Market Research will identify the right markets, products and customer segments for your business.
There is a broad selection of research types that can be conducted by a Market Research Agency. Our specialities at Stratigence focus on finding out the information you need to know in order to develop the right strategy for your business. Some of the more frequent areas we delve into are:
Customer Interviews: Why do our customers choose us? What can we do better? What types of buyers do we want to encourage?
Target Lists: We need more sales, what customer segment should we focus on? We need to find new partners in a new market. We are looking to acquire a business or divest our business, who could be interested?
Market Assessments: We are having a lot of interest from a new market, should we launch there? We have exhausted our market and the cost of customer acquisition is increasing so we are ready to enter a new market, what location should this be in?
Product or Service Validation: We have an idea for a new product or service, how do we know if it has potential?
Net Promoter Score: Is the loyalty dynamic shifting within your customer base and if so why?
Market Research that is Fit for Purpose
One of the greatest considerations for any research activity is assessing what level of insight or depth of understanding is required in order to be comfortable in making that business decision. We are conscious that you need to be happy with the risk and reward that comes from the insights we provide. Fundamentally this is where we sit as a business ensuring your research is fit for purpose. For example, some studies we would recommend several hundred hours invested across multiple cross-referenced research insights. While in other scenarios, 20 hours would be more than adequate to enable a robust business decision.
Market Research that Highlights Statistical Sensitivities
Understanding the statistical significance of any research exercise is an important consideration as part of your strategic decision making. When we work on a smaller engagement, we can run a sensitivity analysis to ensure any potential risks are understood.
Market Research that relies on multiple sources of data
Stratigence brings together multiple research sources to ensure the robustness of the insights. Some sources we frequently rely on are in-depth customer interviews, publicly available research tools, apps and publications as well as third-party validated publications.
Customer In-Depth Interviews
Target Lists
Target lists are a great place to start for effiicient proactive prospecting. Whether you are looking for a potential buyer of your business, to acquire a business or product line, a new partner or purely want to indentify prospective customers to grow your sales pipeline, target lists are a great place to start. The key to a great target list is first identifying the right strategy and selecting a segment of the market that have the greatest potential for genuine interest in what you have to offer. It then comes down to how closely your business and the prospective businesses are aligned on company values, growth trajectory, size of business, network accessibility along with a number of other critical considerations.
The best target lists are those that carefully considered, where the market research greatly improves your rate of success.
Market Assessments
At Stratigence, we run market assessments purely to evaluate new markets and the potential within these markets. It is a detailed and objective evaluation that will provide an insight into future financial returns. A number of factors are considered including environmental forces, market trends, entry barriers, competition, risks, opportunities and the companies resources and constraints.
Launching into a market is a costly exercise, so picking the right market is integral to success. Too often, NZ businesses launch into new local markets as well as international markets, without doing a comprehensive assessment as some of the precipitating factors look favourable. Often these companies end up having to pull out of these markets 2-3 years down the track.
A well-executed market assessment will enable your company to decide where to invest, what markets to go after and the opportunities that will provide the best returns on investments.
Product or Service Validation
You’ve got a great idea, no one is currently offering this product or service and you want to know whether it’s got legs? A product or service validation is a great place to start. Often these market research projects are combined with a market assessment to identify the optimal markets for your idea. It is then a matter of understanding what level of interest there could be for your idea, how readily this could be taken up prospective customers and how easy it would be to roll-out worldwide. These projects begin with a number of assumptions that need to be tested and validated and this can be done through a mix of benchmark analysis, algorithm studies as well as some in-depth interviews.
What if your idea is not unique? Don’t let this throw a spanner in the works, there is still plenty of potential in being 2nd, 3rd, 4th and even 5th to market. There is almost always a way to find our differential advantage and often those in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th to market actually have more potential to make greater profits.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
We love a good Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey. If you have more than 200 customers on your books, this is a great way to gauge engagement, loyalty and how this is shifting. It’s a fantastic tool to benchmark your business to others in your industry as well as review your customer loyalty strategy, identifying ways to improve your customer engagement moving them to advocates of your product or service.
We use a tool that will work behind the scenes collecting data across every day of the month, so it’s not a once-off exercise. It provides great early indicators as to whether or not you are exceeding customer expectations and dashboards are often incorporated into companies Board pack.
How do our Market Research Projects Work?
Need more information before you are comfortable making that strategic decision? Stratigence can help determine what research should be conducted, complete the market research and provide recommendations on the next steps. This is what our engagement process looks like:
Initial Consultation
Statement of Works
We then document your requirements into a statement of works, outlining Stratigence’s recommendations on a suitable market research project for your business.
Agree a Start Date
When you are happy with the statement of works, a start date is agreed.
Onboarding
We commence our relationship on that start date, working closely with the key stakeholders of your organisation and their teams. This is when our research phase will kick into action.
Delivery
Depending on the size of the project, we may have weekly review sessions for the duration of the project, or for shorter market research projects we will set up a delivery meeting where we take you through all our findings, answer your questions and provide strategic recommendations.