Reading my new favorite book, The Next Big Thing, opened the door to the world of market research and trend forecasting to me. I was of course aware that market research existed, but from my experience so far I only came across government reports that were overwhelming, or small reports fit for a blog post. The large, meaty, market research reports seemed too out of reach and behind $1,000 paywalls for enterprise companies.
Paraphrasing from The Next Big Thing, you WANT to pay for high quality, expensive market research reports from companies like Mintel, if you can justify the ROI for your new product launch of course. The author also advocates testing new market research providers that are cheaper, but only on an experimental basis. Some will be good, some will be bad.
For those not at the level of purchasing reports from Mintel, or need faster, on-demand market research, what are the options? In addition, it seems like these staid market research firms may be ripe for disruption.
Market Research for Startups and Small Businesses?
My unsolved question is: How do we use the freely available data and create our own market research on the fly, and is it possible?
Some of the most accessible tools to assist with this are:
- Facebook Audiences – get an approximate number of people who make up audience segments
- Google Trends – it’s not super detailed, but gives you a high level view
- SEO keyword tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz – these will show growing keyword volume demand and trends
- Google Surveys – create a survey of 1,000 people for $100
- Checker Software – I don’t know much about this, but looks interesting
This is not a complete list, but a start. The big idea is that combining multiple free data streams and bringing it together in a data analysis and or visualization tool, you can get quick and dirty market research, although it won’t be perfect.
I came across this smart take on Reddit about the future of market research in 2020 and beyond:
Yeah, good trends. I’d like to add that the best in PR knows that customers expect campaigns to be supported by research, but in the past, it was expensive and time-consuming. In 2020, the most effective and valuable will be studies that can be carried out effectively using AI. The main task is to determine how to apply technology for use in research, how to make at least part of the research process more automated and alienated from a specialist.
The future of research lies at the intersection of technology and the study of public opinion.
Personalization of customer experiences (CX) and marketing messages is impossible without automation technologies, big data, and AI analysis. Technology takes the bulk of the marketing effort, so brands can focus on strategy and create fantastic experiences for customers with enhanced software solutions.
Big data, neural networks, analysis of social networks – these features are often voiced by the reviewers but are not yet actively used in research. There are single cases, but there are no replicated solutions/methods that use these approaches. At this moment:
Large and medium-sized agencies have their own developers, panels, platforms, chatbots, etc. The readiness to undertake analysis of networks and big data is announced, trial projects are being made.
Small companies actively use tech developments, tools available on the network, but they require implementation in the industry. These companies are sometimes ready to undertake projects for free, for the sake of gaining experience/case for demonstration and subsequent sale.
Research agencies see their work in solving the client’s business problems. It is important to help the client improve business processes and increase profits. Research is no longer an end in itself, but a step towards solving business problems. Many agencies do not sell methods or tools, but offer their expertise in resolving certain business issues.
The Intersection of Market Research, Media, PR, Content Marketing, and SEO
Quite the mouthful of an intersection, but I believe that there is a new, cutting edge way to do content marketing for link building and SEO purposes.
It involves using a combination of lean market research, media monitoring, and trends forecasting to understand and predict what journalists are writing about now, and what they’ll likely be writing about in the next 2-26 weeks.
Of course, the short-term 2-week focus is for taking advantage of immediate news trends – aka newsjacking. While the 6-12 week range is topics that are new and likely to stick around, and may also be seasonal. The next 26 weeks are more oncoming trends that will also stick around.
When pitching content to land placements on outlets, you want the perfect alchemy of story, design, content, timing, and uniqueness to have a successful campaign. Even better if you can catch an upcoming trend early that will remain evergreen for a longer period of time. When you do this, you can be an innovator or early adopter of the trend discussion, and then ideally rank for that topic with your (client’s) content, and continue to acquire links to this piece. The perfect compounding interest content piece.
Market research needs to be lean market research because it needs to be fast, cheap, and on-demand when using it for a content marketing campaign. This type of market research is mainly to connect with what publishers want to see now, not what a new billion dollar product line will be, so the focus is much different.
Other pieces of this include media and reporter monitoring, competition monitoring, industry trend monitoring, and more. But that’s for another time.
More food for thought in this article on the top 5 trends for 2020.
Also, just came across the concept of a “Research Ops” role – never heard of it before, seems cutting edge: Are you ready for a Research Ops function? – “Like Design Ops, Research Ops is all about creating repeatable systems and processes to support design.”