How to do the Marketing research for Small and medium scale industry

The data, the numbers, the confusing graphs, Venn diagrams, obscure and never ending parameters; market research could be a very tedious job, particularly for the small and medium scale business owners.

However, as an entrepreneur, your prerogative is not only to survive but to focus on the growth. For that, market research is your business holy grail.

Digital marketing is a tool which helps the people with questions; meet the people with the answers. For that, market research is an essential tool which helps you do the job efficiently.

What does marketing research include?

This is perhaps the first step of any digital marketing strategy. The success of your marketing strategy mostly depends on how well you understand your customers. Listed below is a set by step approach on how to conduct a thorough Marketing research for your Digital Marketing strategies.

Step 1 – Decide your goals

Effective market research is possible only when you identify what you want to know. Do not get carried away with the question. Prioritize your business objectives and try to find the answers to each of your objectives. If you are finding it difficult to set your priorities listed below are few common questions that every businessman have before conducting market research.

1. Most of the businessmen would like to understand if their business is a solution to the problem that people actually have.

2. Who are their target audience and what are their information sources?

3. What is the price the customers are willing to pay for their products or services?

4. What are the customer’s expectations? (Like add on’s, offers)

5. What do customers not like among the available options? (Including yours)

6. How is the market distributed among the competitors?

Step 2 – Identify your ideal customers

You cannot assume that everyone loves your business just because you think it is great. Understand what motivates the customers to do business with you. For that, you will have to understand who they are.

Imagine your ideal customer and give them a character. These characters are called buyer persona or marketing personas. Segment your audience personas and organize them and develop the strategies that appeal to them.

Step 3 – Compile the list of questions you would ask your ideal customers.

Ask the question you want to ask your ideal buyers. Fit into your customer’s shoes and think from their perspective. Develop a hypothesis on how they will answer your questions. While answering the questions, having analytical approach will help you think of potential follow-up questions. Leave no stone unturned and explore all the options for logical scrutiny.

Imagine you drafted a set of questions for which a segment of your customers may respond positively and another segment negatively. Yours follow up question should be to understand why a particular segment’s response is positive, negative or why they are indifferent.

Step 3- Decide Qualitative or Quantitative

Quantitative research is used to gather the information from the people by asking them for their opinions in a defined structure. The information you gather from the answers provide you the statistical and factual data which can help your strategics. The quantitative research, the survey is conducted among the large numbers of the people.

Qualitative research gives you the insight into the underlying reasons for the opinions, motives, and choices. It provides deeper and administrative analysis of the problem and reveals the relevant thoughts and opinions on that particular issue. The data is gathered by conducting a survey among the small sections of the focus groups and through observations.

Off late, the social media channels and the mobile devices have the subscriber data which allow you to observe the user’s emotions, consumer’s buying patterns and other market trends.

Step 4 – Time to ask real people some questions

Big market players have a huge database which they use to understand the market. The independent marketing agencies and the freelancers will have to initiate the process right from the start. This is a blessing in disguise because the consumer’s choices and the buying attitudes are always changing. The research will give you fresh into insights into the consumer data which is left unexplored.

You can reach out to your existing customers and ask them to reply to your questionnaire. Gather the list of the customers who inquired about your business showed interest but did not make a purchase. You can ask people to participate in a contest in social media and ask them the questions. The social media analytics will ensure you reach the right segment of the audience.

What you should not forget about the PPC campaigns

The digital marketers often put immense efforts to create a PPC campaign which is so captivating that people are more than happy to click it. The reality, however, is something else.

Though the Pay per click campaigns are 21 years old, the marketers are yet to master the paid campaigns on the search engines. The platform is ever-changing so much so that, what is relevant 6 months ago, could become an outdated practice today. 

Most of the marketers dive into creating paid campaigns with unclear goals and vague understanding of the metrics. Regardless of the experience, one cannot ignore the fundamentals on which the campaign runs. The campaigners who overlook this fact end up making fewer conversions. 

A new campaign manager is likely to make a few beginner mistakes but this blog is an attempt to list out a few aspects that any professional marketer should consider before and while executing the Pay per click campaign.

Before running the campaign

1.    Not defining the Goals

What is the point of starting a journey when you do not know where to go? A marketer should know what they are expecting from the PPC campaign. Scrutinize the data to determine the campaign goals.

The campaign goals help the marketers understand how to steer the PPC campaigns to get the desired results. In order to get there, the marketer should analyze the brand’s position in the market. Determining the market position will help the campaigners assess opportunities threats, strengths. The market analysis also reveals the weaknesses which could affect the results of the campaign.

By evaluating the brand's market status, the campaigners can have data-driven, measurable and realistic targets. It is a waste of money if the campaign goal is not pre-defined.

2.    Search, Display, Social PPC campaigns are different

It is important to understand the difference between the above three campaign. Not realizing the differences between them could be a costly mistake. The difference is the user's intent.

Search Engine Marketing is trying to reach the qualified user on the internet through paid search listings.

The target consumers for the search campaigns could be categorized into

•    Active online searchers of the business related products or services.

•    Appreciates smooth and easy experience.

•    Likely to react to the sales pitch

The Display Ad focuses on targeting the audiences who are not familiar with the brand but are conducting business related searches.

The consumers for the display ads are likely to have the below-mentioned behavior

•    “The intent to shop” pointer swings from medium to low. They could be future high-intent buyers. They are likely to not react to the ad copies

•    Unlikely to understand the product or service the business is providing.

•    Will appreciate more information about the business.

•    May react to subtle persuasion.

The Paid social advertising targets the qualified audiences who are looking for the business related products or services and the existing followers on the social media platforms.

The audiences for the social media campaigns are likely to have the below-mentioned characteristics

• The audiences are unlikely to make a purchase immediately.

• Not interested in the detailed information about the business.

• Will appreciate and subscribe to the seamless and consistent experience from the ad to the landing page.

It is important to categorize the qualified online consumers; target them with the relevant advertisement which addresses their requirements. It is very important to customize the landing page and the ad copy for the target audience.

3. Not mixing up the keywords

It is of paramount importance for the campaign managers to aim and bid for the high performing keywords. The data analysis will help in understanding the keywords.

The marketers should conduct a thorough research and understand the search patterns. Tools like Uber suggest, SEM rush and Keyword planner (for Google search campaigns) will give the marketers an idea of how people were searching for their business related products or services.

After the hummingbird update, the long-tail keywords have become relevant to the SEO and SEM strategy.

It is important for the marketers to pick the keywords by categorizing the potential consumers as people “who may need the products or services in the future”, “high-intent shoppers who are looking for other options” and “people who have already decided.”

The target keywords should have the right mix of long tail keywords and specific search phrases that target the above-categorized consumers. The marketers can avoid attracting the unwanted traffic by identifying and using the negative keywords.

4.    Not checking the conversion funnel

It is always too late to test the website's conversion funnel if you are doing it after the campaign is active. Most of the Digital campaigners forget to check the conversion funnel before starting the campaign.

The high-intent customer who clicks the campaign expects seamless smooth experience, where he can register with his contact details or easily conduct the sale transaction and check-out.

 Dysfunctional or poor quality landing page will be a costly mistake. The marketer should test the landing page before starting the campaign.

5.    Creating Ad copies that are easy to ignore

Often, marketers get carried away with the market research and data analysis that they end up creating an Ad copy which is best described as average.

The campaign managers should remember that the competitors are also trying to target the online users with same online search and buying intent. It is important to understand what the competitors are doing; not to mimic them, but to do something different.

This is where the campaign managers should bring in their creative expertise to create the compelling ads that inspire the targeted audiences to click on the ad and respond to the call for action.

During the campaign

Running the paid campaign for the first time is an overwhelming experience for the Digital marketers. There are several metrics to focus and often one or the other if forgotten.

The great advantage of the digital marketing is it allows optimizing the campaign to perform better when the campaign is active. A few aspects to consider when the campaign is active are listed below

1.    Get rid of non-performing keywords

A quality search marketing campaigner can assess the performance of keywords as soon as the campaign is active. The long-tail keywords may take some time to show results but the monitoring specific keyword performance is important.

Often the campaign managers get carried away with adding new keywords to test without discarding the non-performing keywords.

The non-performing keywords attract unqualified prospects to the landing page. The bounce rate is likely to go high because the destination where they land is not specifically what they are looking for.

Cost per click will grow higher with lower conversion rates. The following process helps to evaluate the keyword performance.

•    The Click through rate should be high which should also compliment the quality score which should not be, low. If these two factors are low, then the cost per click is higher. Meaning, the marketer is spending more money on the non-performing keyword.

•    The Cost per acquisition should be pre-determined while establishing the goals. The keywords with low click through rates (usually less than 1%) and with the higher cost per acquisition should be removed.

It is alright to get rid of the non-performing keywords. Optimize the campaign with the keywords that are registering more conversions.

2.    Not using Google Value track parameters

The search engines help the marketers track every aspect of the campaign. The insights give a detailed picture to help improve the efficiency of the campaigns. However, the account managers often lose focus and end up following the wrong metrics.

The campaigners should use the Google value track parameters to understand the data and optimize the campaign to generate better results.

The value track parameters measure the landing page efficiency and gather the information about the sources from where the ad is getting the clicks.

Marketers can check the campaign relevancy with the help of the same value track parameters. The value track parameters are extremely useful for the account managers to understand and track the campaign’s performance.

3.    Not having a daily budget strategy

Not every investor is same. Sometimes, the account managers have to manage to run the campaign and generate the desired results within the limited budget. In such scenarios, the marketers have to get little creative.

Marketers can schedule the ads by activating the campaigns only during the peak times. The bids can be lowered or completely turned off at certain times. Campaign managers should closely observe the time when the traffic is responding positively to the campaign. Ad scheduling is one effective way to manage the daily budget of the campaign.

Measuring the campaign

1.    Cost per lead does not determine the success of the campaign

 Cost per lead is one of the important metrics but focusing only on the lead generation is a huge mistake. The purpose of the search ad campaigns has shifted from merely generating clicks to motivating the qualified traffic to register with the business.

The cost per lead is an indicator but does not measure the success of the campaign. Many campaigners may have faced the situation where the cost per lead is more yet the profits registered are low.

The focus of the campaigners should be on the profits. Thorough data analysis will give you an insight on the basic bottom line. Observe the keywords which attract low costs per sale and the search terms that are generating more conversions. The focus of the marketer is to generate the return on the investment.

2.    Avoiding call tracking

 When the campaign objective is to generate sales leads, the follow-up schedule is quite important. The campaign managers should understand that the phone calls are the important source to generate sales.

The Google’s call forwarding feature helps us track the calls and schedule the appointments with the clients.

Call tracking is not a difficult process to follow. The forwarding numbers used in the ad copy call extensions and record the calls to the ad group. Marketers can place a tiny code in a site that replaces the contact number with the forwarding number. This allows the marketers to track how many calls the campaigns have generated from the website.

In conclusions, the above-mentioned aspects are several pointers that are often overlooked by both the experienced and the new PPC campaign managers. It is important to register these aspects during several stages of the PPC ad campaigns to deliver better results and generate the better return on investments.