Market research is a systematic, objective collection and analysis of data about a particular target market, competition, and/or environment. It always incorporates data collection, whether internal or secondary research (often referred to as desk research) or primary research, which is collected directly from a respondent.
Written by DJS Research, appears on DJS Research.net.
What is Market Research for?
- Market research provides a deep understanding of the market accounts, buyers, and users that your organization sells to.
- It helps you differentiate your strategy from your competition.
- Market research is conducted to check the product’s viability in the target market.
- Prioritize your accounts.
- Market research is specific in nature. That means the research gives an understanding of a particular market, which does not apply to other markets.
- Align your strategy with buyer needs and address user problems with your products.
- Provides external context to enable executives to make smarter decisions on how to allocate their resources – people, money, and time.
What Data is Collected for Market Research?
Market research is used to collect information about the market and the competition such as:
- Consumer needs
- Preferences
- Interests
- Marketing Trends
- The latest fashion and so on.
- Competitor Analysis
- The scope of market research is limited as it studies the aspects of market and consumer behavior only.
- Market research involves research of the marketplace and the buyer’s behavior within that market.
The objective of Market Research:
Market research aims to understand the customer, market, target, and competition.
Market Research Process:
- Assess Problem and Matching Tool: Market research often begins with assessing a problem and matching a research tool to the situation to gather information.
- Gather and Analyze Information: You then analyze the information and report the analysis.
- Report, Present, Take Action: Communicate analysis to stakeholders.
Tools and Techniques Differ Based on Situation
The data or information gathering, and analytical techniques often differ based on the situation. When one thinks of market research, they may think about the data collection tools and techniques such as:
- Surveys
- Focus Groups
- Secondary Research
- In-depth Interviews
- Observational Research
- Collecting the Data
- Analyzing the Data
Defining the Questions that You Need to Answer in Your Market Research
- Find an objective by answering the following question:
- What are the inputs you need to develop your corporate, product, marketing, sales, and talent strategy? (Strategy: Allocation of people, time, and money)
How do Market Researchers Conduct Market Research?
There are 4 phases:
- Market Segmentation: Divide the broad target market into subsets of buyers who have common needs, priorities, and solution options.
How big is our market?
What is the growth rate?
This information can be obtained through third-party companies and secondary research.
What industry trends are unfolding in our market?
3 key trends driving K-12 education forward in 2022
- The adoption of personalized learning technologies is on the rise.
- Educators must be empowered with new levels of training that allow them to use digital tools that can surface clear, actionable insights in order to meet each learner’s individual learning needs.
- School and district administrators can expect to pursue solutions that deliver social-emotional support within their experiences so that students receive the support they need as they learn.
- Education technology products can foster connections between educators and students to build students’ confidence, allowing them to take an active part in their own learning.
2022 Education Trends That Might Excite You.
https://www.carnegielearning.com/blog/2022-education-trends/
- Many educators are moving away from teacher-driven lessons and helping students have more voice and choice in what they learn, putting teachers in a more facilitative role.
- Research suggests that game-based learning can be effective at increasing learning by helping students strategize, build problem-solving skills, and rethink their previous attempts at a task to improve future strategies. Expect to see game-based learning spread to more classrooms in 2022.
- With COVID-related reductions in teaching staff, AI teaching assistants and automated grading systems are especially welcomed in most schools. Why not automate the tedious time-killing tasks so teachers can do what they do best: connecting with students and facilitating learning.
- Digital learning tools, such as the Fast ForWord reading and language program and the 1-to-1 tutoring software MATHia, incorporate artificial intelligence that adapts to individual students’ responses to create personalized learning paths for every student. Reports are then created to help drive instruction based on students’ strengths and weaknesses.
- Another important job of AI is in the area of cybersecurity.
- We’ve come to realize that there is no “one size fits all” in education and that there is value in appreciating different methodologies and strategies in learning.
STEM Learning in Afterschool on the Rise, But Barriers and Inequities Exist
- Getting more young people engaged in STEM is essential in part because jobs in STEM continue to grow at rates double those of non-STEM professions. But, providing greater opportunities for STEM learning isn’t just about preparing the future workforce. As our world continues to rely more and more on technology, we all require a greater level of STEM literacy and fluency to understand how science and technology play a role.
- Hands-on STEM learning opportunities help students develop an interest and comfort with STEM subjects, and understand the career pathways to pursue STEM interests.
- Over the last decade, afterschool programs have become a cornerstone in providing STEM learning for students from all backgrounds in all regions of the country.
- Parents reporting that their child’s afterschool program offers STEM learning opportunities increased from 69 percent in 2014 to 73 percent in 2020. STEM learning is tied as the third most common offering of afterschool programs across the country, according to parents, along with homework help and learning responsible decision-making.
- Computer science is available in afterschool: For the first time, America After 3 PM included computer science activities as a response option for parents, finding that 41 percent of afterschool participants have access to computer science in their program.
- There are variations in the specific disciplines of STEM, with technology and engineering most common among high school students.
What are the needs of the market? And how are they changing?
The evidence base for afterschool and summer
- Afterschool programs where they had the opportunity to engage in academically enriching activities, take part in physical activities, build friendships, gain confidence, learn how to make responsible decisions, and seek advice and support from caring adults and mentors.
- Through the pandemic, afterschool programs have been an instrumental partner for schools and families—programs remained connected to their students, complemented school-day lessons, and provided essential supports for families. As the country now looks to reopening and recovery, afterschool and summer programs will continue to be a valuable resource.
- Improve grades: Parents like afterschool and summer programs because the programs have significant benefits for their children in math, English, and science.
- In a randomized-control evaluation of Chicago’s After School Matters program, students participating in the program reported significantly higher self-regulation and significantly fewer problem behaviors than their peers who did not participate in the program. For example, youth in After School Matters were more likely to report that they could manage their attention and their emotions and were less likely to report selling drugs or participating in gang activity.
- Higher participation in an afterschool program aimed at reducing violence-related behaviors among high-risk, urban middle school youth in economically disadvantaged areas throughout the year was linked to better communication skills and better relationships with adults and peers.
- Need to improve physical health: A national evaluation of the Up2Us Coach program by the American Institutes for Research found that youth who participated in the sports-focused youth development program made significant improvements from the beginning of the year to the end of the year in fitness, nutritional habits, and high-impact attributes that contribute to healthy decision-making, including positive identity, situational awareness, discipline, social confidence, and overall well-being.
- A 2020 Search Institute study compared various youth-serving organizations— including out-of-school time (OST) settings, student support groups, and schools—and found that OST settings were more likely to foster high-quality relationships and provide inclusive, equitable environments to help youth thrive. More young people reported having strong developmental relationships with program staff in OST (70 percent) compared to staff in student support programs (62 percent) and teachers in school (40 percent).
- The study, published in the journal Child Development, found that students who participated in afterschool programs in kindergarten through 5th grade displayed greater social confidence in high school, such as speaking aloud in groups and meeting new people.
- Need to develop a positive STEM mindset.
Spiking demand, growing barriers: The trends shaping afterschool and summer learning in rural communities
America After 3 PM is a nationally representative survey of randomly selected adults who live in the United States and are the parent or guardians of a school-age child who lives in their household.
- Rural communities see a sharp rise in unmet demand for afterschool and summer programs. The 2020 America After 3 PM survey finds that 4.5 million rural children who are not in an afterschool program would be enrolled if a program were available and 2.9 million children not in a program during the 2019 summer would have been enrolled if one were available to them.
- A greater percentage of rural parents now agree that afterschool programs help children gain interest and skills in STEM (from 62 percent in 2014 to 75 percent in 2020) and that programs help working parents keep their jobs (from 72 percent to 79 percent).
- Rural families with low incomes and rural families of color are even more likely than rural families overall to report needs for afterschool programs and summer camps since these programs help children gain interest and skills in STEM (62 percent vs. 75 percent), be physically active (73 percent vs. 85 percent), and become more excited about learning (62 percent vs. 72 percent).
- Rural parent support for public funding for afterschool in communities that have few opportunities for children and youth grew from 83 percent in 2009 to 84 percent in 2014, reaching 86 percent in 2020. Support for summer learning opportunities rose from 83 percent in 2009, to 85 percent in 2014, to 86 percent in 2020.
- Access to STEM learning in afterschool grows: Although STEM offerings in rural communities continue to trail the national average, the number grew from 2014 to 2020. The percentage of rural parents reporting their child’s program offers STEM learning opportunities grew from 2014 (66 percent) to 2020 (70 percent). The percentage of rural parents reporting that their child’s afterschool program offers STEM more than once a week saw a 10-percentage-point increase (45 percent vs. 55 percent). This increase is similar to the national average.
America after 3 pm: Demand Grows, Opportunity Shrinks
- From 2014 to 2020, all but six states and Washington, D.C. saw an increase in unmet demand for afterschool programs, with nearly half of states experiencing a double-digit percentage point increase in unmet demand. New York is currently the state with the highest unmet demand for afterschool programs among children not currently enrolled in one (66 percent).
- The number of children alone and unsupervised during the hours after school has continued to decline, reaching its lowest level of 7.7 million children (13 percent) in 2020. However, while the number of middle and high school students on their own after school decreased from 2014, the number of elementary school students increased slightly from 2014 to 2020.
- Based on parent responses, the growing demand may be a result of the positive experiences with afterschool programs and growing appreciation of the support programs provide among parents with a child in an afterschool program as well as parents of nonparticipants.
- For example, the agreement that afterschool programs help children gain interest and skills related to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jumped 11 percentage points, from 65 percent in 2014 to 76 percent in 2020, and the agreement that afterschool programs give working parents peace of mind grew 8 percentage points, from 75 percent to 83 percent.
- Afterschool programs provide time for kids to engage with their peers and reduce unproductive screen time (85 percent), create the space for them to acquire and hone life skills such as communicating and working in teams (82 percent), and get kids more excited about learning and interested in school (74 percent), and reduce the likelihood that youth will use drugs or engage in other risky behaviors (75 percent).
- Parents also recognize afterschool programs’ role in supporting working families. More than 8 in 10 parents agree that afterschool programs give working parents peace of mind knowing that their children are safe and supervised (83 percent) and help working parents keep their jobs (81 percent).
- 93 percent of parents report that safety was important in their selection of an afterschool program, and 92 percent of parents report that they are satisfied that their child’s afterschool program provides a safe environment. Such alignment between the level of importance and satisfaction is also seen in areas including, but not limited to, afterschool programs employing knowledgeable and caring staff and providing opportunities to build life skills.
- Children in low-income families have more limited learning opportunities outside of school compared to their higher-income peers, including access to afterschool programs. Three-quarters of low-income families report that the availability of snacks and meals was important in their selection of their child’s afterschool program, with close to half (48 percent) saying that it was extremely important.
- Cost and access top the list of roadblocks to afterschool participation. Overall, accessibility was a greater barrier for low-income parents of color than for low-income White parents.
How do your buyers buy? Or What user problems you’re identifying?
STEM Learning in Afterschool on the Rise, But Barriers and Inequities Exist
- STEM opportunities are not evenly distributed to all families: America After 3PM reveals other troubling inequities in access to STEM learning in afterschool. The frequency of STEM learning activities varies between the lowest-income and highest-income brackets and the cost of afterschool programs with STEM learning opportunities exceeds the cost of programs not offering STEM learning.
- Technology and engineering: Boys are more likely to have opportunities to participate in technology and engineering activities in their afterschool program than girls (42 percent vs. 36 percent). This six-point difference is the largest of the STEM disciplines.
- Computer science: Boys are more likely to have opportunities to participate in computer science activities than girls (43 percent vs. 39 percent).
- Parents from the highest-income bracket are more likely to report that their child participates in STEM learning at least twice a week than parents in the lowest-income bracket (62 percent vs. 56 percent). There are also gaps when looking at individual disciplines of STEM.
Spiking demand, growing barriers: The trends shaping afterschool and summer learning in rural communities
America After 3PM is a nationally representative survey of randomly selected adults who live in the United States and are the parent or guardian of a school-age child who lives in their household.
- Communities of color and families with low incomes in rural communities have the highest levels of unmet demand: Majorities of Black (59 percent), Latino (57 percent), and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI)* children (57 percent), as well as children living in families with low incomes (52 percent) not enrolled in an afterschool program would be enrolled if a program were available to them, compared to 47 percent of rural children overall.
- Among rural families, reports of barriers to participation have increased by double-digit percentage points from 2014 to 2020, including the cost of programs, children not having a safe way to and from the afterschool program, inconvenient program locations, and the lack of available programs in the community.
- For instance, 69 percent of rural Asian American, Native Hawaiian, or other Pacific Islander (AANHPI) parents; 59 percent of rural Black parents; and 56 percent of rural Latino parents report that not having a safe way for their child to get to and from afterschool programs is an important reason they did not enroll their child in a program, compared to 50 percent of rural parents overall.
- Barriers to summer program participation: More than 1 in 3 rural parents (35 percent) report that cost was an important factor in their decision not to enroll their child in a summer program and 1 in 5 rural parents say that summer programs were not available in their community.
- A program’s safe environment and knowledgeable and caring staff are the top two factors rural parents say are extremely important in selecting their child’s afterschool program or summer experience, in line with parents living outside of rural areas.
What should our go-to-market strategy be for each product or solution? (go-to-market: It’s how we create demand and sell our solutions).
- When communicating about EFBA after-school programs and summer camps, we should mention how our programs can impact children’s education and life. Our message must resonate with the needs and problems parents are experiencing.
Competitor’s Research
- Alliance Française: https://www.afscv.org/learn-french/summer-camps/
- The French Class: https://frenchclass.com/?utm_campaign=gmb
- French American School: https://www.fassv.org/https://www.fassv.org/
- How do my competitors go to market?
What is SEO Competitive Analysis?
SEO competitive analysis is the process of identifying the strengths and weaknesses of your and your competitors’ SEO.
Much like a typical competitive analysis, you’re working to discover any gaps between you and your competitor. But rather than focusing on marketing strategy, you’ll focus on SEO strategy.
A competitor analysis can help you:
- Benchmark your current SEO performance
- Identify areas of improvement in your SEO strategy
- Reveal any competitor gaps or weaknesses
- Discover your competitors’ winning strategies
Goals of Competitive Analysis for SEO
- Find Keyword Gaps
- Find Backlink Gaps
- Compare your website to direct competitors
- Find areas of improvement for your website
- Understand why your website may not rank as high for certain keywords
- Stay up to date on your website vs. your competitors
How to Run an SEO Competitive Analysis
There aren’t any hard or fast rules to running an SEO competitor analysis, but here are a few steps you can add to your process:
Find Your Competitors
- Make a list of who you consider your competitors are
- Focus on websites that rank highly or often for your main target keywords and any significant additional keywords.
- If you’re working on a new website, you can build your list with SEO tools such as Semrush. Select “Find Competitors” on the tool’s landing page, then enter your domain.
The tool automatically visualizes a list of significant players in your market niche with the Growth Quadrant:
The Growth Quadrant chart sorts you and your competitors into four basic categories:
- Niche Players: New or small companies with smaller audience size and a low growth rate
- Game Changers: Emerging companies with a comparatively smaller audience size but who are growing quickly
- Leaders: Companies with both a large audience and a rapid growth rate.
- Established Players: Companies with large, established audiences
- Hover over each entry to see their
- Direct traffic,
- Search traffic, and more.
- You can also view this information in the All Domains tab.
If you already know your competitors, you can use the Market Explorer tool to track them by creating a list. Select “Create List” on the tool’s landing page, enter your and your competitors’ domains, then name your list:
- Alliance Francaise Silicon Valley
- Alliance Francaise San Francisco
- French American International
- Lycee Francais
- PACE Academic After School Program
- Au Petite Monde de San Francisco
- Les Petits Canards French Immersion
- Les Petitis Artistes
- French Playdate
- Color Me French
- What are our competitive strengths and weaknesses?
- What are their opportunities and threats in the market? How can we go and win?
- What are the lifecycle stages of adoption of our buyers and users?
- Account Segmentation: Understand which accounts in your market will generate the most revenue over the shortest period of time.
The objective should answer:
- What is our ideal customer profile? And what defines this ideal customer and a prospect?
- How does each customer prospect score relative to the ideal customer profile?
- What’s the potential spend for each prospect or customer?
- What’s the cost to acquire each customer, and then what’s the lifetime value of each customer?
- What’s the propensity to buy for each prospect and customer?
- What’s the likelihood of customers buying with us versus some purchasing something else?
The ideal customer profile must be proven with math and data science. Then, it must be written down and documented.
- Buyer Segmentation: Understand how buyers in your accounts make purchase decisions. Obtaining insights that will allow us to segment each within the markets we play in is an essential tip.
How Customers Make a Decision to Buy Products
Identify Need/Want
- Internal: The motivation that drives the willingness to want to buy your product.
- External: What external event creates motivation to buy your product.
Information Search
Go through every one of the steps of the information research that prospects and customers would do:
- Which places would they go on?
- Which sites that we’re going with social media sites would they go on?
How customers search for products:
- Go on internet
- Referral
- Word of mouth
- Social Media
- Websites
- Family or Friends
- Magazines
- Which places would customers go?
- Which sites would customers go to?
- Which social media sites would they go on?
Finding Options – The options customers have in the marketplace.
- What are the options? (Competitors)
- What age do you have over the other options that are out there in the marketplace?
Process of eliminating choices
Start eliminating the choices based on the area you’re better than them.
- Our job is to help prospects and customers have the highest chance of your product being the one they choose as they go through the process of elimination options. It may be a:
- Face-to-face sale.
- Cold call sale
- Internet Sale
- Audience sale
- Radio
- Magazine articles
- Blogs
- Informational videos
For example: Tell customers what the competition offers and demonstrate that your business knows what they want and need. Therefore, your business has the best solution for them and not the competition.
Post-Purchase Experience
- Give customers such a great experience that they become an advocate and true believers for you because this stage is when customers are going to say:
- I liked it
- I recommend it
- I didn’t like it
- I regret buying it
- I want to return it
- Contact customers after they purchase and ask them questions about customer satisfaction and feedback. It’s essential to be willing to thank or solve any customer’s complaints.
- User Segmentation: Understand the market problems for users in your accounts
How and What Methods You Should Conduct to Gather that Intelligence?
- Identify who is accountable for the process.
- Do customer, prospect, employee, and competitive research.
Customer Research:
Check customer satisfaction metrics. For example, some companies use NPS (Net Promoter Score).
- Interviews with buyers and users in the accounts.
- Customer advisory boards are also facts of data intelligence.
- Executive mapping under your key accounts.
- Sharing of product roadmaps and OEM relationships.
- Sales interactions or maybe a dialogue day in the life of a sales professional.
- Buyer and user persona interviews.
- Prospect Research:
There are different methods to do prospect research, such as:
- One of the first methods is win or loss interviews. It’s a great source of data because you find out more alignment to the market there than anywhere else by asking questions with the purpose of identifying:
- Are we solving the customers’ or prospects’ problems?
- The different stages of their buying, marketing, and sales processes.
- Social listening: To change or improve how your salespeople prospect.
- Are you hanging out on social media where your customers and prospects are?
- What are the prospects and customers saying on social media?
- What industry forms do they belong to?
- Are they in LinkedIn or Facebook groups?
Sales Interactions: Obtain insights from customers and prospects there.
Buyer and User Persona Interviews
- Persona: It’s a representation of the buyers and users you interact with within the accounts in your market.
- Buyer Persona: It’s typically part of the buying decision team that makes a purchase decision for your product or solution.
- User Persona: The user is the individual that will directly benefit or actually use the product or solution.
By developing a persona, your business will better understand your buyers’ objectives, obstacles, challenges, strategic initiatives, and key performance indicators. You will also be able to develop a buyer process map, and this is the journey that your buyer goes through when making buying decisions. Likewise, these are the stages the buyer goes through. This buyer’s journey helps the company understand how to market to the buyer.
Example,
A CIO is interested in buying the most secure technology on the market after experiencing an event that threatens his data. So, he starts questioning himself:
- How do I prevent another data breach?
- What are the best practices for security protocol?
- How will this affect me, and should I care?
That is an excellent customer insight because the company can use it.
How to use it?
You can use it by understanding how to market to the buyer if you start answering the questions that the CIO is asking himself through content, whether it is marketing and/or your salespeople, early-stage buying. Then, you will be able to position your services or solution in a much more formidable way and be able to influence early-stage buying and solutions.
- By creating buyer personas and buyer process maps, you’re answering the following questions:
- Who are the buyers?
- Who makes the decision when buying our solution?
- What do our customers care about? (objectives, obstacles, challenges)
- How does our buyer make purchase decisions? BPM (Buyer Process Map)
- What do our buyers value when engaging with our team?
- How can I be different?
- How can I know them better than they know themselves?
- The key delineation by creating the user persona you are answering the following questions.
- Who are our users?
- What are the users trying to get done?
- What problems are they trying to solve?
- What prevents our users from completing their job?
- What alternative solutions exist for users to address their needs?
- What do our users value when engaging with our team?
- What must our products be best-in-class to succeed in our industry?
- Employee Research:
Why employee feedback?
- Technically they are internal resources.
- Many employees may have been in the industry for a number of years, many have likely worked for a competitor, so you can obtain market insights and competitive intelligence by tapping into employee’s knowledge.
- Employees may have worked in markets you are trying to penetrate, but don’t discount employees that have worked in other industries that could implement emerging best practices in your company.
- There are multiple ways to obtain feedback from employees, such as:
- Survey
- Interviews
- Team Huddle’s
- Dialogues
- Discussions
- Focus Groups
- Competitive Research:
- What are the competitors’ strategies?
- How do they win? – Do they win on product, customer, experience, price?
- What are the methods to do this?
- Conduct Mistery Shops: This will give you an insight into competitors on how they market and sell to prospects and clients, such as:
- What is their nurture path look like?
- Who calls back?
- How quickly do they call you back?
- What content do they give you?
- Do they distribute you an email?
- Conduct Mistery Shops: This will give you an insight into competitors on how they market and sell to prospects and clients, such as:
What can Mistery Shops be done?
It can be as simple as going on my competitor’s website form fill and seeing what kind of response I get. Then, derive insights from it.
- By doing that, I will understand how competitors market to clients.
- Win-loss interviews: This is to understand why a buyer you know may have chosen your competitors’ solution is critical.
- Secondary Market Research firm such as, Gartner ICI, Forrester. They have a wealth of information about your competitors.
- Intel from employees and partners. Only if it has done ethically.
Questions before doing Competitor’s Research
- How do my competitors go to market?
- Do they win on a product?
- Do they win on price?
- Do they win on customer intimacy?
- What are our competitive strengths and weaknesses?
- What are their opportunities and threats in the market? How can we go and win?
- What are the lifecycle stages of adoption of our buyers and users?
- Is it a brand-new solution that nobody knows about?
How often should companies do Market Research?
It should be done consistently.
Summary of Market Research Methods
- Customer Research: To ensure your strategy is aligned to your customers.
- Prospect Research: To ensure your strategy is aligned to your prospects.
- Employee Research: To ensure your employees are aligned to your strategy and the market.
- Competitive Research: To ensure your strategy is different than your competitors.
BONUS
KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators)
- Use KPI’s to measure and monitor business performance.
- Leading indicators of performance and alerts of performance issues.
- Helps with / provides clarity on what areas to optimize.
Steps to Set-Up
- Select timeframe (daily, weekly, monthly).
- Select KPI’s (6-12 complete views).
- Select Polaris KPI.
- Measure and monitor according to timeframe with the time.
Examples
| KPI’s 1 Rankings | KPI’s 2 Traffic | KPI’s 3 Lead Conversion | |
| Week 1 | 10 | $ 100k | 15 % |
| Week 2 | 12 | $ 110k | 20% |
| Week 3 | 9 | $ 80 | 17.5% |
Other KPI Examples
- Order Defect Rate.
- Inventory Performance Index.
- Cash inflow, outflow.
- Year-to-date Profit and Loss in the business.
What makes market researchers good at KPI’s are being clever with the way they combine metrics into one case PI that gives a deep, profound insight into a certain dimension of your business.