Here we are, at the end of this series on Market Research. Now comes the fun part. Here is where we take the information we gained in the other steps and craft our message to the target market based on market research. But how to interpret the market research into vibrant marketing messages?
The survey data you collected is now going to arm you with a message that provides what your target market is wanting or lacking. In other words, you are going to be able to translate these problems into some useful solution.
You might choose the name of your company to address the biggest fear your audience or customers have.You can also present various advertisements that offer specific answers to their questions and concerns.
Let’s look at an example to illustrate what we mean by this.
Our business is in Florida. It is hot here. So, air conditioning is a pretty big deal. Let’s say, we were working with an air conditioning provider and service company. We might help them with a survey that went like this…
We may start off by asking some rapport-building questions:
• Where they live?
• Do they own or rent?
• How old is their AC system?
Once we move through those basic questions we move onto questions that will actually reveal their true thoughts on the subject being surveyed:
• Who serviced your AC last time it broke?
• What did you love about their service?
• Did anything drive you crazy about the process?
• What do you wish they offered?
What do we do with all this information we collected?
Now, you are going to take all your data and put them into groupings or categories based on their answers. We are going to tabulate it.
What does tabulate mean?
To arrange figures or information together in a set or list so that it can be easily compared and analyzed.
By doing this we figure out what most people think. In other words, what’s does most of the homeowners in this area see as the problems.
We can drill down by demographic information and learn even more.
Probably the best way to think about this was on the old game show, Family Feud with Richard Dawson. Remember, he would ask a question and then the top six or seven answers would be hidden and ranked based on how many people said that in their interview.
It’s the same idea here, only nothing is hidden. We are looking for patterns to craft our solutions.
In our example of the air conditioning company maybe we learned that many of the folks we surveyed fit into these categories:
• They lived in the suburbs and owned their own homes
• Their AC systems were about 10 years old and they dreaded the annual service because it seemed too expensive and hard to get an appointment
• It made them mad that they had to wait around all day for the repair technician to show up and they often only could get service during weekdays without paying a huge after hours premium.
So, what could this lead you to do? You might:
• Ensure that your website has all the suburbs listed as areas your company services.
• Leave a coupon for 15% off annual service if scheduled before the busy season.
• Offer appointments on weekends and later in the day
• Promise that your technicians arrive within one hour for any emergency repair with no costly “after-hours” charge.
• You might even call your company “60-Minute AC Solutions”
This would position you far ahead of any business that just did generic marketing.
Why?
Because you are giving the market exactly what it asked for.
For now, we just wanted to give you a nice high-level overview so you could begin to think about marketing thoughtfully and decide what to do next. If you need help with your survey project, contact me and I can give you tips!