To understand market potential and successfully reach customers, first of all a framework of market and customers questions that business leaders, product management and market researchers need to answer. Secondly we look at sources of data that don’t require a budget to enable you to start answering these strategic marketing questions.
(Presentation from Product Camp Dublin 2013)
7 Ways to Understand the Market and Customer without a Budget
Part 1 – Structuring Market Research
Questions to answer:
- ‘What’ your organization should bring to market?
- Keep abreast of market changes
- Understand customers needs
Qualitative and Quantitative
- NEVER USE A SINGLE SOURCE
- TRENDS BEAT DATA POINTS …. months / years
Market Trends Research Questions
What larger changes in the market that are causing customer to make different choices related to your offering?
- New technologies
- New influencers
- Growth trends
- Pricing changes
Market Size Research Questions
- What’s the total available market in units and revenue for you and the competition in the target geography?
Market Segmentation Research Questions
- Considering all the customers, can they be divided up into similar groups?
- How can the market be divided up?
- E.g. shoe market; women’s, men’s, sports shoes
- E.g. pay-as-you-go, bill pay
- E.g. internal HR/recruiters, recruitment agencies / platforms
Customer Persona Research Questions
What does the ecosystem of your customers look like? What are the needs, painpoints, responsibilities, key concerns, influencers and information sources of your customer persona.
<Given them a Name>
- Externally who are their existing partners and providers?
- Channel partners
- Fortune 500 vendors
- The IT savvy daughter
- Suppliers
- Internally who holds sway?
- Finance
- IT
- Sales
- Responsibility
- What does their job description look like?
- What happens on a day to day basis, as well as, weekly/monthly/etc?
- What are their key concerns?
- What is the context into which your offering must fit?
- What articles and email subscriptions do they read? What their others sources of information such as events and conferences?
Pricing Research Questions
- What is your and the competitions;
- ERP Average End User Price (ERP)
- Channel Margin Needs
- Average Selling Price (out your/competitors door)
- MLO (material, labour, overheads)
- Fixed Costs (hosting, IT ops)
- Gross Margin (ASP less MLO)
Competitor Research Questions / Overview
- What are this competitor’s company
- internal strengths?
- internal weaknesses?
- external opportunities?
- external threats?
- How does the competitors’ offering compare to ours?
Part 2: Market Research Data Sources
(and a few cool tools)
Market Trends Sources
- What larger changes in the market may cause customers to make different choices related to your offering?
- Google AdWords
- Google Trends
- Sample question: Are people more inclined to use the term; ‘resellers’ or ‘partners’?
- Gapminder.org
- Sample question: in which countries are people living longest?
Market Size & Segmentation Data Sources
- What’s the total available market in units and revenue for you and the competition in the target geography?
- All of the Tools /Sources From Market Trends
- Facebook Insights, Twitter Ads,
- 3rd Party Market Research Organizations
- Gartner, Nielsen, McKinsey, IDC and, and, and…
- Press releases, webinars, tweets and, and, and …
Pricing Research Sources
- What are your, and your competitions’ pricing structure?
- Web search on channel partners sites
- Search on catalog and broad-based eCommerce sites
- Ask customers and partners about adjacent offering
Competitor Market Research Sources
- What are your competitors strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
- Read their marketing materials
- Read product literature. Insider tip => user manuals are a wonderful source of limitation and other insights
- Ask your channel partners
- Subscribe to competitor AND adjacencies emails, etc
Customer Persona Data Sources Sources
- What are the needs, painpoints, responsibilities, key concerns, influencers and information sources for your customers and potential customers?
- Ask your marketing, sales and support people
- Read your support forums and reviews
- Utilize In-product feedback forms
- Review your website analytics (such as Google Analytics)
- Do face to face usability testing
- Use free surveys
- Talk to customers:
- form a product council
- make a goal to survey (call) 1- 3 customers a week/month.
- Ask your marketing, sales and support people
Further Market Research Sources
Select favourites (favorites) of market research articles / sources:
- Fast Company Magazine
- Silicon Republic
- How To Research A New Marketing / Business Opportunity
- Enterprise Ireland Clients Market Research Center
How To Get Market Research Done?
- Figure out the priority of your information needs;
- Market Trends, Size, Segmentation, Share
- Customer Ecosysten, Profile, Problems and Needs
- Pricing & Competition
- Dedicate some time i.e. schedule it
- When something comes between you and your market research, don’t delete it: move it.
- Warning: read, and ideally, go to the source of all data.
For more details and examples of free market research data sources see the PowerPoint.
- Sources of B2B Market Research Data
- B2B Customer Persona Development Framework
- Voice of the Customer Research