When you’re running a business there are all sorts of concerns competing for your time, attention and perhaps most importantly, money. Deciding where you’re going to spend those important resources is one of the key skills of leadership – you need to be able to identify what’s a good investment, and likely to lead to returns and what will cost you but provide no benefit.

One of the options you have for spending money is with a market research firm – is this a good choice for you? Today we’re taking a look at the different ways market research data and insights can help your business, so you can make a better assessment of its value to you and your brand.

Building Something New

The rewards of launching a new product can be huge, pulling in more consumers to your business and giving your existing customers something else to spend money – a double boost to your income.

Unfortunately, it’s also attended by risks: a new product that fails and isn’t embraced by the market doesn’t just waste its development resources, it can damage your brand. It can make you look like you don’t understand your customers and aren’t able to properly meet their needs, even with your existing products.

Building market research feedback into your new product development process can help to mitigate these risks. It means you can start with a clear understanding of what gaps there are in the market, and how much revenue you can expect them to generate. This allows you to focus your development process on these likely possibilities and ensure you’re working to a realistic budget and price point.

You can also test prototypes of your concept and product on consumers to make sure your development is on target: if your prototypes aren’t pleasing customers, or they can’t understand why they’d want them, you know you need to adjust course.

Success Over Time

One of the most important things market research gets you is an understanding of how your decisions impact your level of success over time. While you have access to the important data showing how your revenue rises and falls over time, it’s hard to act on that information until you add the other half of the equation: what customers think of you and why.

Brand tracking charts your customers response to your business over time, rating it – along with your competitors – for the key indicators of brand success in your niche. This helps you optimise your decision-making process over time, finding the choices that customers respond well to, and leaning into them while avoiding the outcomes you don’t want to see.