8 Marketing Research Methods To Transform Your Campaigns

Online marketing research has become a staple for modern businesses. It helps them analyze the needs of target audiences. Before launching new products or services, thorough online marketing research and customer research is a must. It reveals latest market trends, contributing to effective marketing strategies.

To carry out research, marketers can use various online marketing tools like customer feedback forms, social media analytics, key word searches and online questionnaires to determine market positioning. Previously, marketing research used to be much more expensive and time consuming. Furthermore, data accuracy was also not guaranteed in the past. Today, online marketing research has eliminated many of these limitations. However, many businesses are failing to fully utilize online marketing research. In this post, we go over some helpful guidelines to conduct online market research.

Data Types

Before understanding the various methods to conduct online research, you should be aware of the types of data that you are collecting. There are two types of data.

• Primary Information
• Secondary Information

Primary info is the type of research you do yourself. Secondary information is the type of research that has already been gathered and compiled for you. That can be research done by the government, third-party agencies, trade associations or almost any other type of corporation, organization or similar. It is important to use both of these types of data for your market research.

Google Engines

When it comes to online market research, Google can be more helpful than you might expect. You can get started by typing straightforward questions into the Google search box. In addition to using the regular Google Search engine for customer analysis, try using Google Scholar to get research publications too. Odds are, you will discover new facts, trends and market possibilities. Remember to search with all terms, authors, technical jargon, ideas and keywords that specifically describe your products. Furthermore, you can use the names of research companies for finding additional data. Certainly, Google offers instant access to information that is extremely valuable for a marketer’s research.

Relevant Blogs

Popular blogs in your industry provide a wealth of online marketing research. Think of the blog’s readers as your prospective customers. By reading their comments and guest posts, the content will help you understand what they want. Since blogs are informal, the latest trends are usually published by bloggers and blog readers first. As a result, blog posts can offer better research and insights than traditional websites. You can use search engines like BlogPulse or Technorati to identify helpful blogs. Following industry blogs, you will be in direct connection with market happenings and developments. Gain more insight by driving more consumers to your blog through the top SEO tactics. Then, you can implement this method more effectively.

Online Polls and Surveys

Marketers, looking for quantitative data, may take advantage of online polling and surveying options. Polling and surveying help in accumulating specific marketing data. Using these options, you can also explore different aspects of the market, which will help you to effectively use marketing segmentation. However, the target audiences have short attention span. Make sure that your online surveying questionnaire is short and simple. Otherwise, the audience may get bored and leave. Online surveys and polls can be expensive compared to other online marketing research techniques. In some cases, you may have to pay up to $0.10 for each response. However, the answered questions and qualitative data could pay dividends for a business who caters to the market.

Database Research

Online database research is popularly referred to as database mining. This online marketing research method aims to collect all kinds of customer data. Database research offers sufficient information to group your target audience. From purchase records to income status, database research can reveal it all. More specifically, marketers can access purchase records to determine the buying habits of target audiences. While this tactic may seem intrusive, it can be a highly effective marketing research strategy. Use this method to give your small business marketing campaigns the boost they need.

Social Media Platforms

A huge number of buyers visit social media platforms daily. Consequently, they are ideal places for conducting online marketing research. Focusing online marketing research on popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter can yield great results. For example, you can create one or more social groups. Then, get the conversation started. Next, research their habits, lifestyle and needs to derive more accurate data, just as valuation services do. For the modern online marketer, social media networking sites are a treasure chest of market research information.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is an excellent tool to use when conducting online market research. This tool allows you to research popular articles, blogs and experts on any topic. You can use this tool to identify prominent influencers in your particular area of business. This will definitely help you find someone to reach out to your target audience on your behalf. This is especially true when it is used in conjunction with social media benefits. It will also help you better understand your target audience overall. If you want to use one of the most popular online market research tools available, BuzzSumo is perhaps the most popular out there.

Interviews

Finally, interviewing is a promising market research method. In the past, marketers conducted interviews in person, which entailed a long, time-consuming process. Now, you can interview members of your target audience online in numerous ways. You can ask an online focus group questions regarding their preferences on face-to-face applications or via email. Some marketers even use social media platforms to ask consumers interview questions. Regardless of how you conduct interviews online, you can obtain a decent amount of useful information for your future campaigns.

Online marketing research offers plenty of valuable data to better understand your target audience. To get unbiased results, be sure to use different online marketing research techniques. The diverse approach will help you in collecting extensive range of information about target markets and ultimately developing the best mobile marketing techniques. Of course, once the online marketing research is complete, develop a plan to test your findings on the company’s products or services.