What is the First Step in the Marketing Research Process? A Detailed Insight

Market research as the term suggests, is getting an overview of the market that you’re operating in. In simple words, I would say, it is all about understanding the people in and around it, plus your place in it. If you are in business you must understand the complete marketing research process.

Basically, it is a step-wise collection and curation of data from consumers, suppliers as well and competitors to get a clear understanding of the reach of your brand. I think that’s very crucial for any business. I’m saying this because it is about how your brand is performing and if the target market is being tapped.

Not only this, but you also understand your marketing and advertising working, consumer attitudes towards your brand, and your market share in your sector, compared to your competitors.

So, if you are keen to be aware of all these, you need to analyze data after background information, conduct surveys, and ask research questions to the target audience.

The Entire Marketing Research Process Is Carried Out in Five Steps

1. Identifying the Problem

The first step in the marketing research process is to identify the problem and define it in a way, you are trying to provide a solution for.

Put up all questions in a specific research methodology by including inputs from industry experts, potential customers, and other organizations, involved in the decision-making process for your brand.

Get clarity on the objective that has to be fulfilled, with a complete and detailed understanding of all marketing conditions.

The Icy Whiz team interviewed Omer Lewinsohn, General Manager and Marketing Expert at Management.org, and discussed the most effective strategies for identifying and defining specific marketing problems through research. Here is what he said:

“Effective strategies for identifying and defining specific marketing problems involve thorough market research, including analyzing consumer behavior, market trends, and competitor activities.

Conducting surveys, focus groups, and data analysis helps pinpoint areas of concern and opportunities for improvement.

Aligning these strategies with consumer needs and organizational objectives requires a deep understanding of both.

By integrating consumer feedback into decision-making processes and regularly evaluating organizational goals, marketing strategies can be tailored to meet both consumer demands and business objectives.

This ensures that research efforts are targeted toward addressing relevant issues and ultimately lead to impactful solutions that benefit both consumers and the organization.”

2. Develop the Research Plan

For the problems that have been identified, in the first step you have to develop a plan to conduct marketing research, so that we can find ways to answer those questions.

Usually, there are two ways of data collection :

• Primary Research– This way of data collection involves surveys, personal interviews, and other consumer research processes that provide the most accurate results. Although they are very time-consuming, I believe they are the best ways for data mining to build a marketing research plan.
• Secondary Research– These are methods to gather data in an indirect manner. This involves using the existing data present on government websites or research reports. There is not much knowledge discovery from these methods instead they help you to derive diverse techniques to approach the data collected from your primary research.

3. Collecting Data

Now that the problem definition is done, and the research problem has been probed, it is time to follow the research design planned in the second step.

• A/B Testing– This research methodology helps you understand which of the two versions of a layout works better and helps you reach your marketing goal. It helps to determine the same by taking reviews of users, analyzing their engagement, and checking which variable gives better results. For example – A post for Instagram might be blue in color or red in color, which is better can be tested by this method.
• Focus Groups– Collect a set of people based on similarity in age or spending capacity or other demographic ways, and put them together in a conversion to get their opinions about your product, your objectives, and marketing as well. In a focus group, there is a better understanding of the group as well as individual behavior to avoid bias in any form.
• Social Media Polls– This is a quick and easy method of collecting user information, primarily their desire and opinion about your product or service. It is inexpensive and effective when you have a good following on your handles and helps you provide some possible answers in a very short time, which can help you to make further informed decisions.

Noel Griffith, CMO at SupplyGem, emphasized collaborating with stakeholders to define specific marketing problems. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

“In my decades of experience as a marketing researcher, I’ve found that the most effective strategy for identifying and defining specific marketing problems is to take a collaborative, discovery-based approach with stakeholders.

Rather than making assumptions or decisions in a silo, have in-depth conversations to unpack the business and research needs.

Ask smart, probing questions to get to the heart of the issues, drill into the details, and determine root causes. Approach it as a learning process, not just a problem-diagnosis exercise. This discovery phase sets the foundation for research that provides true insights and impact.”

4. Data Analysis

All the data that has been collected needs to be analyzed and evaluated to understand the marketing problem and the management problem. A thorough study will explain what are the trends in your business, what marketing decisions led to customer satisfaction, and what are the drawbacks of your product/service.

There are a few data analysis procedures –

• Descriptive Research Analysis– Putting out data in a descriptive manner like charts or graphs. Presenting in a form that gives clarity and provides a complete screenshot of the entire data collection.
• Predictive Analytics– Using data from the past that has been gathered via reliable sources to make forecasts about the coming quarter or next season. Works in a correlation manner, after finding two factors that depend on each other with pragmatic considerations.
• Diagnostic Analysis– A basic method of finding the reason behind a problem, or reason behind a growth. For example, if you see increased engagement on your website, you need to figure out if it’s your new marketing process or something else.

5. Interpretation of Results and Plan of Action

After all the tedious groundwork is done it’s time to incorporate everything into a detailed report. It contains all the interpretations, conclusions, and primary research data for your marketing research project.

It will also include all company-specific details, the important findings like opinions of the customers, reviews from the field force, exploratory research outcomes, and quantitative data along with secondary data.

All the above is then submitted to the concerned organization, and steps to execute them are discussed.

What will be the changes in your marketing strategy, how does the product need to change, and how will the set targets of sales be achieved by forming a doable plan of action for all?

It will also provide an understanding of some values or concepts of the company or the employees need any changes.

In an interview with the Icy Whiz team, Alex Taylor, Head of Marketing at CrownTV, suggested qualitative research for identifying and defining specific marketing problems. Here is what he said:

“In my experience, the most effective strategy for identifying and defining specific marketing problems that need research is to start with thorough qualitative research.

Interviewing a wide range of stakeholders—including customers, salespeople, customer service reps, executives, etc.—allows you to gather diverse perspectives on where the pain points and opportunities lie.

Qualitative research paints a nuanced picture of the problem landscape and reveals the “unknown unknowns” that quantitative data often misses. From there, you can zero in on the highest priority issues and refine them into targeted research questions.

For example, when working with a B2B software company struggling with low customer retention, our stakeholder interviews surfaced a range of hypotheses—everything from pricing and positioning issues to product gaps to service problems.

But a pattern emerged around customers feeling “nickel-and-dimed” by upsells, add-ons, and maintenance fees.

We were then able to focus quantitative surveys specifically on drilling into this issue and sizing the revenue risk. The discovery of the nickel-and-dime problem was only possible through open-ended engagement with stakeholders.”

Now, You See Marketing Research Is Necessary for Any Business

Marketing research is necessary to have a better connection with your audience and competitors and to get a clear understanding of your business operations and their outcomes.

It helps you to decide a better way to conduct a specific process and acquire more benefits. It also tells you what changes are necessary and how they should be implemented. I hope this piece of information will help you in understanding the process better.

Guest Author: Saket Kumar

Last Updated on May 13, 2024 by Pragya