It’s easier than you think
The third installment of the Marketing Planning and Strategy series

Intelligent marketers pay attention to their customers and their markets working to build their business constantly. The ability to conduct a pure market research study is difficult to budget for most organizations. If it gets into the budget, it may get cut before it launches. If it launches, the scope gets constrained. The result is a study that often very disconnected from the core business need (it reads like a case study for someone else's business), or it only generates a set of great questions that tend to remain forever unanswered. Don't despair; smart market research is possible no matter what your organization's situation.

The Data at Hand

Take advantage of the data you do have. Track it. Customer counts, service hours provided, sales (by product, by day), profit (by segment, by center) and more are all available in most organizations. Develop a strong set of baseline organizational data that represents the actions of your customers/clients.

The Data near at Hand

Prospect data is also often quite readily available. Number of quotes, scope of proposals (by revenue, by product type), shoppers that don't purchase, Web site traffic, phone call inquiries (what are they asking about?), literature requests, in-person sales calls and other measures are likely tracked (or could be easily) without generating additional direct costs to the organization.

Quiet Data

Your staff, vendors and many stakeholders are treasure troves of data. Interview them; take them to lunch. You are probably interacting with them already, but have a set of standardized questions handy. Develop a survey and test it using your own staff, vendors and stakeholders. You'll wind up with a great survey instrument; one you can use when a market research project gets funded.

Never Underestimate Your Own Knowledge

Who is meaningful to the success of the business? Leaders? Owners? Get them involved. This immersion should create a beneficial set of information about your industry. It is rare that organizations ask their own leaders to respond to surveys or submit to interviews meant to cultivate trend and market data. Be unique; use the leadership, owners and yourself as subjects. What is a new trend in your business? (Wouldn't you like to know the answer from the top 25 people in your organization? Ask!)

Be Prepared

If you are a constant, active market researcher, you'll be a better consumer of market research when you are able to purchase or contract outside services. If you had 50 top customers in a room, what would you ask? What about 50 top prospects? Generate a list now. Revisit the list regularly and get others to contribute. As an organization's brand steward, you may have tons of things to do, but don't let this one slip. It is crucial.

Market Research Facts/Tips:

Focus Groups

The cost of a focus group should include two sessions at a minimum (even if they are on the same night, at the same place and run through the same scenario) to help verify the information as reliable. Costs include:

• The facility and moderator
• Observer costs and meals
• Recruiting costs (incentive for recruit, fee for recruiting)
• Equipment costs (computers, A/V, recording the session, etc.)

Many companies use their own facilities, an internal facilitator and don't include their own staff's time as observers. This can create a misleading cost estimate for running a focus group. Hiring a firm to recruit people to the focus group is necessary when the audience includes prospective clients or another group that you don't know by name. No matter who you recruit, where you hold the session and how you facilitate and record the session, recruits deserve some compensation for their time.

Based on recent projects and research, a single focus group of 10 people plus one moderator costs approximately $10,000 to conduct if you add in the true cost of a facility and staff time. Remember you really need to run at least two sessions to check what you learn in the first session. So budget $20,000 if you are hoping to run a focus group this coming year.

Surveys

There are a number of math formulas available to determine what can be deduced from the data collected. For example, easily determine your margin of error. Take the square root of total responses (let's say there are 400 surveys; the square root of 400 is 20). Divide one by this number (20). The result is five percent. This is the margin of error. Statisticians say that if surveys of 400 were continued, results would be within five percent of what you got the first time. The one additional consideration is that this sort of result will occur 95 percent of the time. The reason for this is based on a normal distribution model with the majority of any population answering within a common area and only a minority answering in a extreme (or uncommon) manner.

While this may not be very clear without doing some more research and testing yourself, what is clear is that even a small sample population (such as 400) can generate highly usable and reliable data.

You are very likely already conducting some forms of market research; the key is to do more of it, record it, ensure its consistency and—ultimately—use it!

For more information on this topic or to order multiple reports, contact Adsoka.

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