At the end of last year, The Insight Advantage conducted research to understand how market research is being used in organizations.
We heard back from participants that there are three primary obstacles to doing market research.
- Budget
- Time
- Lack of Internal Resources
It’s important for companies to find ways to overcome these obstacles so they can ensure they are integrating updated market research into their businesses before making key business decisions. Decisions about product development, marketing, sales, and other key initiatives must include current knowledge about customer needs, wants and overall mindset.
“I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.”
-Bill Gates
See below for our tips on how to overcome the three biggest obstacles to conducting essential market research.
Budget
- Some data is better than no data. Don’t get overwhelmed by thinking that you can only do research if you have large numbers of respondents…you can get directional data from a small subset of your customer base or target market.
- Collaborate with a market research firm. A market research firm can recommend the research methodology that works within your budget and helps you decide which portions of the research you want to do in-house vs. hiring someone else; they can also provide flexibility to work within your budget.
Time
- Don’t reinvent the wheel. Contract with a market research firm that has the time, expertise, and experience (and perhaps template resources/processes that can be adapted for your project to help reduce cycle time). And, again, they can recommend methodologies that will meet your timeframe and still meet your objectives.
Lack of Internal Resources
- Use a market research firm. Choose a firm that has experience in doing research with your type of audience and can minimize the amount of time you/your team have to spend on the project. Your team can focus on giving direction on the objectives and review/approve content vs. having to spend time on execution and reporting.
The common answer to each of these obstacles is external resources. This may seem counterintuitive when budget is one of the biggest obstacles. But having a trusted research partner figure out how to successfully do SOME research vs. NONE could be the best investment you make.
I’ve often helped clients with tight budgets gather enough customer research to be much smarter about decisions they were making. Some examples of where that data was used:
- Prioritizing which features to put into their next product version
- Developing product positioning
- Selecting the most effective ways to market to target customers
- Gathering competitive insights for sales tools
- And more…
You may need access to other external resources to help get portions of a project done, particularly when it comes to communicating the results of your research internally or externally.
See Outsource Easier for some great ideas on how to make sure you don’t get stuck with a great idea because you don’t have the resources to get it done.
Don’t let ANY obstacles get in the way of doing customer research … the companies who are constantly gathering insight from their customers are more likely to be able to differentiate themselves from the pack and increase their market share. Don’t guess … use data like Bill does!