The business landscape is rapidly evolving. Once strictly reliant on qualitative market research techniques, you now have access to complex data points through multiple sources to extract insights like customer behaviors or buying habits.
However, sifting through analytics can seem like a cumbersome task when you’re managing a startup. To help derive insights and patterns from data, market research is a useful tool to collect and analyze information from your relevant audiences.
What are the different market research techniques? Let’s dive into various mathematical tactics you can use to amplify your startup growth.
Quick takeaways:
- Market research helps you analyze information to create a better customer experience
- Using both quantitative and qualitative research helps you make more informed decisions
- Statistics help you avoid psychological bias and focus on audience preferences
What Is Market Research?
Accounting for over $74 billion global revenue, market research is the practice of using different techniques to gather information and better understand your target audience. Your startup can use market research to design better products, enhance the user experience, and develop more in-depth marketing campaigns that increase your bottom line.
There are two types of market research. Qualitative research consists of focus groups, interviews, and other exercises designed to produce non-numeric outputs. Quantitative research validates hypotheses from qualitative research by collecting statistically-significant samples of customer data and building actionable models.
Why Does Market Research Matter?
Market research helps you target the right audience, at the right time, on the right platform. Performing market research not only allows you to minimize campaign expenses but also establishes mathematical confidence behind your decisions.
Research helps you avoid any psychological bias in your decision-making process. Instead of following a gut instinct or a handful of individual opinions, you can utilize a broader scope to make informed decisions for your startup to deliver on KPIs and ROI.
5 Quantitative Market Research Techniques
Using a wide variety of statistical marketing techniques can help you effectively analyze patterns and improve your marketing and sales campaigns. Once you develop a hypothesis and conduct primary research, you’ll need to move towards larger scope market research to establish fiscal modeling.
To get started, here are a few quantitative market research techniques:
Regression Analysis
Regression analysis demonstrates how multiple independent variables impact a dependent variable. Used for predictive analytics, it helps you understand what elements will have the most impact and influence on your customer relationships. For example, you can use regression analysis to determine how likely a customer is to recommend your product based on price, incentive, website navigation, etc.
The T-test
The T-test compares the means of two normally distributed groups to interpret whether the differences are statistically significant or coincidental. For example, you conduct a survey with two sample customer groups in different geographic regions about a product feature. Let’s say Group A rated your startup’s product 8/10 and Group B rated your product 4/10. A T-test would help you determine the probability that your product is really better or if Group A contained a lot of customers with more positive experiences.
Cluster Analysis
One of the more popular market research techniques, cluster analysis processes datasets to determine how the individual data points are related. Cluster analysis is an ideal way to identify categories like earning brackets, age groups, location, etc. for audience segmentation. Once you see a pattern from cluster analysis, you’ll be more successful at delivering targeting messaging to your customer groups.
Conjoint Analysis
If you’re looking to predict why your customers make complex purchase decisions, conjoint analysis is an ideal way to earn answers. Conjoint analysis asks your customers to make trade-off decisions so you can understand the most popular outcome and your startup’s value. For example, you can determine your target audience’s ideal price point, communication preference, messaging, etc.
Text and Sentiment Analysis
Relatively new to data processing, analyzing human language can provide your startup an outlook into the customer experience. Machine learning can process and categorize data from texts, emails, reviews, chatbots, and more to analyze trends and help you make a positive change.
Conduct Market Research to Boost Your Startup Growth
While you can choose from a variety of qualitative and quantitative market research techniques, it’s important to put your resources into the tactics that target your goals. Whether you’re looking to grow brand awareness or convert more leads for your startup, the research techniques you choose should always funnel up to boosting your bottom line.
Ready to accelerate your startup growth? Complete Sellerant’s Growth Acceleration Starting Grid to get started.