How to do market research for a startup PART – I
Every fresh product concept raises the urgent query, “Will the market accept it?”
What is the most effective technique to find out how the market will respond to your product? Understanding the market is important when starting a new business. The information required to determine whether your product suits your target market can be obtained by conducting market research. Here are some tips on How to do market research for a startup and reasons why it is crucial.
BEFORE WE DIVE INTO THE HOW OF MARKET RESEARCH LET US UNDERSTAND WHAT IS MARKET RESEARCH
The practice of obtaining data on consumers and the market to assess the potential of a product or service is known as market research. Interviews, surveys, focus groups, and analysis of industry data are all examples of market research.
Market research is to gain a deeper understanding of potential customers, how well your product or service fulfils their needs, and how it stacks up against offerings from other companies.
There are two types of research you can conduct: primary and secondary.
- To discover more about your unique clients or target market sector, you must conduct primary research. It helps you develop consumer personas, segment your market, and enhance your offering to better serve clients.
- Using information, you did not obtain yourself, you can conduct secondary research. You can learn more about your target market segment and industry by consulting industry studies, public databases, and the confidential information of other businesses through market research agency.
HOW TO DO MARKET RESEARCH for Startup?
1. Form Hypotheses:
What queries are you hoping that market research will address? You can form predictions known as hypotheses using such queries. Setting out your hypotheses in advance can assist direct how you choose subjects, formulate research questions, and create test plans. “How much are people in my target demographic willing to pay for the current version of my product?” is an example of a question you might use. What is the user’s primary problem, and is my product addressing it? is another possible question. Multiple hypotheses can and should be tested, but attempt to limit the number of hypotheses per test to keep the research narrow.
HOW TO WRITE A HYPOTHESIS?
STEP 1: State the question your research is looking to answer. You can have more than one hypothesis as you seek answers to multiple queries
STEP 2: Identify your independent and dependent variables.
STEP 3: Write an “If, then” statement that clearly defines the focus and variables of the research.
2. Select the Type of Research Needed to Test Hypotheses:
Once your hypotheses are created, choose the kind of study that will be done. Start with secondary research if your hypothesis centre on finding where your startup fits into the larger market. This may involve analysing already-available data to estimate market size, the share of that market your firm may control, the names of your main rivals, and how your brand and product stack up against them. Choose the data-gathering technique that best suits your needs if your hypotheses call for primary research. Individual interviews, surveys, focus groups, and polls are a few examples of these. You can learn more about brand recognition and perception, consumer satisfaction and loyalty, and the usability of a product now by conducting primary research.
3. Identify Target Demographics and approach subjects:
You must comprehend your target population to obtain insightful data. Do you want to appeal to pet owners, young athletes, or working parents? Identify the kind of person your product will help. To perform primary research, you must find participants. This can be done in several ways, including:
- Word of mouth
- Promoting the study on social media
- Hiring a third-party market research company:
You can provide incentives like cash, gift cards, meal coupons, or early access to your product to encourage involvement. Make it obvious that the subjects are receiving money as a thank-you for their time and candour.
4. Conduct the Research:
Conduct your research after deciding on the type of study and target audience required to test your ideas. Use a different person to conduct interviews or moderate focus groups to lessen prejudice. Based on your audience and hypotheses, pose questions. Create objective research questions, employ impartial language, and alter the order of the options in multiple-choice questions since the questions you ask are tools to support or refute ideas. If individuals see that choosing the third option always leads to a particular result, this can prevent them from making the same choice repeatedly. Recency bias and priority bias are also helped by this. Once data has been gathered, make sure it is securely stored and organized to preserve the subjects’ identity.
5. Gather Insights and Determine Action Items:
Analyze your data once you’ve organized it to derive useful insights. Even though some of the data will be qualitative rather than quantitative, you can find patterns in the responses to turn it into a quantitative form. For instance, you can note that 15 out of 20 subjects said they were very anxious when attempting to put together your product. Outline your next steps once you have analyzed the data and used data visualizations to explain emerging trends. With each new round of market research, you can learn more about how potential customers view and use your product.
Conclusion
Two key resources that startups can employ to create a successful business are market research and strategy consultancy. Startups can learn much about their customers, markets, and competitors by engaging with a market research firm and a strategy consulting firm like Bizcon Services. They can create helpful methods with the use of this insightful knowledge and help your business grow to a great level.
