Grow your business with market research
On average, over 30% of businesses that conduct market research end up realizing significant increases in revenue, according to CEO of Bluedot Data Intelligence, Larren Peart. Peart, who was speaking on #MoneyMovesJa with Kalilah Reynolds, noted that there are several benefits in using the strategy.
The Bluedot boss defines market research as the science or methodology that allows businesses to understand who their customers are, what their customers want and how to market or target them.
He said the potential for growth through market research makes the activity important, noting that data should come from a wide cross section of a community that is representative of potential customers and not just from family and friends.
“In the Caribbean, we’re accustomed to making gut based decisions, decisions not based on data or data driven, which can work but it’s not the best way of going about making very important decisions especially that you’re going to be putting money behind,” he said.
“If you’re just building products based on anecdotal information, it’s like fishing in a pond with dynamite,” he added.
Through market research, Peart said businesses are able to explore opportunities and gauge investments. He said it allows businesses to understand customer behavior to better target them as well as build products and services to meet demand.
“We [tend to] spot a need and think there’s a problem looking for a solution without accurately getting that data to make those data driven decisions to build better products and services for customers,” he said.
Social media – your largest focus group
Meanwhile, Peart said in today’s digital world, social media presents a unique opportunity to conduct market research without having to spend much.
“Social media is your largest focus group so measuring your engagement on social media, reading what people are commenting on is extremely important. You can gain so much information by just listening to what customers are saying through social media. Today customers are definitely not shy in telling us how they feel,” he said.
Peart added that businesses can also conduct self market research through day-to-day observations. For example, his company, Blue Dot, has engaged in several ethnographic studies, watching how consumers move about in supermarkets.
“If you have your retail store just observe customers walk through the store, see what items they stop at, do they turn right as they come in first or do they turn left? What aisles do they walk past? And then you can mix and match and do some A/B testing so if you’re noticing that they turn right first, you might want to put your higher margin products in that direction,” he reasoned.
He added that there are also free survey tools, like Google Forms, which can be used by any business to assist with market research. These surveys he said should ask about service, as well as ways to improve.
Watch #MoneyMovesJa with Kalilah Reynolds and EXIM Bank’s Business Advisory Service. New episodes premiere Wednesdays at 7pm at kalilahreynolds.com and youtube.com/kalilahrey
