid play key roles in the UK’s energy sector, focusing on renewable energy initiatives, oil and gas exploration, and electricity transmission.

Influential Industries

A large industry in the UK is the pharmaceutical industry. This industry has an essential part in the economy and the UK has a big share of global pharmaceutical R&D expenditures. Companies in the UK, next to companies in the US, have discovered and invented more leading medicines than any other country.

The automotive industry has a turnover of about fifty billion pounds and twenty-five billion pounds of exports. The UK also has the second-largest national aerospace industry in the world.

According to European standards, the UK has intensive, efficient, and highly mechanized agriculture. More than half of its food needs are being produced domestically, however, the percentage of the labor force is very small. Another big industry is the fishing industry and there are important natural resources such as coal, natural gas, petroleum, limestone, and a lot of arable land. The UK is furthermore a large consumer of energy and one of the world’s largest producers of natural gas.

Local Markets in Great Britain

Out of the four countries, England possesses the largest economy. The country is highly industrialized and is an important producer of chemical products and textiles. A significant proportion of the country’s income comes from London. London is one of the largest financial centers, with insurance companies, banks, commodities, and future exchanges all concentrated in the city.  The financial services sector plays a vital role in the economy of England.

Scotland’s economy mainly consists of heavy industry underpinned by shipbuilding, steel industries and coal mining. With many large finance firms based in Scotland, the financial services center of Scotland Edinburgh is the sixth largest financial center of Europe.

Wales now has a post-industrial economy. Earlier Wales had a dominant mining and coal industry but that has changed. The service sector now provides the majority of jobs.

The economy of Northern Ireland is the smallest economy of the four. The economy has benefited from major investments by large multinational corporations in the high-tech industry. Subsidies from the government and the skilled workforce in Northern Ireland attract these corporations.

Regional Insights in the UK

The United Kingdom comprises diverse regions with economic strengths, cultural identity, and market dynamics. Understanding regional differences is essential for effective market research and targeted business strategies. Here are insights into key regions within the UK:

• London: As the capital and financial hub of the UK, London offers a vibrant and diverse market with opportunities across finance, technology, fashion, and tourism. It attracts global talent and serves as a gateway to international markets.
• South East England: This region is known for its strong economy, particularly in sectors like aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and digital technology. It offers proximity to London and benefits from strategic transport links.
• North West England: Home to major cities like Manchester and Liverpool, this region excels in media, creative industries, and advanced manufacturing. It has a thriving startup ecosystem and cultural vibrancy.
• Scotland: Scotland boasts strengths in renewable energy, tourism, and food and drink industries. Edinburgh and Glasgow are centers for finance, technology, and higher education.
• Wales: Wales has a diverse economy with strengths in aerospace, renewable energy, and creative industries. Cardiff, the capital, is a hub for finance and professional services.
• Northern Ireland: This region has a growing tech sector, particularly cybersecurity and software development. It also offers opportunities in agri-food, tourism, and advanced manufacturing.

Current Trends in Market Research in the UK

The landscape of market research in the UK is continuously evolving and following these trends is crucial for businesses to understand and adapt to the UK market effectively. Here’s a look at the current trends in market research in the UK:

• Sustainability and Ethical Consumption : With a growing consumer emphasis on sustainability, market research in the UK is focusing more on understanding attitudes toward environmentally friendly and ethically sourced products.

• AI and Machine Learning Integration : Artificial intelligence and machine learning are increasingly used for market research data analysis. These technologies enable more sophisticated pattern recognition, predictive analytics, and sentiment analysis.

• Agile and Real-Time Research : There’s a trend towards agile and real-time research methodologies in response to rapidly changing market conditions. Businesses are seeking quicker, more flexible approaches to gain timely insights.

• Personalization and Micro-Segmentation : Market research is becoming more personalized, focusing on specific consumer segments and individual behaviors. This helps in creating more targeted and effective marketing strategies.

• Voice of the Customer (VoC) Programs : Many UK companies are implementing VoC programs to continuously capture customer feedback across various channels and touchpoints, providing real-time insights into customer needs and preferences.

Largest-Growing Segments in the UK Market

Several industries and sectors are experiencing significant growth and innovation within the UK market:

• Technology and Digital Services: The tech sector in the UK is booming, with growth driven by digital transformation, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and cybersecurity. E-commerce, fintech, and software development are key segments experiencing rapid expansion.

• Healthcare and Life Sciences: The life sciences sector is multiplying due to an aging population and an increasing focus on healthcare innovation. Biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices offer substantial opportunities for research and investment.

• Renewable Energy: The UK is committed to sustainability and renewable energy, with growth in offshore wind, solar power, and green technologies. This sector presents lucrative opportunities for investment and innovation.

• Financial Technology (Fintech): London is a global hub for fintech innovation, with growth in payment solutions, digital banking, blockchain technology, and insurtech. Fintech startups are disrupting traditional financial services.

• Creative Industries: The UK’s creative sector, including film, television, gaming, and design, is thriving. Content creation, digital media, and immersive technologies drive growth in this dynamic industry.

• Food and Beverage: The food and beverage industry is evolving to meet changing consumer preferences, with growth in health-conscious products, plant-based alternatives, and premium offerings.

Expected Results from SIS International’s Market Research in the United Kingdom

In-depth Consumer Insights:

Our market research in the UK provides businesses with profound insights into consumer behaviors, preferences, and purchasing patterns specific to the UK market. This knowledge enables tailored marketing strategies and product development that are aligned with consumer needs.

Strategic Recommendations:

SIS offers actionable recommendations based on robust data analysis and market assessments. Our strategic insights empower businesses to make informed decisions, optimize resource allocation, and capitalize on market opportunities effectively.

Competitive Intelligence:

By analyzing the competitive landscape, SIS International helps businesses identify market gaps, assess competitor strategies, and formulate competitive positioning strategies to gain market share in the UK.

Risk Mitigation:

Our market research assists in mitigating risks associated with market entry, product launches, and strategic initiatives by providing data-driven insights and scenario analysis tailored to the UK market environment.

ROI Optimization:

Through targeted market research, businesses can optimize their return on investment (ROI) by focusing resources on high-potential market segments, refining marketing messages, and enhancing customer engagement strategies.

Market Drivers and Restraints

Understanding market drivers and restraints is crucial for businesses operating in the UK market. By leveraging market drivers and addressing market restraints effectively, businesses can capitalize on opportunities, mitigate risks, and navigate the evolving business landscape.

Market Drivers:

• Digital Transformation: Rapid adoption of digital technologies across industries, including e-commerce, fintech, and remote working solutions, drives market growth and innovation.
• Shift in Consumer Behavior: Changing consumer preferences towards sustainability, convenience, and personalized experiences push demand for new products and services.
• Government Initiatives: Supportive government policies and incentives for innovation, renewable energy, and infrastructure development stimulate market activities and investments.
• Global Connectivity: Access to international markets and trade agreements fosters business expansion opportunities and market diversification.
• Research and Development (R&D) Investments: Continued investments in R&D across sectors like healthcare, technology, and renewable energy fuel innovation and product development.

Market Restraints:

• Brexit Uncertainties: Ongoing uncertainties related to Brexit, including trade agreements, regulatory changes, and labor market implications, impact business confidence and investment decisions.
• Skills Shortages: Challenges in accessing skilled labor, particularly in emerging technologies and specialized sectors, limit growth and innovation potential.
• Economic Volatility: Global economic uncertainties, currency fluctuations, and geopolitical tensions threaten market stability and consumer spending patterns.
• Regulatory Complexity: Evolving regulatory frameworks and compliance requirements create operational challenges and increase business compliance costs.
• Infrastructure Constraints: Limitations in transport, digital infrastructure, and access to high-speed internet in certain regions may hinder business expansion and connectivity.

Opportunities for Businesses

The rich commerce, culture, and technology tapestry makes the UK ripe with business opportunities. When engaging in market research in the United Kingdom, one can discover a multitude of avenues waiting to be explored such as:

• Digital Prowess: The UK is a frontrunner in the digital economy. For businesses eyeing the tech sector, market research will reveal opportunities in e-commerce, AI, FinTech, and more.

• Cultural Heritage and Creative Industries: The UK’s creative industries are thriving, from film and music to fashion and design. Market research in the United Kingdom can help businesses identify collaboration potential and growth areas within this vibrant sector.

• Health and Biotech: The UK’s health research, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology prowess offers vast opportunities. Businesses delving into market research will discover avenues for innovation, partnerships, and investments in these fields.

• Education and Research: The UK houses some of the world’s leading universities and research institutions. There’s immense potential for educational collaborations, student mobility, and R&D ventures.

• E-commerce and Retail: With an evolving consumer base and a surge in online shopping trends, businesses can find ample growth spaces in the UK’s retail landscape. 

Challenges for Businesses

While the UK market presents countless opportunities, it also brings specific challenges that businesses must be aware of. Market research in the United Kingdom aids in the identification of these potential pitfalls:

• High Competition: The UK’s status as a global business hub means intense competition across sectors. Market research often shows saturated markets and the need for differentiation to succeed.

• Dynamic Consumer Behavior: The UK consumer base is informed, discerning, and constantly evolving. Continuous market research in the United Kingdom is required to track consumer expectations and preferences shifts.

• Sustainability Pressures: With a push towards green initiatives, businesses face the challenge of aligning with sustainability goals. Market research in the United Kingdom can guide businesses in aligning with the nation’s environmental objectives while remaining profitable.

• Cultural and Regional Diversity : The UK’s diverse cultural and regional landscape means consumer preferences can vary significantly across different areas. This diversity makes it challenging to conduct research representative of the entire market.

• Consumer Skepticism : Consumers often have a level of skepticism regarding market research, which can make gathering accurate and honest feedback challenging.

Future Outlook of Market Research in the UK

Technological innovation is expected to shape the future of market research in the UK. That’s why understanding these upcoming trends is crucial for businesses to stay ahead. Here’s an overview of the anticipated developments in market research in the United Kingdom for businesses:

• Increased Reliance on Technology : Advanced technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data analytics will play a more significant role in market research. These tools will enable more sophisticated data analysis, predictive modeling, and real-time insights.

• Greater Focus on Customer Experience : There will be a heightened focus on researching the customer journey and experience. This comprehensive approach will provide deeper insights into how customers interact with brands and make purchasing decisions.

• Sustainability and Social Responsibility : As consumer awareness and demand for sustainability grow, market research will increasingly focus on environmental and social governance factors. This shift will impact product development, branding, and corporate strategies.

• Mobile and Social Media Analytics : Mobile and social media analytics will be used more frequently in market research, offering real-time insights into consumer behaviors, preferences, and opinions.

• Agile and Flexible Research Methodologies : Businesses will adopt more agile and flexible market research methods to adapt to market changes and consumer trends quickly.

SWOT Analysis of the UK Market

This SWOT analysis provides a holistic view of the UK market landscape, highlighting areas of strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that businesses should consider when formulating strategic plans and conducting market research. Some of the most important factors to consider before investing in the UK are:

• Economic solid Fundamentals: The UK has a diverse and resilient economy supported by industries such as finance, technology, healthcare, and creative sectors.
• Innovation and Research Capabilities: The UK is a hub for innovation with leading universities, research institutions, and a culture that fosters entrepreneurship and technological advancements.
• Global Connectivity: London is a global financial center and gateway to international markets, attracting investments and fostering business partnerships.
• Stable Regulatory Environment: Generally stable regulatory frameworks support business operations, consumer protection, and industry standards.

Weaknesses:

• Brexit Uncertainties: The aftermath of Brexit has introduced uncertainties related to trade agreements, labor markets, and access to European markets, which have impacted business decisions and investments.
• Skills Shortages: Certain sectors, particularly in technology, healthcare, and engineering, face challenges in accessing skilled labor.
• Infrastructure Constraints: Transport and digital infrastructure in some regions may limit business expansion and connectivity.

Opportunities:

• Market Diversification: Expanding into new markets or diversifying product offerings presents growth opportunities for businesses in emerging sectors.
• Green Economy Initiatives: The growing emphasis on sustainability and renewable energy offers businesses opportunities in green technologies, the circular economy, and sustainable practices.
• Digital Transformation: Accelerated adoption of digital technologies creates opportunities in e-commerce, fintech, telemedicine, and remote working solutions.
• International Trade: Exploring global markets beyond the EU presents opportunities for export-oriented businesses.
• Economic Volatility: Global economic uncertainties, currency fluctuations, and geopolitical tensions threaten market stability and business growth.
• Regulatory Changes: Rapid regulatory changes or policy shifts can impact business operations, compliance costs, and market access.
• Competition: Intense domestic and global competition requires businesses to differentiate and innovate to maintain market share and profitability.
• Cybersecurity Risks: Increased reliance on digital technologies exposes businesses to cybersecurity threats and data breaches.

SIS International  provides full-service solutions in Consumer, B2B, Industrial, Healthcare and other industries. SIS can help you to stay competitive by delivering full insight into the business landscape.  SIS conducts Qualitative, Quantitative and Strategy Research.  Our methods include:

• Focus Groups
• Customer Interviews
• Digital Communities
• Market Opportunity, Sizing & Entry Assessments
• Competitive Analysis

We have extensive market coverage in Europe.  Learn more about our coverage in London , Scotland and in Europe .

Expand globally with confidence. Contact SIS International today!

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How to do market research for a startup (with examples)

Did you step out of the shower this morning with a business idea to beat them all? Did you read back through late-night notes, and they finally made sense?

If you’ve come up with an amazing idea for a product or service, congratulations! This could be the start of a great adventure, and every adventure needs to start somewhere.

To set a business set up for success, don’t create that website or launch that prototype just yet .

Take the time for proper market research . We know it might not seem as exciting as elevator pitches and guerilla marketing campaigns. Still, it’s just as important for your business strategy and will be a firm contributor to your startup’s success.

To discover if your big shower idea is viable, you need to conduct market research .

Before understanding which market research method is best for you, let’s get on the same page. 

What we’ll cover in this article:

What is market research.

• What good market research looks like, and what it can deliver
• Why market research for startups is so valuable 
• How to conduct market research for startups in a way that’ll give you actionable data
• Some examples of how market research changed the course for startups that went on to become successful businesses

Market research is about analysing the market you are in or are about to enter. It involves closely examining market trends, industry trends, market dynamics, your target audience, and other potential customers. Market research includes competitor analysis to see how similar businesses are selling and identify any indirect competitors you can learn from.

Market research findings will influence and guide your go-to-market strategies, and help you secure funding — they aren’t just for good-looking reports! Investors will want to see more than general market size figures. If you can show them proprietary data you’ve gathered from your target consumers (also known as zero-party data ), it will give them the deeper layer of insight they’re looking for.

Market research has been around for decades , and companies have tweaked and updated it over time, but the term has always been used rather loosely. It shouldn’t be conducted to simply confirm that your idea is good. 

When you conduct market research looking to affirm a hypothesis, you become susceptible to market research bias. You can end up walking away with specific data sets that affirm your theory, rather than actionable data that can dictate the direction your theory needs to take—which may be the opposite direction!

Why is market research important for entrepreneurs and startups?

It’s easy to be blinded by the potential of a big startup idea. Your product or service might seem great on paper—or even as a prototype—but without proper market research services , it could flop when you go to market.

Startup founders need to get as much detailed information on their potential market as soon as possible. Here are some reasons why:

Market research will help you test your ideas

There are several things you can and should find out about your product through research. The first question to answer: is there sufficient demand for your product?

It’s not true that if you make something and promote it hard enough, people will eventually start buying it. 

It could be that the product you have in mind is not for the target group you would expect or that the timing is off. For example, selling wired headphones now that most cell phones don’t even have a headphone jack would not be the perfect timing to secure demand. This works both ways; your product could be behind the times or ahead of them—as you’ll see later in our examples!

That doesn’t mean you can’t produce anything that hasn’t been done before – you simply have to do it differently and better. When Slack entered the market, there were communication tools for businesses already on the market. They just did it better. 

Aside from understanding what your core product and its features need to look like, you’ll also gather important information on pricing, payment plans, marketing strategies, product messaging, and more. There are tons of companies to help you with your research—here are the top market research companies in the US to get you started.

Conducting market research is important for attracting investors

If you want to impress potential investors, you’ll need more than a spicy prototype to whet their appetite. The main thing that investors care about is how likely they are to make money out of this product in the long run. 

For that, they’ll need to see research that backs up your claims and proves there’s a viable market for you to enter and meet demand. 

 This research makes the decision-making process to invest that much easier. 

Investors will need to conduct a due diligence check before they part with their cash. You’ll have a large chunk of the data they need embedded in your market research—making this investment process run that much smoother for every stakeholder. 

Discover how market research can help your brand: from reaching the right customers to testing creative assets

It makes startups less likely to fail 

Let’s look at why startups fail.

The top answers for this underline the importance of market research once again. At number 1 on the list of reasons why startups fail: ‘ no market need. ’ In 42% of cases , there’s simply not sufficient demand for a shower thought—no matter how innovative it is.

Number 3 on that same list is being beaten by the competition. Ignoring your competitors accounts for 20% of startup failure !

Of course, market research can’t predict the future entirely. However, when done properly, it’ll give your small business the tools needed to get a head start in the sink-or-swim world of startups.

Choose the right tools for market research

Attest is here to give you all the market insights you need, with tailored demographic filters and ready-to-go survey templates, you can measure everything from brand awareness to product demand in hours, not days or weeks.

How to do market research for a startup: 6 steps

There are plenty of tools, resources, and best practices to conduct solid market research, but it can be difficult to pick the right direction to head in. Worry not! Here are six steps to get the most out of your market research.

1. Find the right market research methods for your needs

Before diving into your market, target audience, and competitors, it’s good to freshen up on the types of market research methods there are: primary research and secondary research.

Primary market research

The internet only knows so much. You’ll have to get some data straight from the source: your target audience. That’s where primary data enters the picture. This is research you do yourself, gathering information directly from the people you want to use your product or service.

A great way to do this is by using online surveys or working with focus groups to get a comprehensive understanding of what your future buyers and loyal customers need.

Secondary research

If you use existing research and data, you’re doing secondary market research and finding secondary data. This can be great for exploring market dynamics and spotting trends. You can find more tools to help you conduct this research method in our blog: 12 great market research tools .

Secondary data has its place, but because it’s external research that hasn’t been conducted with your business in mind, you’ll need to be aware of citation bias.

What’s citation bias? Citation bias occurs when your data uses the results of other research. The results of which may have been looking to prove something slightly different to what you’re looking to prove. Plus, if the research is not conducted by you, then the data may already have fallen victim to one or more other types of survey bias you haven’t been able to account for.

2. Find out what you need to focus on

You might have a general sense of what you want to learn from your market research: whether or not you should launch your startup idea. However, you’ll need to specify some research goals to get actionable data.

After your first exploratory primary research or secondary research, you’ll be able to identify where you have knowledge gaps. What isn’t clear about the market? What assumptions about your potential customers need to be verified?

You can split up your market research goals into different categories—helping you better assign the right team to the right tasks.

For example, let your best marketers and sales reps help you in researching buyer behaviours. Let your finance team guide payment habits and payment methods for your market research. 

This market research template can help you better guide your market research.

3. Identify your ideal market

In any market research, you’ll have to look at three important factors:

• the target market as a whole
• your competitors
• your potential customers

We’ll start with the market as a whole because it’ll help you get more specific data along the way.

First, figuring out which market and industry niche you fall into is crucial. It may seem obvious, but if you put some thought into it, you might find you’d perform better in a different market.

Aim for a market where you fit in, where there’s a large enough product demand , and where you can make a difference.

Here’s how to find out what’s going on in a market:

Find your market, fast

Don’t leave the success of your startup to chance – our market research software is here to help you navigate the market and make the right decisions for your brand.

Talk to industry experts

Talk to experts who’ve been working in that target market for years and ask them about what they think the future will look like. These might just be speculations, but it’s better to hear them and address them than pretend they don’t exist.

You can also pay attention to what’s happening in online communities revolving around your product idea. For example, places like Facebook Groups, Reddit, Twitter, Twitch, ProductHunt, G2, Capterra, and other platforms can be a great eye opener about your potential future customers and market. 

Read the latest trend reports

Another great way to get a clear view of trends in your market is to keep track of relevant blogs and news. There are plenty of target market reports and public market data available to find out the latest trends and where the market is going, like G2, Deloitte, Gartner, McKinsey, and more—make the most of these datasets.

Use target market research tools

With Google Alerts and Trends, you always have comprehensive, up-to-date data on trends and can spot changes in popularity for certain brands and products by focusing on specific keywords. 

Find out what our favourite tools are for analysing your target market in our blog: eight smart market analysis tools .

4. Shake hands with your target audience

Get ready to talk to real people.

To understand your target market, you need to look at more than numbers. It’s great to see some people spending a lot on certain products, but you’ll need to learn why they do that. Get the powerful insights you need to create a strong positioning and ensure your marketing efforts hit the spot.

This is where primary research is most important. You can choose in-depth interviews, online surveys, focus groups, or a mix of those things, depending on what answers you’re looking for. 

Lost for words? We’ll give you some inspiration in this list of 20 essential questions you should ask your (future) customers .

Consumer profiling for startups

We recommend you go beyond the standard consumer profiling demographics and build buyer personas with layers. By adding behavioural and attitudinal data to the mix, you will create much more effective marketing campaigns and digital marketing strategies that land with the people most likely to use your product.

We’ve got a guide full of tips to get started with consumer profiling as a startup and a success story of one startup that discovered their most important potential customers weren’t who they thought they were .

5. Analyse your key competitors—direct and indirect

Next up: your competition. You don’t need to infiltrate their business to get to know them inside-out, but it sure helps to look at their strategy, messaging, tactics, and, most  importantly, what your target audience thinks of them.

Your target market probably knows who your competitors are better than anyone else. Find out what products they consider as alternatives to yours, and you may find out you have significantly more competition than you initially thought.

Take things a step further and look beyond your obvious direct competitors; focus on other companies that could be catching up with you in a few years or are in your niche but currently offering something else. Chances are you’re not the only one working on a new business idea each morning in the shower!

Rest assured, this doesn’t have to be guesswork—here are our 14 favourite competitor tracking tools to help you get started.

6. Be prepared to make big, but well-informed decisions

Once your market research is done, and all questions answered, it’s time to create a plan of action. Hopefully, you found out that your product or service is a lucrative idea and that there’s a real market for it—even if you need to tweak your idea a bit.

Market research will be the guide for any future business decision you take. How you approach product development, branding, and marketing, will all depend on the results of this research. 

3 Examples of market research for startups

The success of any startup heavily depends on whether they’re willing to listen to their target market or not.

Let’s look at real-life examples that paved the way for tons of startups and set an example in market research best practices to transform a business in its earliest stages of growth.

Example 1: the board game maker that won big with market research

Before coming across Attest, Big Potato Games was cobbling together insights from social media and Google Analytics—not ideal when you want a comprehensive picture of your market.

The team needed to establish exactly who their customers were, and learn the behaviours and attitudes of their potential customers to more effectively target the right people in the right places with the right messaging.

Using market research to explore consumers’ attitudes towards board games and what motivates them to play helped them define key customer personas. The research uncovered seven key customer types, all the way from casual, occasional players to hardcore gamers.

An example of what they uncovered through market research was that mums view board games as a way of getting the family together, while young adults saw it more as a way to socialise with friends.

They also found out the size and importance of each customer segment. While the hardcore gamers are a super important and dedicated segment, it’s still quite a small buyer group. It turned out that the mums group was a much bigger purchase decision-maker and demographic to go for.

Market research allowed them to better understand the segments where they sought to build awareness, who was using their product, and who was actually buying it.

Example 2: admit when you can’t beat the competition

Ever heard of Odeo? It probably doesn’t ring a bell. It was created by Evan Williams and Biz Stone in 2005 as a platform for podcasts. They placed their bets on podcasts. However, as we now know, their timing was off.

Instead of sitting around and waiting for podcasts to hit, they re-examined the market. They looked at user adoption rates, technology, and customer acquisition costs. At the time, Apple was their main competitor, and they knew they wouldn’t win. So, based on their market research, they pivoted.

They looked at other popular platforms where content was shared, such as Facebook. Their market research looked at what people didn’t like about those platforms. What tools were they missing? What annoyed people?

Not long after, Twitter was born. The Facebook News Feed was too cluttered for many people, so they cleaned things up. As we know today, it was a huge success.

Example 3: The dating site that turned into a video platform

Over the years, a lot of dating sites and apps have come and gone. Tune In Hook Up is one of those that has gone rather quickly. Its creators saw that the website, which was a video dating site, didn’t get enough traffic to make the right matches.

They had this technology that made posting videos online easier than ever, but not enough people were jumping on it.

They did market research and found it was hard to find specific videos online, and websites that did offer them didn’t work very well. Sharing videos with others was a pain for users.

Based on their research, they broke up with the online dating market and focused on the video part of their business that already existed. They changed the name, the platform, and their lives. You might have heard of it. They called it: YouTube.

Market research made simple

The right market insights can make or break your business, which is why market research is one of the most important things you can invest in. Don’t leave your market research up to chance – choose the best tools that set your startup on the path to success and match it with talent that knows what to go for. Now get back in the shower; you’ve got ideas to create!

Make market research easy with Attest

With our cutting-edge tech and on-demand research expertise, your startup can rest easy. Measure brand awareness and gain vital insights from our built-in audience of 110+ million people.

Market Research FAQs

To do market research for a startup, you should follow these six steps: 1. Pick the right market research methods 2. Identify what you need to know 3. Find your ideal market 4. Get to know your target audience 5. Analyse your key competitors – direct and indirect 6. Be prepared to make big, but well-informed decisions Once you complete them, you’ll have all the information you need to create a business strategy that will lead to your startup’s success.

The best form of market research you can do for a new business is primary market research. This is gathering information directly from the people you want to use your product or service by using online surveys or working with focus groups.

The main focus of the market research for small startup businesses is to validate their business idea. It doesn’t matter how good your idea or prototype looks; if there isn’t a market for it, no marketing budget will suffice.  By researching what the market thinks about your idea and what needs they have, you’ll know if your product will have demand or not. 

Customer Research Lead 

Nick joined Attest in 2021, with more than 10 years' experience in market research and consumer insights on both agency and brand sides. As part of the Customer Research Team team, Nick takes a hands-on role supporting customers uncover insights and opportunities for growth.

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Blog / Small business tips / How to conduct market research for your business idea

How to conduct market research for your business idea

If you don’t know who you’re selling to, you may miss important acquisition opportunities. Market research helps you to uncover key information about your target market so that you can reach, engage and ultimately convert your ideal customers into buyers.

The internet has made it easy for customers to find out information about brands online. The same is true for small business owners looking to figure out how to do market research for a business idea .

Market research will help you to discover who your ideal customers are, where they hang out online or in-person and how and why they make purchasing decisions. Armed with this information, you can get in front of your ideal audience in the right place at the right time, thus grabbing their attention and motivating buying behaviour.

In this article, we’ll explain what market research is and why it’s important, outline several types of market research and detail how to do your own market research to boost reach, drive conversions and increase revenue.

Top Tip: Conducting market research is a key part of ensuring that your start-up idea is something that people actually want and/or need. Once you’ve finished your research, you’ll need to get into the nitty gritty of creating a brand for your business, choosing your company formation structure, educating yourself on business laws and regulation, sourcing funding (if necessary), and marketing your business. You can learn how to do all of this and more in our guide to 10 effective steps to start your business in the UK 📌. 

Table of contents:

What is market research.

• Why is market research valuable? 

Types of market research

• How to conduct market research in 5 steps

5 common market research questions

Wrapping up.

Market research is the process of identifying information about your target industry as well as your target customers. 

When starting a new business, it will help you to answer the following questions:

• Demand: Is there a desire or need for your product or service? If so, what problem or pain points does your offering solve and how can you better align it to suit this demand? 
• Market saturation: How many similar options are already available to consumers?  Further, what are those businesses who are already in the space doing well and where are they missing opportunities? What can you do differently to fill in these gaps?
• Market size: How many people would be interested in your value proposition? This will help you to forecast your startup budget or, for businesses that are post-launch, this new product or service budget. From there, you can also predict revenue and profitability.
• Economic indicators: What’s the income range and employment rate of your target audience? This is the first step in customer research and it will help you to create detailed customer personas (more on these later on).
• Location: Where do your customers live and hang out, both geographically and online, and where and how can your business reach them?
• Pricing: What do potential customers pay to your competitors? This will help you to figure out exactly how to price your products or services so that you can stay competitive and achieve profitable markups. 

The results from this research will help you tailor your marketing efforts and brand messaging to better engage your audience. And, it will help you to design and package your product or services in a way that aligns with your audience’s needs. All of this leads to better conversion rates, sales and revenue. 

Why is market research valuable?

Understanding your customers is the most effective way to drive engagement and increase loyalty. Knowing their desires, needs and pain points helps you create a better user experience and cater to audience demand.

Market research is invaluable because it gives you compelling insights into user behaviour. While data and analytics give you a high-level overview of behaviours, market research goes a step deeper and uncovers what drives user intent. If you can unearth user intent, you can speak directly to your consumer with personalised messaging that motivates them to take action.

Market research also helps you uncover industry trends, ensuring you’re staying in line with what customers want and need out of similar products or services within the same industry. 

Competitor research like this helps you figure out what your competitors are doing well and where there are gaps in their strategy that you can fill. Plus, getting a sense of small business trends in your target market will help you to understand how they will impact your revenue and profits. 

There are two main types of market research methods: primary and secondary. Primary research entails speaking directly to the source, or direct-to-consumer, and secondary research is the act of gathering data from existing third-party sources. 

Both main types of research utilise qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.

Qualitative research focuses on data from first-hand observations, such as interviews, focus groups and questionnaires.

Quantitative market research , on the other hand, focuses on collecting and analysing big data from larger sample sizes, such as demographics, spending behaviour and opt-in rates.

To conduct the most well-rounded market research, you should incorporate both types of research and methodologies. It’s easier to start with secondary research and move into primary research once you have an idea of general industry and consumer trends. As secondary research has already been compiled and published by others, it’s less time-consuming and often cheaper than primary research. 

If you’re starting a new business, whether a full-time endeavour or a side business for extra income, this market research will be critical when creating a market analysis section in your business plan . Showcasing exactly what your competitors are doing, how your business will fill industry voids and your plan to attract your target audience will help to generate interest in your business idea.

Let’s dive into the two types of market research in more detail.

Secondary Research

Secondary research is third-party data that gives you a high-level overview of your target market. This data can be found in trend reports, market statistics, industry content, your own sales data if your business is post-launch, studies by government agencies, trade associates or other businesses. 

There are two main ways to access secondary research data.

• Public Sources: These include government statistics, academic databases, news sources, published books, published studies, and so on. Publicly sourced information is often free and you can find it online or in libraries. Such sources in the UK include the Office for National Statistics , the British Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses and more. 
• Commercial Sources: These sources are often in the form of statistics from private-groups that you have to pay money to gain access to. Such companies include Forrester , Gartner , International Data Corporation (IDC) , Everest Group , Mintel , Euromonitor , YouGov and more. You can also use online sources (both free and paid) that analyse online behaviour and trends like Google Trends , Product Hunt , Social Mention and SimilarWeb .

Primary Research

Primary research is research you conduct yourself in order to gather more detailed information about your specific target audience. You should begin primary research only after you’ve completed secondary research as it’s meant to fill any missed gaps from third-party sources.

There are three main ways to do primary research.

• Exploratory research: This involves talking directly with people. You should have an initial sense of your target audience from your secondary research, so this is the first time you’ll be communicating directly with them. Start with broad, open-ended interviews in an attempt to narrow down this group into a more niche audience.
• Specific Research: Once you’ve generated this smaller, more niche group, use the same methods that you applied to your exploratory research. But this time, ask more specific questions to get more valuable and intent-driven answers. 
• Internal Sources: If you’ve already launched your business and are conducting market research to see if the industry has changed since launch, collaborate in-house to see what your existing customers are saying. What were their challenges and pain points at launch and how have they changed? What are your customer’s biggest needs now? What do they say you can be doing better? The idea is to learn from and improve upon your original research by combining historical with updated customer-driven insights. 

How to conduct market research

There’s no one specific way to do market research. Generally, you want to start broad and narrow your research as you learn more. 

Once complete, you should be able to define your buyer persona, know their specific needs and pain points, understand how your competitors are positioning themselves in the market and identify your opportunity to gain a competitive advantage.

Here are five steps you can follow to organise and optimise your market research process.

1. Define your buyer persona

The key to driving brand engagement and purchasing behaviour is the ability to connect with your target audience. Otherwise, you’ll be promoting your product or service to a wide array of potentially uninterested parties, wasting valuable time and money.

Defining your target audience is the first step of your primary research efforts. Once you understand who you are selling to and what their interests are, you can and subsequently reach out directly via your secondary research initiative (we will explain how to do this in step 2 below). 

From there, you can begin to create a buyer persona. Use your target audience research to create buyer personas that answer the following questions:

• Who are your customers and why are they interested in buying your product or service?
• What characteristics, interests, desires, pain points and needs do they share?
• Where do they live?
• How old are they?
• What is their education level?
• What is their income range?
• Which types of websites do they frequently visit?
• Where do they currently buy similar products?
• Which languages do they speak?
• What industry do they work in?

Use the aforementioned public and commercial resources to gather and compile this data. Once complete, you can build your customer persona. This step is important because you can distribute a detailed, shareable document amongst your team or potential investors to guarantee everybody clearly understands your target audience. 

You can use online tools like HubSpot’s customer persona creator , Xtensio , Userforge or Smaply to build basic buyer personas quickly. 

Top Tip: This is the first step in building a marketing strategy that will help you gain traction and boost brand awareness. To learn more about how to attract your ideal audience, read our guide on how to build a go-to-market strategy .

2. Engage with a small target sample

Now that you’ve completed your initial customer personas and market research, it’s time to dive deeper into your audience’s behaviours. This is where your secondary research efforts come into play.

You can reach out to your target audience in several ways across many mediums. Remember to begin with exploratory research by asking open-ended questions and follow up with specific research that unveils invaluable insights. 

• Surveys: Use online surveys to ask a group of people a set of questions. Often, an online survey is delivered via email, but it can also be posted on social media platforms or online forums. Surveys are easy and cheap to conduct, the results come in quickly and the data is straightforward to analyse. You can use platforms like Survey Monkey , JotForm , Google Forms , LimeSurvey and more.   
• Emails: Send a cold email asking if they will be open to answering some of your questions. You can attach your survey to this email and/or use it as a platform to schedule a more in-depth phone interview. 
• Phone calls: Phone interviews allow you to speak directly with your potential customers. Use their answers to formulate your follow up questions to dive deeper into intent and expose insightful trends. 
• Face-to-face: This will be exactly the same as the phone interview, but one-on-one in person. In-person or interviews via video conferencing can be more valuable than phone calls as they give you the opportunity to see body language. Sometimes, you can learn more about what a person is feeling based on their body language rather than their words. Observation is key in face-to-face meetings.
• Focus groups: Focus groups bring together a group of selected participants to answer questions in real-time. Usually, a trained moderator will lead the discussion and ask questions about your product or service, user experience, user expectations, competitor products or services, marketing and branding messaging and more. 
• Call for participants via social media: Post on social media platforms to generate interest about participating in any of the above methods. Make sure you are posting your questions in the places that your target audience hangs out online, such as LinkedIn , Facebook groups, Twitter , Reddit , and so on, so that you attract people that align with your unique customer personas.
• Leverage your network to get participants: Apply the same methodology as your social media call for participants when leveraging your own network. Reach out to friends, former coworkers, family members and more to see who among them fits into your customer persona and is willing to participate.

3. Identify competitors

Gathering information about your competitors helps you figure out who their audience is, how they communicate with them and how they position themselves in the marketplace. This will help you to learn from their successes and failures so that you can replicate the fruitful tactics and avoid messaging or branding that received negative feedback.

There are two types of competitors to identify.

• Industry competitors: Industry competitors are those that saturate your target marketplace. For example, if you are selling a SaaS video conferencing tool, your competitors will be businesses like Zoom or GoToMeeting.
• Content competitors: Content competitors may not be competing in terms of the products or services they sell, but they are competing in terms of content creation. For example, if you run a leadership training business, a content competitor will be a business that creates content about how to be a great leader. This content competitor could run a finance business, a retreat business, a SaaS business or so on, but because they create content that targets similar keywords, they are a competitor in that specific space. 

It’s important to understand as much as you can about your competitors so that you can make better decisions. Learn everything about your competitor’s audience and apply those insights to your branding and marketing strategy.

4. Analyse data

You will amass a ton of information throughout this process. Make sure that you are using a system that helps you organise it so that it doesn’t become overwhelming.

Here are some ideas on how to do this:

• Sort your data into groups to better understand the big picture
• Create several distinct customer personas if you learn that you have more than one audience type
• Build a matrix chart to see how often pain points, desires, needs and attributes overlap 
• Generate a customer journey map to outline the journey from awareness to purchase, using free or paid tools like LucidChart , HubSpot or Visual Paradigm .

Once organised, you can draw meaningful insights from your data collection. This will help you to further shape your offering and messaging. 

5. Summarise findings

Summarise your findings in a simple and shareable format. Draw inspiration from the common themes you discovered to help tell a story about your target audience. 

This will guide future marketing and branding efforts and help your team and potential investors develop a clear picture of who your ideal audience is in their minds.

Add in quotes, diagrams, call clips, video clips and more to amplify the audience’s voice. Outline who you talked to, common themes and if you will stay on course or pivot based on any common feedback threads. End the summary with immediate next steps and action items.

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The most effective questions get to the heart of the matter and help you obtain invaluable insights. These insights will affect who you target, where you position your brand, what your messaging will be, what voice and tone you will use and much more. 

Here are some common market research questions.

1. What do you look for in a brand?

This will help you figure out what matters the most, at a high-level. For example, does your audience care about engaging with brands that support a good cause, or do they prioritise quality above all?

From this answer, you’ll have a better idea of what to include in your messaging. If your audience prefers brands that support a good cause, you can forge partnerships with nonprofits or charities and commit to donating a portion of your proceeds to them. Then, add this messaging on your website or in your content to make sure your audience is aware of your stance.

2. What are the reasons or actions that drive you to make a purchase?

Based on that answer, you can ask more specific follow up questions such as:

• Do you prefer testing products with free trials, or are explainer videos sufficient to pique your interest? 
• Do you prefer when a company is active on social media or do you not care so much?
• How much does a business’s customer service response influence your brand loyalty?

Use these answers to uncover desires, expectations and experiences that influence your focus in these areas.

3. What problem were you trying to solve or what goal were you trying to achieve when you purchased from [COMPETITOR]?

This answer will help you understand your competitor’s audience to see what their intent was before making a purchase. You can use these insights to position your business as a better solution to their problems.

4. What challenge(s) at work has [COMPETITOR’S] solution failed to solve?

From this answer, you can identify pain points that your competitors have yet to build a solution to. Ideally, you can get to market before them and present your product or services as the solution that will fix their ongoing problem.

5. What does your day look like?

While broad and open-ended, this question will help you learn more about your target audience in general. You need to not only understand what drives their buying behaviour, but who they are in a larger sense. 

This will help you build empathy for your audience, which will only serve to help you when speaking directly to them and personalising messaging. Plus, you may uncover something you didn’t previously know about their buying habits from this answer.

Market research is crucial in order to identify, understand and segment your target audience. Further, it allows you to gain a high-level understanding of your target industry as a whole, giving you the data you need to competitively price your products and forecast revenue.

Without market research, you will be selling blind. The most successful companies not only understand their place in the market and exactly who they are selling to, but how and where to target them. 

Plus, they know why their target audience makes certain purchasing decisions, helping them to skew their messaging in a way that captivates, engages and produces results.

Photo by Startup Stock Photos, published on Pexels

Valentine Hutchings

Head of Community and small business enthusiast

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How to Conduct Market Research for a Startup in 10 Steps?

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Understanding the Importance of Market Research for a Startup

Step 1: setting clear research objectives for your startup, step 2: determining the type of market research you need, step 3: conducting primary research for your startup, step 4: performing secondary research for your startup, step 5: identifying and understanding your target market, step 6: collecting and analyzing market research data, step 7: applying market research findings to your business plan, step 8: using market research to monitor competitors and market conditions, step 9: ensuring customer satisfaction and brand awareness through ongoing research, step 10: leveraging third-party market research services for in-depth analysis, final steps: implementing and reviewing your market research plan, conclusion: the path to a successful startup through thorough market research.

Imagine launching a startup without knowing who your customers are or what they really want—it’s a gamble that often leads to failure. With 50% of new businesses collapsing in the first five years, the critical factor for success lies in thorough market research. But where do you begin to understand your potential customers and industry trends?

Market research for startups is essential. It helps test product ideas, attract investors, and support business plans with solid data. Effective market research can demonstrate your commitment to refining your business based on the latest market insights, thereby speeding up investor interest.

To conduct your market research efficiently, you need to follow a structured research process. This involves setting clear goals, analyzing your market and competitors, choosing appropriate research methods, identifying the right study participants, and scrutinizing the data for actionable insights. By listening to potential customers, you can fine-tune your products, services, and marketing strategies to hit the mark.

In this article, we’ll guide you through 10 vital steps to conduct your market research effectively. These steps will help you understand all you need to know about the market, empowering you to make informed decisions and enhance your chances of success in today’s competitive landscape.

Key Takeaways

• Market research is crucial for startups to get to know their audience and make choices based on data.
• Doing market research means following a structured process. This includes setting clear goals, picking the best methods, and analyzing data for useful insights.
• Startups can use market research to test out product ideas, attract investors, and tweak their offerings to meet customer needs.
• Primary research, like surveys, focus groups, and interviews, lets startups gather data straight from their target customers.
• Secondary research, using existing data and reports, offers insights into industry trends and what competitors are doing.
• Market research should keep going as a startup grows and its products evolve. This ensures customer satisfaction and keeps you ahead in the market.

Market research is key for any startup or new business. It gives deep insights into your audience, competitors, and trends. This helps you make smart decisions that lead to success. In fact, companies that do market research are four times more likely to succeed.

Startups often have limited resources. So, using them wisely is crucial. Market research can cut the risk of failure by up to 85% and boost profitability by up to 25%. Knowing your potential customers is vital for fitting your product into the market, especially when launching a new product or growing.

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Starting market research for your startup means defining your goals clearly first. These goals will guide your research, helping you find the right insights. They make sure you know if your business idea will work.

Start by thinking about what you want to learn. Are you launching a new product, entering a new market, or boosting your marketing? Knowing what info you need is key, like understanding customer needs or checking out competitors.

To set good research objectives, keep these points in mind:

• Be specific and measurable: Your goals should be clear, brief, and you can measure them. For example, “Find out how big the market is for our product in the United States” is better than “Look into the market potential.”
• Align with business goals: Make sure your research goals match your business aims and strategy. This helps you make smart choices with the info you find.
• Prioritize objectives: If you have many goals, pick the most important ones. This lets you use your resources well and focus on what’s most critical.
• Be realistic: Set goals you can reach with your resources, time, and budget. Goals that are too big might not be fully completed or clear.

After setting clear goals for your startup, it’s time to pick the right market research type. There are many methods, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. Knowing the differences will help you choose wisely and get the data you need.

Primary vs. Secondary Research

Primary research means getting data straight from your audience through surveys or interviews. It gives you direct info tailored to your startup’s needs. Though it takes time and money, it’s priceless for understanding what your market likes and needs.

Secondary research looks at data already out there, like industry reports or online articles. It’s cheaper and quicker than primary research. But, it might not be as fresh or relevant.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research

Quantitative research deals with numbers you can analyze. It’s great for finding out market size or customer satisfaction. Methods include online surveys and phone interviews. This type of research gives a broad view because it often looks at a lot of people.

Qualitative research looks at opinions and feelings, not just numbers. It’s perfect for understanding what your market really wants and needs. Methods include focus groups and in-depth interviews. This research gives deep insights but takes longer and looks at fewer people.

Primary research means getting data straight from your target audience. It helps you understand what they need, like, and do. This is key for startups as it gives a deep look into potential customers and checks if your ideas will work. Though it can be expensive and take a lot of time, it gives insights that shape your marketing and product plans.

Surveys: Crafting Unbiased Research Questions

Surveys are great for getting lots of data from many people. When making surveys, make sure your questions don’t push people towards certain answers. Use clear language and skip loaded questions to get accurate info about your audience. Tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms make it easy and cheap to collect data online.

Focus Groups: Gathering In-Depth Insights

Focus groups let you get deep insights into what people think and feel. Pick a mix of people who really fit your market. Have a neutral person lead the talk to keep things honest. These groups can reveal a lot about what customers need and think about your product.

Interviews: Direct Conversations with Target Customers

Talking one-on-one with customers gives you a closer look at their needs. Ask open questions to really understand what they want. Choose people who truly fit your market and care about your product. Record and write down what they say for later analysis.

Primary research is key for getting direct insights, but secondary market research is also vital. It helps you understand your industry by using existing data. This way, you learn about market trends, customer behavior, and competitors without spending a lot.

Scouring the Internet for Existing Data and Reports

The internet is full of information for startups doing secondary research. Start by checking out online groups like Facebook Groups, Reddit, Twitter, Twitch, ProductHunt, G2, and Capterra. These places can give you insights into what your customers need, like, and dislike.

Also, keep up with blogs and news to spot new trends and changes in the market. Sites like TechCrunch, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review have articles and reports on different industries.

Utilizing Industry Reports and Competitor Analysis

Industry reports from groups like Deloitte, Gartner, and McKinsey are great for secondary research. They offer deep insights into market size, growth, and major players in your field.

To stand out, study your competitors well. Look at their prices, products, marketing, and customer feedback. This can show you where the market is missing something and how you can offer something new.

Identifying and understanding your target market is key for your startup’s success. Knowing who your potential customers are helps you focus your research. This way, you can get the right info to make smart business choices.

Creating Detailed Customer Personas

To get to know your target audience, make detailed customer personas. These are like fake profiles of your ideal customers. They show their traits, likes, and actions. Focus on how they relate to your product and what they want to achieve.

Don’t worry too much about age or where they come from. Instead, look at what affects how they use your product.

Think about these things when making your personas:

• Pain points and challenges
• Motivations and aspirations
• Purchasing habits and decision-making process
• Preferred communication channels
• Lifestyle and values

Segmenting Your Target Audience

Break your target market into smaller groups to get a clearer picture. This way, you can focus your research and marketing on specific parts of your audience. It helps you connect better with each group.

Here are ways to segment your audience:

After deciding on the type of market research for your startup, it’s time to start collecting data. This step is key to getting the info you need. You’ll gather data from different places and analyze it for useful insights. A systematic approach ensures your research gives you valuable results.

Data Collection Methods and Techniques

There are many ways to collect market research data. The method you choose depends on your research type and what you can do. Common methods include:

• Surveys: These are online or paper questionnaires that get info from people.
• Focus groups: Small groups talk about their views and behaviors.
• Interviews: One-on-one chats with customers or experts to get more details.
• Observation: Watching how people act in real life.
• Secondary research: Using existing data like reports and statistics.

Analyzing Quantitative Data for Actionable Insights

Quantitative data, like survey answers and sales numbers, needs statistical tools for analysis. This process finds patterns and trends to help you make decisions. Key steps include:

• Data cleaning: Getting rid of bad or wrong data.
• Data coding: Turning categorical data into numbers for easier analysis.
• Descriptive statistics: Summarizing data with means and standard deviations.
• Data visualization: Showing data clearly with charts and tables.
• Inferential statistics: Testing ideas and making predictions with the data.

Interpreting Qualitative Data for Deeper Understanding

Qualitative data, like focus group talks and interviews, needs a special way to be analyzed. The aim is to spot themes and insights in the data. Techniques for this include:

• Content analysis: Categorizing data to find common themes.
• Thematic analysis: Spotting patterns and meanings in the data.
• Narrative analysis: Looking into the stories people share for deeper insights.

After you’ve collected and analyzed your market research, it’s time to act on the insights. The main goal of market research is to guide your strategic choices and boost your startup’s performance. By using the research in your business plan, you can refine your marketing strategy and tailor your products or services to your audience’s needs.

Shaping Your Marketing Strategy Based on Research

Your market research can greatly shape your marketing strategy. Knowing your audience’s demographics, behavior, and preferences lets you craft a marketing message they’ll respond to. Use your research to:

• Find the best marketing channels to reach your audience
• Develop a brand voice and messaging that speaks to your ideal customer
• Create content that solves your audience’s problems and interests them
• Improve your website and social media to draw in potential customers

Adjusting Your Product or Service Offerings

Market research can also guide you in making your products or services better match what customers want. By listening to your potential customers, you can spot areas for improvement and tweak your offerings. Think about:

• Changing product features or functionality based on customer feedback
• Adding new products or services to meet market needs
• Adjusting prices to stay competitive and attract your target audience
• Enhancing customer support and service based on what customers say

As a startup, it’s key to keep up with the market’s changes and the competition. By watching your rivals and keeping up with trends, you can make smart choices. Studies show that about 80% of businesses do market research to learn more about their performance and the competition.

Understanding Competitors in Your Space

Looking into the competition is a big part of market research. Most Fortune 500 companies do this, and many have seen good results. When checking out your competitors, think about these things:

• Well-known brands in your industry
• Their product or service offerings
• Pricing strategies
• Sales tactics
• Content strategies
• Customer reviews and feedback

Staying Updated with Current Market Trends

Market trends change often, and it’s important to keep up. Over 80% of companies do market research often, with many doing it five times a year or more. To keep up with trends, consider these steps:

Keep your market research fresh to catch changes in what customers want, new tech, and the competition. This helps your business stay flexible and ready for changes. Some common research projects include:

• Analyzing customer satisfaction and needs
• Identifying market trends
• Measuring brand equity
• Conducting win-loss analysis projects (which have seen a 19% increase in interest due to increased uncertainty in the market)

As your startup grows, it’s key to keep an eye on customer happiness and brand awareness. Ongoing research helps you understand what customers need and think. This lets you adjust your plans as needed. By asking for feedback and watching how people see your brand, you can make smart choices to boost your marketing and grow your market share.

Conducting Regular Surveys and Feedback Mechanisms

Regular surveys and feedback tools are great for checking customer satisfaction. They give you insights into if your products or services meet what customers expect. Here are some stats to think about:

• 96% of unhappy customers don’t tell you they’re unhappy. This shows why it’s important to ask for feedback to keep customers happy and coming back.
• 77% of customers prefer brands that listen to their feedback through surveys. This shows how important it is to value what customers say.
• 91% of unhappy customers don’t come back. This highlights how crucial it is to make a good first impression to keep customers loyal.

Measuring and Improving Brand Awareness

It’s also vital to keep an eye on how well people know your brand. Brand awareness research checks how much customers remember and recognize your brand. This tells you how well your marketing is working.

To check brand awareness, try these methods:

• Brand recall surveys: Ask customers to name brands in your industry or category to see how much they know about your brand on their own.
• Brand recognition surveys: Show customers a list of brands and ask if they know them to see how much help they need to remember your brand.
• Social media monitoring: Watch for mentions, hashtags, and engagement about your brand on social media to see how visible you are online.

Working with a third-party market research company can give your startup a deeper look into the market. These firms have the skills, tools, and resources needed for detailed market analysis. They can tailor their research to fit your startup’s specific needs.

Benefits of Hiring a Market Research Company

Here are the perks of working with a market research company:

• Access to a team of experts in market research
• Use of advanced tools for data collection and analysis
• Objective insights without internal biases
• Saves time and resources, letting your startup focus on its core
• Custom research solutions for your industry and goals

Choosing the Right Market Research Services

When picking a market research company, keep these points in mind:

• Look for a firm with industry knowledge in your area
• Make sure they use a variety of research methods
• Check their reputation and what past clients say
• Choose a company that can tailor their services to your needs
• Find a firm that values clear communication and teamwork

Working with a top market research company can give your startup a big advantage. You’ll get access to specialized knowledge, thorough data analysis, and actionable advice. This partnership will help you make smart choices, improve your business plan, and grow faster in the market.

Market research is key to a startup’s success, but it doesn’t end with data collection. After analyzing the data, it’s time to act on your findings and keep an eye on your progress. This phase is about using your insights to make smart business choices and keeping your research plan up to date.

Implementing the Research Insights into Business Decisions

Your market research aims to help you make strategic decisions for your startup. Use the insights you’ve gathered to shape your business strategies, marketing, and product development. It’s important that your team can adjust your strategy and test different approaches to see what works best with your audience. Remember, your research report should be a guide for your startup’s growth, not just a dusty document.

Regularly Reviewing and Updating Your Market Research Plan

The business world changes fast, and so should your market research plan. Regular updates help your startup keep up with market shifts and what customers want. This keeps you competitive and sets you up for long-term success.

Here’s how to keep your market research plan fresh:

• Set regular check-ins to review your research and its effects on your business
• Watch for changes in your industry, target market, and competitors
• Do follow-up surveys or interviews to see how customers feel and find ways to get better
• Look at how your marketing is doing and tweak your strategies as needed
• Keep up with new research methods and tools that could help your startup

Contact us now

To build a successful startup, thorough market research is essential. This research involves setting clear goals, understanding customers and the market, and using tools like surveys and interviews. By doing this, startup businesses can gather the critical insights needed to shape their products and services effectively. Whether you’re a small business or a startup, you need to know about market research to guide your strategy and make informed decisions. Remember, your startup idea’s success hinges on understanding what the market needs and how your competitors operate. As you take the next steps, create a market research plan that can help you navigate the challenges ahead, ensuring a strong foundation for growth and success. Consider attracting a group of experts in this trade to enhance your efforts — schedule a free consultation call to explore how professional guidance can benefit your business.

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Money blog: PrettyLittleThing U-turns on controversial returns policy

The Money blog is your place for personal finance and consumer news. Scroll down to read about new research on how families with twins or triplets face at least a £20,000 financial hit, and about PrettyLittleThing U-turning on its controversial returns policy.

Wednesday 11 September 2024 06:12, UK

• 'I gave birth to triplets and it pushed me to the brink of bankruptcy'
• PrettyLittleThing U-turns on controversial returns policy
• State pension likely to rise by £460 in April

Essential reads

• How to get ridiculously cheap flights - by someone who does it professionally
• Student finance special: Best paying jobs after uni, cheapest cities for students, top discounts and freebies
• How your pension could be taxed

Tips and advice

• Data roaming charges compared by network
• Should I consider an annuity - whatever that is?
• Free school meals guide

Ask a question or make a comment

PrettyLittleThing will stop charging "royalty" customers to make returns, its founder has announced.

The online fashion giant made headlines in June for scrapping its free returns policy, with all customers having to pay £1.99 to send back items.

It also started closing accounts for having a high returns rate. 

Royalty holders, who pay a £9.99 subscription fee for unlimited free deliveries and returns, were angered by the move.

In a post on Instagram, the company's founder Umar Kamani announced his return to the business and apologised for any "negative experiences" in his absence. 

"Over the past few years, I've watched from the sidelines as the brand we built together has, at times, lost touch with make it so special - you, our loyal customers," he wrote. 

"This has driven me to step back in and take on the responsibility of steering PrettyLittleThing forward, putting your needs and desires at the forefront of every decision we make." 

He added: "As part of this renewed commitment, one of my first changes will be to reintroduce free returns for our royalty customers, a step I believe is vital to making your shopping experience more seamless and enjoyable."

He also hinted that there might be more changes to come, saying the retailer was moving into its "next exciting chapter". 

Fans were quick to react to the news, with some saying they were glad Mr Kamani had returned. 

"Thank you for coming back. PLT hasn't been the same without you," one person said on X. 

"Thank you for coming back. The company was in shambles," said another. 

Others asked him if their blocked accounts would be reinstated, or if they would get a refund for the returns they were charged for. 

Mr Kamani stepped down last April after 12 years as PLT's chief executive. 

Under his leadership, the brand collaborated with huge stars including Kylie Jenner, Naomi Campbell and Jennifer Lopez. 

In recent years, the company has seen its profits wane, with its revenue falling from £712.2m to £634.1m in February 2023. 

By Megan Harwood-Baynes , cost of living specialist

When Monique Bertrand found out she was carrying triplets at eight weeks pregnant, she had no idea the unexpected arrivals would push her family to the brink of bankruptcy.

New research has found families with twins or triplets face at least a £20,000 financial hit in the first year after birth, compared with those who have two babies in succession.

Having been told she could never carry children, Monique had been considering foster care when she unexpectedly fell pregnant - but a bigger surprise was in store when she found out she had naturally conceived triplets.

After a difficult pregnancy, at 31 weeks and surrounded by a team of 35 doctors, nurses and midwives, she gave birth to Macho and Lylah, weighing a tiny 2lb 8oz, and Trinity, 2lb 1oz.

Research, commissioned by the charity Twins Trust and carried out by Per Capita, found raising multiples is more difficult in the UK than in almost any other advanced OECD economy, due to the lack of additional support.

"Triplet mums just need extra hands," said Monique, 39, from Lewisham.

The triplets spent 50 days in the hospital (Monique herself was admitted for 34) and by the time they returned home, her partner had already used up his two weeks of paternity leave. With him working lengthy night shifts, she was left to care for three infants alone.

"I felt I could not do it. I felt I wanted to run away. There was no support in any way," she says.

"I wish the government realised there is a huge difference between having multiples and having singletons."

Families of twins and triplets experience a 15% decline in household income (around £12,500), with 72% having to buy a new car to accommodate their children. Twins and triplets are often born premature, requiring families to take more time off work to care for their children.

"People don't realise, I have to pay for everything three times," said Monique, who works as an assistant director of education. "A twenty-pound baby outfit, for me that costs sixty. We go through nappies like they are tap water, formula... the costs just mount up.

"There is no passing things down between children, you have to have everything at once. It almost bankrupted us."

She said she knew of some multiple mums who had to transition their children onto cow's milk early, simply because they could not afford the cost of formula.

Families she had previously supported would send Monique clothes, food, formula and baby items to help the family survive: "The doorbell would ring, and it would be Amazon delivering three high chairs."

'I had to work while my twins were in hospital'

When Frank Fallon and Frankie Wakefield's twins, Ezra and Theo, arrived a day before their wedding, it was just the latest surprise of an unexpected pregnancy.

The couple had gone through IVF but only implanted one embryo, to try to mitigate the risk of multiples - but their eight-week scan showed two healthy heartbeats. 

Born three months early, Frank had to continue working while the twins spent seven weeks in hospital, to avoid rinsing through his paternity leave: "I would go visit them at 6am before work and we had to rely on friends and family to drive Frankie to hospital to see them."

Now the twins are energetic two-year-olds, and the couple are finally having their much-delayed wedding on Saturday, but they are calling for more support for multiple families. 

"Everything just adds up," said Frank. "Extra nappies [the family orders approximately 240 every four to six weeks], high energy bills because they are having more baths.

"I think I am at Tesco every day because they now go through litres of milk."

He added: "Even children's classes that Frankie goes to so she can socialise, you have to pay double for the extra baby."

' Childcare would have cost £5k a month'

Almost 90% of the 1,800 families surveyed said current childcare provisions are inadequate.

As Monique prepared to return to work, she sat down and wrote her resignation letter, after realising the cost of childcare for her triplets would be more than £5,000 a month.

"It broke my heart because I have never not worked," she said.

On learning this, her family held a meeting, volunteering to look after the children on different days so she could return to work. Now the twins are 21 months old, she qualifies for 15 hours free childcare, but the bill still stands at an additional £3,500 a month, and she relies heavily on her family to help.

At one point, Frank considered putting his children in on different days, to try and lower the cost of their £4,000 a month childcare bill (the boys go two days a week). 

"We are lucky we have both been promoted, but in our old jobs we would never have been able to afford it," he said. 

The Twins Trust report is calling for maternity pay to be allocated per baby, rather than per pregnancy, as well as an expansion of the Sure Start Maternity Grant and additional mental health support for families of multiples.

Shauna Leven, chief executive of Twins Trust, said: "This report lays bare the grim reality facing families with multiples - the financial burden, mental health toll and lack of support.

"Raising multiples is harder in the UK than almost any other nation. We will continue to campaign tirelessly to tackle the issues highlighted here, so our families can access the support they desperately need and deserve.

"With one set of multiples born every hour across the UK, it's critical that our society steps up and provides adequate support, rather than sending our families to the back of the queue."

By  Megan Harwood-Baynes , cost of living specialist

When James* was followed by an Instagram account offering an investment opportunity he thought it would be a quick way to supplement his apprentice salary.

Two weeks later, all his bank accounts were closed, he had a fraud marker against his name and now he cannot even take out a new mobile phone contract.

He is one of thousands of "money mules" identified by Lloyds Bank - this is someone who transfers or moves illegally acquired money on behalf of someone else.

Scammers often use social media to find their victims, and many do not realise what they are doing is illegal. It is sometimes framed as a legitimate job or investment - some victims are drawn in by loved ones, who are also unaware they are acting as money mules.

The Lloyds bank mule-hunting team has uncovered more than 160,000 mule accounts and stopped more than £114m from getting into the hands of fraudsters since it was set up in 2018. There has been a 44% increase in money mules identified in the past year alone. 

James was told he could make large profits by buying Bitcoin, and after being contacted by an unfamiliar account he agreed to invest £200 through an app.

James was then told to invest a further amount, which would give him an access code for withdrawing profits from the account, which had grown to £3,900. But he was told the access code would be available once he invested a further £900.

James didn't have that sort of money, so asked for his initial investment back. His mentor said he could instead pay £200 for the access code and that the mentor himself would pay James £700 to cover the rest of the total needed for the access code - meaning James received £700 from his mentor which he in turn then transferred on.

James continued to follow instructions sent to him via Instagram, sending and receiving more funds over the next few days. When he asked to release the so-called profits from his "investment" he was again told he would need to transfer more money to do so.

At this point, James began to realise he may have fallen victim to a scam - but didn't know how serious the consequences would be.

Within two weeks of that first payment, he received a letter from his main banking provider (not Lloyds Bank), saying his account had been frozen while it reviewed his recent activity.

A few weeks later, he was told that his main account had been closed with immediate effect.

Then, Lloyds Bank also got in touch to say his account would be closed.

He had been flagged as a third-party fraud facilitator - or a "money mule".

But age is no limit

Young people, like James, are often short on cash, so it's no surprise to find they may be targeted by fraudsters. Nearly a quarter (24%) of money mule accounts belong to customers between 19 and 30, with over half (58%) belonging to those under 40.

But there has been an increase in older people falling prey - the latest Lloyds Bank data shows 19% of money mule accounts are held by customers over 40, a growth of an astonishing 73% over the last year.

Liz Ziegler, fraud prevention director at Lloyds Bank, said it is vital to realise how easily people can be lured in.

"Criminals are very good at making their illegal activities look like a real job opportunity and at tricking people into unknowingly recruiting family members and friends into becoming money mules," she said.

"Fraudsters will keep the illusion of legitimacy up until the mule gets caught, then disappear, leaving the mule to deal with the fallout of unintentionally laundering money."

And the fallout can be severe - with up to 14 years in prison, being prevented from opening a bank account for six years, being listed on the national fraud database and being unable to take out a mortgage, loan or even a mobile phone contact.

"While the realisation that you've mistakenly helped a fraudster clean their dirty money would be devastating for anyone when it comes to mules, it won't save them from the consequences, which can be extremely serious," she said.

"Always remember - no legitimate company or person will ever ask you to use your bank account to receive and transfer their money. Do not do it under any circumstances, it’s not worth risking your own future by doing so."

*Name has been changed

A man has been charged with running a network of illegal crypto ATMs in the first-ever criminal prosecution of its kind. 

Crypto ATMs are standalone electronic kiosks that allow users to buy and sell cryptocurrency in exchange for cash. All sell Bitcoin, while some offer other cryptocurrencies but not all ATMs allow the sale of crypto, as some are limited to just purchases.

Olumide Osunkoya, who is 45 and resides in London, has been charged with running a network of crypto ATMs that processed £2.6 million in transactions over almost two years, without the required registration.

These are also the first charges brought against a person accused of operating crypto ATMs in the UK.

Mr Osunkoya will appear before Westminster Magistrates' Court on 30 September.

There are no legal crypto ATM operators in the UK.

Therese Chambers, from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), said: "Our message today is clear. If you're illegally operating a crypto ATM, we will stop you.

"If you’re using a crypto ATM, you are handing your money directly to criminals. Criminals can exploit crypto ATMs to launder money globally."

The FCA warns people that if you buy crypto, you should be prepared to lose all your money as the currency remains largely unregulated in the UK and is "high-risk".

JD Sports is set to cut nearly 200 jobs by closing its distribution centre in Derby.

Staff at the Derby Commercial Park were informed of their job losses on Friday, following a six-week consultation, the BBC has reported.  The company is now trying to find them alternative roles within the company. 

A spokesperson for the company said it was "working with those affected to ensure they are fully supported during this challenging period."

Legislation to strengthen a  public finances watchdog  is set to become law after clearing the House of Lords. 

It would mean any major tax or spending announcements would be subject to an independent assessment by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

The legislation, classified as a Money bill, will provide information but the government will not be forced to comply with what it advises.

Viral chicken chain Dave's Hot Chicken has reportedly eyed up London's Piccadilly for its first UK site.

Backed by rapper Drake, its spiced-to-order chicken has seven levels, with the highest (Reaper) requiring a signed waiver from guests.

The group has submitted planning proposals to display a series of illuminated signs at Vernon House, 40 Shaftesbury Avenue.

As hundreds of thousands of teenagers head to university for the first time this month, many will be facing financial independence for the first time. 

In our first ever Money blog spin-off, we put together some essential reads that will hopefully help stand them in good stead...

The iPhone 16 was announced last night to much fanfare across the tech world.

As well as coming in a range of new colours and having a fancy new camera button, it is also capable of running the company's new AI, Apple Intelligence.

But despite the fact it is all over the news, today is actually probably the worst day to buy an iPhone.

If you're looking for the latest tech, you are better off waiting for the release, as otherwise, you'll find yourself with a year-old processor in a matter of months. This is particularly true if you want to make the most of Apple Intelligence, which will only be available on the iPhone 16, 16 Pro and existing iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.

Buying a new iPhone right before the next model launches is not a wise move, even if you aren't looking to upgrade to the flagship phone. Waiting until the new phone hits the shelves will not only give you time to decide whether you want to upgrade, but when a new model comes out it usually means its predecessors bump down in price.

Lisa Barber, tech editor at Which?, said: "Apple's latest launch event hitting the headlines this week might mean consumers are immediately tempted to upgrade to a newer iPhone model. However, in terms of price, today is usually one of the worst days to do this. 

"To save money, we'd encourage consumers to wait until the iPhone 16 has actually been released later this month and then look out for the discounts which are likely to emerge on older models. 

"For example, we wouldn't be surprised to see the iPhone 14 drop to around £300 below its original price once the 16 range hits the market.  

"Another tip is to check the second-hand market, particularly as we could see a flood of iPhone 15s appearing when people start replacing them with iPhone 16s."

So even if you are looking for an iPhone 14, you can expect a price drop - in September 2023, Apple dropped the price of the iPhone 13 after it announced the 15 would shortly go on sale.

The possible exceptions

As with everything, there are a few exceptions to the rule: if you are looking for an iPhone 13, or SE. Apple is likely to stop selling these entirely (although they may be available on the secondary market for a while yet, while retailers clear out old stock), so you may want to get that while you still can.

However, as Macworld says, "bear in mind that soon the iPhone 14 will have a similar price", so you may be better off waiting anyway to get more bang for your buck. 

As expected, the House of Commons has voted to approve the government's cut to the winter fuel allowance.

For clarity - the motion that has been voted on was to cancel the government's move to cut the £300 payment to pensioners.

The result of the vote is:

• Yes (to cancel the cut): 228
• No (to approve the cut): 348

For all the latest news from parliament, read more in our  Politics Hub ...

Warehouse workers, healthcare assistants and chefs face the steepest car insurance premiums in the UK, new data shows.

For warehouse workers , their costs are nearly £400 more than others - whilst the average is £985, for them it comes in at £1,372, new research from Quotezone has found. 

Healthcare assistants working in hospitals, care homes, and clinics also face substantial car insurance premiums. Likely due to long shifts, high levels of stress, and frequent travel between different healthcare settings, these professionals can face premiums that are 36% above average.

Chefs are also hit with pricey premiums - 30% above average, which may come down to them working unsociable hours and in a high-pressure environment. These factors likely correlate with increased accidents during risk analysis.

These professions have lower premiums

Meanwhile, insurance experts found teachers , civil servants and even HGV drivers are typically quoted premiums as much as 41% less than the national average.

Retired people typically enjoy the cheapest premiums – as much as 50% less than the average.

How tweaking your job title can decrease your insurance

When it comes to listing your job with your insurance, some small (legal) tweaks can make a difference. 

The team at MoneySavingExpert have this  handy tool to show you what difference a title can make.

For example, if you are a delivery driver, listing yourself as a haulage contractor could save you up to £350 on an initial premium of £985.

But you need to make sure your job still legally describes your work and it comes with a warning from Martin Lewis: "When considering whether you can use a different title, alway imagine you were asking a reasonable person who knew what you do for a living.

"Would they say it was reasonable for you to describe yourself this way?"

Waverley, in Surrey, and Waltham Forest, in Greater London, are the top rising neighbourhoods for first-time buyers across the UK, new data has revealed.

Using data from 2013 to 2023, Santander has analysed which neighbourhoods have had the largest increase in the number of first-time buyer (FTB) purchases over that time - and which have had the biggest drops.

Overall, London has become less popular, with the number of first-time purchases dropping nearly 80% in the past ten years. 

Santander also found that FTBs are increasingly compromising on location to fulfil their dream of owning a home - with two-thirds (67%) moving to an area they had never been to before, compared to just over half (51%) of those who bought more than five years ago.  

This is due to a lack of suitable properties and affordability constraints, with those who made the move saving an average of £29,000, compared to buying in the neighbourhood they previously lived in.

This is more true in London than any other region, with 63% moving away from family and friends to get on to the property ladder - more than any other region.

Meanwhile, Elmbridge, Tower Hamlets and Teignbridge saw the biggest drop in first-time buyers moving into the neighbourhood. 

Graham Sellar, head of mortgage development at Santander, said: "Our latest data shows that first-time buyers are increasingly looking to purchase in neighbourhoods where they previously might not have considered - or even heard of.

"Those neighbourhoods which have seen the largest drop in FTB purchases, such as Teignbridge, also tell a story, as it becomes clear that location has become the number one compromise for many looking for their first home.  As first-time buyers explore these alternative neighbourhoods, we want to reassure our customers that Santander are here to support them achieve the exciting milestone of purchasing their first home, wherever it may be."

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How To Sell a Service in 6 Practical Steps

Selling services (rather than goods) can be a lucrative business, whether you’re an accountant, a personal trainer, or an expert piano tuner.

Selling a tangible product can be both time-consuming and expensive, with shipping costs, inventory storage, and fluctuating product sales. Service-based businesses can sidestep some of the logistical complexity product-based businesses face. They provide clients with a specific skill set as opposed to a tangible good—and many service businesses can attract customers online. In 2022, 73% of small to mid-sized business owners stated they’re shifting to digital platforms to sell their services. 

Whether you’re a chef, financial adviser, or marketing expert, you can start selling a service that leverages your expertise. Here’s how to find potential customers and make sales, with simple tips that can set your service business up for success.

Table of contents

How to sell a service

Example of selling a service, how to sell a service faq.

• Identify your target audience
• Conduct market research
• Refine your pitch
• Promote your service
• Build credibility
• Follow up the sales process

1. Identify your target audience

The sales process is all for naught if you aren’t connecting with prospective customers who can become qualified leads. Start by finding your target audience —a specific group of consumers you identify as most likely to want your service.

To begin, create an ideal customer profile . Consider your target audience’s age, gender, location, income, interests, and other demographic information. The more specific you can get about your potential buyers’ needs and motivations, the better.

For example, if you’re a marketing guru, your clientele may primarily consist of small business owners within the ecommerce space looking for content creation like product descriptions, images for social media, or SEO-optimized blog posts. Or, if you provide financial advice, targeting leads within a certain income level, location, and occupation can help you find the right person in need of your assistance.

2. Conduct market research

Conduct extensive research into your service locally and online; take note of what competitors offer, what their clients say about them, and what you could bring to the market that sets you apart.

A discovery call, or an initial contact with sales prospects, is an effective way to learn more about them and how you can mutually benefit from your service. You might also explore forums and Facebook groups related to your services, which can yield new insights and reveal pain points that you can solve.

Based on the information gathered from your research, try to position yourself within an underserved niche to attract consumers your competitors may be overlooking.

Free competitor research template

Find a strategic angle to achieve sales success, uncover your product-market fit, and stand out from the competition with our free template.

3. Refine your pitch

Using your research findings, refine a pitch to deliver to potential clients. Your pitch should include a comprehensive list of your services, your pricing, and a clear explanation of how you stand out among competitors. 

If you find your audience has varied income levels, make the decision-making process easier for your consumer by creating tiered options for your services that cater to small, medium, and large budgets. In addition, a free offering of a portion of your service can give your audience a test drive of what to expect from the paid service. 

4. Promote your service

Grow your consumer base by promoting your services —building a website and using paid ad platforms can make all the difference. 

First, create a landing page with a clear headline, engaging visuals, concise copy, a strong call-to-action, and trust indicators for visitors to see as soon as they arrive at your website. 

To funnel more visitors to your site for free, use SEO keywords within your copy to boost your position within search results, acquire a feature on a popular blog within your industry, or frequently post to social media to gain followers who will click the link in your bio that redirects to your services.

If you want to invest in marketing, use social media and search engine ads to broaden your audience. Based on your key demographic, you can target specific ages, interests, and Google search keywords to ensure your ads are effective. If you have a makeup tutorial business, you might use Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat ads to reach your target user base.

5. Build credibility

Build trust with your audience by featuring reviews and personal anecdotes from previous clients that enhance your perceived value. Social proof can help you show potential clients that other customers trust and value your services. 

Take the time to respond to negative reviews, showing you care about public perception and are willing to learn from your mistakes and communicate with your audience. Sales is no longer about boasting; it’s about building relationships. Be readily available to answer questions and provide insights tailored to each customer’s problem or need.

If you have a dedicated sales team, ensure each team member is trained to provide clear, consistent information and adopt a communication style that puts the customer first. Crafting templated responses to common email queries and compiling key facts for your sales team can ensure consistent, high-quality communication with customers.

6. Follow up each sale

Closing deals is not the end of your sales cycle. Staying connected with each customer can lead to a longer-lasting relationship and increase the possibility of future sales. Follow-up emails and promotions can encourage repeat business and prompt customers to share your offers with others.

Nonna Live , a virtual Italian cooking class, is a successful example of a service-based business. With polished content marketing, an array of pricing options, and consumer-focused communications, Nonna Live found success within the homemade pasta tutorial niche using Old World cooking methods. 

Originating from a small village northeast of Rome, founder Nonna Nerina initially offered an in-person cooking class with her granddaughter. When the pandemic hit, she recognized an opportunity: With restaurants closed and cooking enthusiasts in lockdown, she moved her business online. Through authentic communication and a willingness to connect with her audience via Google Hangouts, Nonna built a loyal following.

Nonna’s success stems from finding her audience, tailoring her service to their needs, and fostering genuine connections. Her commitment to relationship-building has opened new opportunities including a broader client base and diversified revenue streams, both online and in-person.

How do you effectively sell a service?

Sell your services by creating a website, putting customers first, and building credibility in your industry. Clearly communicate your offerings, listen to your client’s problems to find solutions, and be cognizant of when a client may not be the right fit.

Why is it hard to sell a service?

Selling services can be more difficult than selling products, because services often involve creating and fostering ongoing relationships with customers, as opposed to one-time purchases. Reviews and testimonials are key to driving recommendations for your services.

What is the process of selling a service?

Service selling involves narrowing your target audience, finding a niche within your market, comparing your service against your competition, and promoting your service business online.

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• Analyst Comment

Corruption and bribery hinder social and economic development

Corruption can take many forms, including extortion, fraud, deception, collusion, and money laundering.

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Widespread corruption and bribery can hinder social and economic development by diverting scarce resources away from the most economically productive activity.

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What is corruption and bribery?

Bribery is also a form of corruption, and the most common form of bribery is kickbacks, which involve payment of a commission in exchange for services. Another widespread form of bribery is facilitation payments, where money is paid to speed up or facilitate routine actions.

Companies are being charged with offences

In January 2024, SAP , a provider of enterprise application software and related services, agreed to pay more than $220m to settle bribery charges stemming from investigations by the US Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

SAP paid bribes to officials at state-owned enterprises in South Africa and Indonesia to obtain valuable government business. SAP failed to implement sufficient internal accounting controls over the engagement of, and payments to, third parties and lacked sufficient entity-level controls over its subsidiaries in South Africa, Greater Africa, Indonesia, and Azerbaijan.

In South Africa, SAP supposedly paid millions in fees to consultants, despite no work being done, and also funded trips to New York for government officials, including meals and golf outings.

In Indonesia, it funded shopping excursions and dining, as well as making more explicit payments.

SAP Africa used resellers to conduct business in Malawi, Tanzania, Ghana, and Kenya. These resellers engaged in bid-rigging and arranged corrupt payments to government officials in connection with SAP Africa deals in all four countries between 2014 and 2018.

The bribes were inaccurately recorded as legitimate business expenses in SAP’s books and records.  Earlier, SAP also violated the US laws against bribery and corruption in Panama in 2016.

The company has failed to make and keep accurate books and records and failed to devise and maintain a sufficient system of internal accounting controls necessary to detect and prevent improper payments.

Similarly, 3M , a manufacturer and distributor of industrial products and solutions, has agreed to pay $6.5m to resolve bribery charges against its China-based subsidiary.

The company has violated the books and records and internal controls provisions of the FCPA.

The SEC alleged that as part of marketing and outreach efforts, the employees at 3M’s Chinese subsidiary bribed Chinese government officials by arranging overseas travel, including tourism activities, to encourage them to purchase 3M’s products. The subsidiary conspired with local travel agencies and reportedly paid around $1m to fund at least 24 trips for Chinese government officials, which included tourism activities and shopping visits. This highlights the company’s inadequate internal accounting controls.

Earlier in 2018, the company found that some of its employees had violated the company’s controls and ethics policy, and it reported the matter to the US government and fully cooperated with its investigation. Although the company acted to address this violation, it still needs to work on its internal controls and policies to ensure such instances do not occur in the future.

How to mitigate corruption and bribery

To mitigate corruption and bribery, companies must:

• Implement a company-wide ban on political contributions.
• Conduct an external audit of all related party transactions.
• Implement a company-wide ban on lobbying for unsustainable causes.
• Anti-money laundering policies throughout the company.
• Ensure proper segregation of duties.
• Introduce clear policies to punish tax evasion.
• Implement employee-friendly whistleblowing policies.

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