Discover Marketing Research part 1: Market
It doesn’t matter how long you have been in the marketing sphere, when starting research it’s always tough to make the “one step at a time”. The diversity of strategies is not always helpful in the ocean of data. That’s why in this article you’ll find a step-by-step, ready-for-implementation marketing research guide. It will be a great reminder for the marketing gurus out there and a starting point for the fresh ones. Enjoy:)
Before even starting the research you should ask yourself one simple question: “Why?”. Answering this question will give you a clear understanding of your main goal and purpose. Will it be a product launch or you need to validate your marketing strategy? Either way, the next thing you need to figure out is “What” exactly we’ll need to investigate.
What are the elements and topics, which will answer the research main question? Will it be the number of mobile users in a certain geo or category penetration? Do you see how you get more and more specific about your future actions? Now, to be right on track and make sure to realize your research goal professionally and on time, you’ll need a plan…
In other words, you’ll have to answer the “How” question. This is the most particular part of your research, so take the time to create your research plan and schedule it in a timeline. Most definitely the “How” also gives you information about which tools you’ll need. But we’ll come back to this a bit later.
So if you were careful enough, you may have noticed the application of the golden circle theory, which was best explained by Simon Sinek. Check his TedTalk if you haven’t, it’ll surely bring you a lot of insights. Leaving you a pretty schematic picture of the theory.
And we’ll continue with the giant many marketers are afraid of and the one who decides which product will prosper and which won’t survive. Behold the Market.
Know your market
Any complex system can be destructured and brought to a more understandable level. You can and you should decompose the market the same way. By doing so, you’ll identify your market.
Way too often marketers answer the “who is your target?” question with an “everyone can use my product!” As Albert Einstein used to say: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” When generalizing there is a big chance of losing the focus and not having a value proposition.
One of the most widely used approaches, the TAM, SAM, and SOM framework. This framework helps to figure out risks, threads, trends, and opportunities. Let’s take a closer look at this framework.
Total addressable market
To make it easier, let’s imagine you’re opening a bar in Barcelona. Your TAM can be any person, who drinks alcohol. But how many of these people can you reach? It would be awesome to say that all the drinking people in Barcelona are your addressable market, but this wouldn’t be true. Instead, you may start from the location of the bar. Who lives nearby? When you answer this question you’ll get near to your SAM.
Serviceable Available Market
Continuing the example with the bar in Barcelona, your serviceable available market is the portion of people who drink in the neighborhood relative to the total available market. This portion will be your market volume/value. Bear in mind that all of this is yet your assumption. To check your hypothesis there are many ways of experimenting (more on that a little further). The SAM period is like a reality check to assess the likelihood of achieving the market share implied by the Serviceable Obtainable Market and as a proxy for the short-term upside potential of your business.
When you’ll get this far, all you’ll need to figure out is the SOM.
Service Obtainable Market
Now you’re in the core of your market research. The Serviceable Obtainable Market is the one that matters most. If you are able to succeed on a fraction of the local market, your chances of scaling in the future are way higher. This is the short-term target, so be patient and do the work.
Going back to our example, if in the neighborhood where your bar is located there is a population of a hypothetical thousand people, only 50% drink and of those alco-gourmets, only 50% would visit a bar. This means your total serviceable market is now only two-hundred-fifty people (a thousand divided by two, twice). Yet, you’re not the only bar in the neighborhood. Another person had the same idea, and her bar serves already half of those people cold beer. This means that your potential share of the market might be 50% of the serviceable market, or a hundred and twenty-five people. This is your SOM.
Make sure your SOM has to factor in:
- Necessity. Customers actually need your product/service.
- Identified distribution channels. You have a plan on reaching out to the bigger part of your targeted audience.
- SAM. Remember that you’re not alone in the market field. Always check your competitors. The SOM must be a reasonable fraction of your Service Available Market.
All the above is a theory, now let’s speak practically. Marketing loves data and data love marketing. Without further ado, get ready to dive into the diversity of Market data sources.
Where to get the Market data?
You can always buy it! Profound research in any industry you can think about is available by global research companies and some niche companies like Nielsen, GFK, Ipsos, Kantar, Newzoo (for esports), and so on.
But in terms of Digital researches let’s check out these tools:
Statista
They have some beautiful free-to-download dashboards that can give you quite many insights and facts from across 170 industries and 150+ countries. You can check it out here.
GWI
Here you can dive deep into some customer insights. Check the resource pages and just enjoy the juicy data obtained from survey-led research. Here is the link.
Google public data
Despite their striving, there is still not enough useful data. Basic googling can bring you more. Here are some basic tips when googling for digital research:
- Choose several search phrases that fit your research purpose.
- Try it one by one and then check what do you get in your top 5 results (without the ads).
- Check this and update your search list again. Collect all results into one file.
- Try adding ‘pdf’ at the end of your search phrase. It may give you ready reports.
- The more specific your search query is the better results you’ll have.
- Structure the research results from general to specific.
- Try using Google Keyword Planner.
- Check Google Trends to see if a certain topic is popular.
SEO tools for market research
Your research can be based on the analytics of competing sites, the popularity of major search queries, competition in contextual advertising. Thus in this case google ads account (including keywords) ‒ is your perfect tool.
An all-time killer is definitely Ahrefs. Not only it helps with keywords and competitive landscape analytics, but you can see the organic and paid traffic. It also allows you to track backlinks and PR publications.
Other SEO tools that might help:
Next steps
The first huge step is done. Once you know your market and obtain the basic data in your niche, the next steps are to find who are your competitors and take a better look at your brand strategy. The interesting part is yet to come. That’s why make sure to check part 2 of Discover Marketing Research: Competitors.
Author: Daria Kushnir
Editor: Lilly Zaremska
