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How to Conduct Market Research for your Brand?

Hey there!

Today we are going to be talking about Market & Brand research, what it is and how you can carry it out with full efficiency. Keep reading to know more about it.

So what is Brand Research exactly?

Brand research helps with the development, creation of ongoing management and strengthening of the brand. Analysis can be taken forward to understand the landscape and to develop a strategy for the launch. But Brand research can also be conducted after the launch is done to assist in the development of the brand assets.

For better-established businesses, brand research can be periodically used, or continuously to track customers’ awareness, experience and perception. So to sum it up, Brand Research is quite essential to create a good brand strategy and to take it forward to the path of success.

What are some Brand Research Methods?

Talking about any research, the best method will include information taken from various different sources. Some will be much easier or chapter to get than others, but investing wisely means that you will develop a much more detailed picture of the landscape and reduce the possibilities for bias that are inherent in any kind of research. Some Brand Research Methods are:-

  1. Surveys – The old fashioned survey is still a great way to get consumer views on brands and product categories, and can be of great use irrespective of what development stage the brand is at. You can conduct surveys face to face, by calls or online, anything works. Each person has his or her own set of biases that researchers have to be aware of. Surveys can provide you with quantitative insights for brand research, helping you understand consumer views on a large scale.
  2. Workshop and focus groups: Bringing various types of people, from employees to customers, into a workshop can bring some quantitative insights into the research mix. Asking open-ended questions permits you to gain a much deeper perspective, opinions and emotional responses to your brand, product or service.
  3. Employees: Any customer-facing employee should have some insight Into what prospects and customers think of your brand. Salespeople shop assistant account managers in customer service representatives will have stories from the front line that can add to the search in qualitative aspects.
  4. Social Intelligence: Social intelligence offers a very unique blend of research. If used well, it can offer a mix of both the quantitative and qualitative aspects. The organic nature of conversations reduced response bias found in service while the volume of conversations means that you are not being limited to a specific set of questions. You basically need to devise the methodology to best answer the question should like answered while also being able to get aspects of the conversation you had not anticipated.

While gathering social media metrics for campaign monitoring has been a popular use case for a very long time, deeper business insights can also be found through it. Even brands that pre-launch relatively new small brands with lower volumes of conversation can get inside just by looking at what topics and types of conversation. Segmenting the data using tags in categories is essential for highlighting important information in your data.

Ways to conduct Brand Research:

Different types of servers and focus groups can surely help you to just ask people the questions although you also need to design the questions to reduce bias wherever it’s possible and keep them open-minded. With social intelligence, you will also have to design methodology as mentioned earlier. One advantage, in this case, is that you may come across insights that you had not previously considered.

So given below are some ways to conduct brand research that can be of help to you.

Competitive Analysis

Whether you intend to launch a new brand or an established player, understanding the current landscape is essential. Taking a competitive analysis can give insights to help you position and improve your offering.

Using social intelligence, you can uncover the strengths and weaknesses of the competition, understand their USP (unique selling point) in the eyes of the customer, and get an overview of the level of competition among different marketers and demographics by measuring the share of voice

Brand Awareness

Are people able to recognize and recall your brand unprompted? Focus groups are the best if you want to measure brand awareness, but surveys and social intelligence can also be used to understand the level of fame your brand has achieved. So make sure you know your brand thoroughly and know what its brand awareness is. Knowing what its reach is and how well (or bad) it is doing will help you create strategies for your brand accordingly.

Brand Perception

Measuring brand awareness will tell you if people are aware of your brand, but measuring brand perception will let you know what those people think about the brand. Think about what your brand represents for the consumers. What do they think of its services and products? How does all this compare with the other brands?

Brand Associations

In relation to brand perception, you can discover and measure brand associations consumers have when they think about business. If you are a luxury brand, you need to know that you are maintaining that exclusivity, appreciation and admiration. If you are aiming at the Opposite end of the market, do people associate your brand with Savings and economy for cheap, inferior products? I hope not!

Sentiment and Satisfaction

Doing a sentiment analysis in social intelligence platforms can provide you with a quick overview of public opinion on any topic you want. Human analysis of the information can surface more nuanced emotions such as joy, frustration, anger and so on. Working through the data you can understand if your customers are satisfied or frustrated and what’s the reason for the same, helping you address any issue.

Shopping Experience

Whether your shop front is brick and mortar or it is an e-commerce, understanding perceptions of your shopping experience is also very valuable. The average shopping cart abandonment rate for eCommerce stores is about 68%. While Shoppers do not intend to abandon carts in physical stores, experiences can still be improved by a lot through data-led approaches.

Here are some Brand Research Tips to help you further:-

  1. Do not hesitate in asking simple and straightforward questions. Very often you can find that by asking such simple questions people open up more and explain in much more detail. 
  2. Try to find emotional and rational responses. There are various reasons as to why someone chooses one brand over another. Trying to uncover a mix of these two will help you in brand research.
  3. Do not begin with your assumptions or bring your own views into the research. Facilitate the conversation to discover true insights, do not lead the conversation to where you expect or want it to go.
  4. Think about the best presentation methods possible. Present your finding very well, with methodology and key findings, to begin with, followed by clearly presented data and qualitative.

Make sure you use these tips best for the advantage and the growth of your brand. There are many tools out there that can help you but it is you who need to use them strategically. A painter can have the best brushes and a carpenter can have the most expensive tool to work with, but without skill, these tools will be of no use. So make sure you are thorough and clear with what exactly you want to go ahead with.

That’s all for today. We really hope you liked the blog and found it helpful. Stay tuned for more content on such topics that can really help you grow in your life and career.

We will see you in the next blog…

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