Question

5 step marketing research approach

Answer 1

Marketing research is a helpful tool for organizations to better identify marketing strategies and evaluate business decisions using data. There are five major steps to the marketing research approach:

1. Define the problem
2. Develop your plan
3. Collect relevant data and information
4. Analyze data and report findings
5. Take action

Define the problem:

• The most important part of the marketing research process is defining the problem. In order to do any research and collect data, you have to know what you are trying to learn from the research.
• In this first part of the process, you need to establish your research objectives and develop questions that will help define the problem which will be very beneficial later.

Develop your plan:

• After you’ve examined all potential causes of the problem and have used those questions to boil down exactly what you’re trying to solve, it’s time to build the research plan.
• Some of the techniques used for conducting research are -
  • Interview prospects and customers
  • Conduct a survey
  • Run user test

Collect relevant data and information:

• ​​​​Once you start to collect your data, make sure it’s valid and unbiased. Use a mixture of the methods mentioned above to get relevant data from all angles. The ideal type of information to gather would be analytical/scientific as well as emotional data that you couldn’t get from looking at a graph. Personal stories can give a lot of the insight .

Analyze data and report findings:

• Once you gather your information, it is time to analyze the data. When you do this, it’s important to look for trends as instead of specific data pieces. As you’re study the data, try to look at everything objetively and don’t try to find patterns based off your previous assumptions prior to collecting the data. It doesnt matter if your initial idea was right or wrong. That’s the reason behind the testing. Be fair and impartial with the data and you will have a unbiased report.

Take action:

• Present your findings and take action. Begin to develop your marketing campaign. The most imporant thing here is that even though the initial round of research is complete, it’s not over. Research will never be finished. This is the driving force for improving your problems.