From foundational to advanced, market research is a powerful tool through which you can discern what your customers are looking for in service, product or idea – and helps prepare you in advance to stay competitive.
Be it market surveys, focus groups, interviews, user personas, or secondary research – conducting market research can be effective for your organisation. Especially when you’re aiming to build a promising thought leadership for your organisation in the market, you have to develop curiosity for the market developments. Factors like market dynamics, the product-market fit, or planning your go-to market strategy – all underpin the fact that thought leadership is not ‘faddish’; it is rooted in practical know-how of your executive expertise and industry outlook. When market research is parlayed into powerful marketing campaigns and brand narrative, it can speak the voice of your founders and their market confluence: of services, value(s) and customer experience.
That said, below are 3 ways in which you can optimize your market research into strengthening your organisation’s thought leadership.
Insights-driven PR and content marketing strategy. Market research has two facets: qualitative and quantitative. Brand storytelling needs a blend of both objective and subjective insights to create a holistic and inclusive brand imagery. This is when you marry research data (industry stats, market performance, etc) with content, you create data-driven insights that can help you carve both short-term and long-term content and PR strategy. These insights can be employed for multiple marketing purposes – like news release, executive summary, infographic, videos, etc. Grounded in data insights, you can map your thought leadership content with business objectives to realise market outcomes.
Founder’s [Fresh] take on trends, industry challenges and issues. Straight from the founder’s desk comes a fresh market perspective on industry discoveries and trends that support your business. Per CMI, 57 percent of marketers feel publishing original research is an effective content tactic. Original research empowers founders to cite their own Point Of View in regards to any business issue, trend or market development. As excellent output of this blended research activity – that is, a mix of primary and secondary research – could be an original research report that could be used by all your organisation’s stakeholders for their tailored business requirements. Audience loves companies that question the status-quo and bring new possibilities and business viewpoints through factual information and rationale.
Competitor intelligence. Your competitive landscape is ever-evolving. This is where conducting secondary research is powerful. Understanding the holistic market and its undercurrents can help your organisation to position itself differently as opposed to your competitors. A thorough SWOT and PESTLE analysis paired with your competitor’s marketing strategy can arm you with whitespaces that can be optimized by your organisation in the market. Perhaps your competitor’s whitepaper on IoT performs as a great inbound gated content offer for its customers; you can similarly conduct first-hand research though focus groups, surveys and interviews to come up with original insights through a relevant POV on a similar topic. By augmenting your perspective through grounded market research with relevant industry stats and customer observations, your thought leadership solidifies in the market.
Makes research informs your marketing strategy by helping you understand your customers on a deeper level.
How are you employing market research to support your thought leadership goals?
Photo by David Travis on Unsplash
