Market research and analysis is a key factor in determining if a product should be launched or even invested in. Every startup or business launching a new product needs market research of some kind. Just because you can’t hire a huge marketing firm doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get the research done.
You can do it yourself or work with smaller firms or freelancers. Either way, everyone needs market research. Especially for those looking to start a any crowdfunding campaign, knowing something about the market is very important. Here are some tips about market research and how you get set yourself up for success.
Finding similar products
One of the first things, and usually the easiest, is to search for similar products. These products can be found all over. While it might be tempting to just look at Amazon and the first page of Google, don’t stop there.
Products get listed on many other websites, and in niche markets, they are often on their own website. Research in very small niches are sometimes hard to find because of terrible SEO or limited information. Make sure you know your niche, see our blog post Defining your Niche – Why it Matters, it’s very important.
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What’s a SWOT analysis
You probably have heard of them, and maybe even done one before. But in case you don’t know what one is, it’s simply defining your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Strengths can be anything that gives you a leg up on competition. Weaknesses are areas that can be taken advantage of by your competition. Opportunities are areas that you aren’t the best at, but you can easily improve if focused on.
Threats are anything that actively can limit or harm your product success. This puts all your information easily read format to make decisions about what to focus on first. You can use this tool for almost anything.
Market Placement Matrix
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This is something we include when doing market research for a new product. We pick the two most important ways we can measure a product and divide a space in quarters.
Each line represents two ends of a spectrum. For example, we could use Angular & Round, and Expensive and Cheap as the spectrums. This now creates for unique quadrants that we place competitors on, and then see where there are gaps in the market.
Maybe all Angular products in this category are cheap, that would mean that Expensive Angular products have little to no competition and could be a good direction to go. It’s a tool that’s used by designers when looking at design options as well but can be used effectively for market analysis.
Can’t Find Competition?
Well, there are a couple reasons that might be happening. One possibility is not looking in the right places, there are more places to look that you might think.
Another is that they haven’t released the product yet. Doing a patent search is usually the next place to search if you haven’t seen any public products.
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Getting Help
While it can be money savvy to do it yourself at the beginning, don’t be afraid to bring in professional help before you invest. Having a professional opinion is always a good idea before diving into investing, or trying to get investors, on a project.
Be smart about who you hire to help you, they probably won’t be able to show you examples as these market research is often protected under NDA. These points are a great starting place to ask questions and make sure they know what they are talking about.
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These tips will help you start doing your own market research. When you are ready to hire a firm to help you, you’ll know some points to go over to make sure they are knowledgeable in market research. Keep in mind that you should know if you want in depth marketing research or something brief.
You should know what you want out of the research. This is why some market research is a few thousand, and sometimes it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars to do. Market research is a baseline for building a marketing plan for your product.
While this isn’t always needed very early on, it can be a good investment. Keep in mind market research isn’t always needed if you are looking to just sell your idea outright.
We provide market research and analysis for our clients, typically to support new product launches. With that said, we’ve done market research and analysis for many different uses, including at the business level. We typically provide some market strategies and the execution of those strategies.
Our Market Briefs contain all the points above, plus some other items that our clients have found beneficial. These all help with making financial and investment decisions about launching a new product.
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Market Research – 3 Ways to Get It
Market Research is something that everyone should get when launching a new product. As we’ve talked about before in 5 Tips for Market Research & Analysis, there is quite a bit of information that you can get even from a low level Market Research done by people who know what they are doing. What we didn’t discuss was where and how to get this done for your product. Here are the three best ways to get Market Research for your business or product. Yourself This is the lowest cost way to do this if you do it right. I recommend that even if you hire a Firm or a freelancer to do it for you, you should spend a little time doing some yourself. If you catch something that is really bad or looks really great, you can tell whoever you hire about it, and they can confirm or contradict what you’ve found. There are tons of resources online about how to do market research, what things to think about, etc. Start there, and if you feel confident enough in your product, or business, then go for it. The downside of course is that while you can get lots of resources online and do it for “cheap”, it takes a lot of time and as it isn’t necessarily your day job, you are more likely to have mistakes and miss things than a professional. Hire a Firm The best guaranteed way to get all the information you need for your exact projects comes with a price. There are obvious benefits and drawbacks to hiring a firm rather than a freelancer to do the work. However, if you have the funds, a firm’s benefits outweigh their drawbacks, most of which is price. Firms usually have checks and balances to ensure the research provided is exactly as needed. With the additional financial investment comes access to better information and tools. It can also substantially speed up the process as opposed to doing this yourself. For those who may argue this, you have to include the amount of potential errors that will cause wasted time down the line. Both Marketing Firms and Design Firms can most frequently provide this type of service. Hire a Freelancer You might be surprised freelancers are listed here based on my post last year 3 Reasons you Should use a Firm and Not Just a Freelancer. However, they offer the balancing act that many startups need. I should know, I was a freelancer before I established the Peterman Design Firm. Established companies and funded startups look to Firms for help, but not everyone is in that position. While some firms can pull off the work at freelancer rates, they often can’t do it as fast. Freelancers are the in-between area that can benefit someone who’s tight on cash but know they need help. Freelancers skill can vary widely, as well as their cost and delivery time. As a single person they don’t usually have the benefits of someone double checking their work. They also usually don’t have the resources to put toward the best tools and databases for research. If you are bootstrapping, I highly recommend that you at least hire a freelancer to do some basic Market Research on your idea. Even if all they do is confirm how market viable your product is, it’s worth it. You’ll have extra confidence in moving forward. If you have the cash or are more established, spend the extra and do a more thorough Market Research process. Always remember to do a little research on your own. Doesn’t matter if it’s you, an intern, or someone interested in your success. Research before hiring a firm or freelancer will make your initial meeting more productive. That research will ensure you can bring up your concerns or questions to whoever you are hiring and let’s them address those for you. Author Mr. Peterman
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