5 Ways Women in Tech Perform Better Market Research
Accurate market research is the backbone of your marketing strategy. If you get the research part wrong, your entire marketing strategy will be focused on the wrong thing. For instance, if your target demographic is incorrect, you’ll waste time, payroll, and marketing dollars advertising to the wrong market.
Since many business owners skip market research, you can gain an advantage over your competition just by using this basic tool.
If you’re wondering how to obtain accurate market research, this article will give you some inspiration. Here’s how the top women in tech get better results with market research.
- Product/market fit (PMF) surveys
There’s no better way to find out who your market is than asking people directly. If you already have customers, it’s easy to send out product/market fit (PMF) surveys to find out how much your product is a part of people’s lives.
With PMF surveys from Delighted, you can find out how your existing customers feel about your products or services. All surveys begin by asking customers how they would feel if they could no longer use your product. They can select one of three answers:
- Very disappointed (with an upset face)
- Mildly disappointed (with a sad face)
- Not disappointed (with a neutral face)
Once a customer answers this question, you can add up to 10 more questions to understand more about your customers and their preferences.
How PMF scores work
Ideally, you want at least 40% of your customers to say they would be “very disappointed” if they couldn’t use your product any longer. This means you have a strong product to market fit.
While the system collects this information, it also collects demographics from each respondent so you’ll know exactly which demographics are a fit for your products or services.
- Interviews
One-on-one interviews with your target market are powerful conversations that can help you go deep into the psyche of your customers. Speaking directly to your ideal customer will help you understand their pain as it relates to your products.
As a business owner, you can request interviews directly from existing customers in exchange for a discount for their honest feedback.
- Observation
Observation is one of the fun ways to do market research. All you do is observe a customer using your product. While your customer is using your product, you’ll take notes on what you observe.
For instance, do they seem to get the hang of your product quickly? Do they struggle with the instructions? Do they seem frustrated with anything? Are they focusing more heavily on a particular aspect of your product?
Observation is great, but you won’t know what your participant is thinking. You could ask participants to verbalize their thoughts, or you can follow-up with a survey.
- Focus groups
According to Hotjar, focus groups are best for companies who are already involved in market research and aren’t great for new companies. However, anyone can create a focus group.
A focus group is a set of pre-selected participants who match your company’s target market. A group conversation about your product or service is led by a moderator in order to gain insight regarding the user experience.
Focus groups are often paid or come with benefits like free products and services. However, running an effective focus group is expensive. If you try to skip important aspects of a focus group, the results will be poor and you won’t get accurate data.
If you’re going to use a focus group, be sure to do it correctly from the start to ensure you get good results you can use.
- Field trials
Field trials will tell you a lot about your market. A field trial is when you put your product on the shelf and test how customers respond to your product.
Running field trials will give you important information like feedback on your price point, packaging, and the overall function of your product.
If you know a business owner who would be willing to place your product on their shelf, that would be ideal. Otherwise, you’ll need to pay for product placement in a store.
Market research is a fundamental component in your marketing strategy
Understanding your target market will improve your marketing strategies and increase your overall success. With market research, you can design better products, improve the customer experience, generate higher quality leads, and nail better conversion rates.
Without market research, you’ll always be a little removed from your customers. The more you know about your customers, the better you can serve their needs.
