2019 Marketing Strategy: Audience and Target Market Research

You may have noticed my colleagues at CG Life have been dropping some strong marketing knowledge recently in a series of posts exploring how to prep your businesses marketing efforts for the New Year. From identifying core marketing messages to tips for crafting a marketing plan to how best to measure your marketing success, our team has outlined tried and true best practices that will help you achieve your marketing objectives.

And while the advice offered in the other blog posts is critical, I’m here to tell you that your marketing efforts will fall flat if you haven’t taken the time to perform market research and analysis to really understand your target audience and their perceptions, expectations and pain points.

Uncovering Valuable Marketing Knowledge About Your Customers

Sure, you may have conducted some customer surveys. You may have even done some high-end quantitative segmentation studies. But from a pure communication point, I’d argue that conducting a qualitative target market research study is more valuable and will provide you with the ammunition and marketing knowledge you need to create compelling value propositions that align with the real needs of your customers and the marketplace.

And execution of a target market research program doesn’t have to be overly expensive or time consuming. Craft a simple questionnaire that seeks answers to some basic questions such as:

• How is your product/company perceived vs. other options in the marketplace?
• What are the most critical attributes your customers look for when considering a purchase?
• What keeps your customers/prospects up at night?

The key is to seek thoughtful answers from the research participants in order to gain true insight and increase your marketing knowledge of your customer base. For example, if you ask, “what are the critical attributes you consider when purchasing a specific product?” you’ll most likely hear “quality.” That’s great, but you must dig further with follow-up questions to really understand what they mean by “quality,” so that when you draft your messaging and value propositions, your able to truly connect with your prospects.

Taking A Deep Dive Into Target Market Research

If you want a true deep dive into audience insights, actions, motivations, and beliefs beyond surveys and Google Analytics data, a market intelligence solution may be for you. A market research partner will act as your investigator, delivering qualitative research to inform and empower your marketing efforts. When choosing a partner, look for a team with expertise and experience in your particular industry area or business, be it healthcare, biotech startup, medtech or pharma, among others. This will give your research team a special edge and a core understanding, allowing them to dig deep when interviewing your target audience.

No matter your marketing plan focus areas for the coming year, starting off on a firm foundation is a best practice recommendation that will continue to deliver benefits over the long term. If you need market research services, we’re happy to discuss what we do and how it works. Contact us.

For more posts in this series go to our Life Lessons blog homepage.