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How to do market research: The complete guide for your brand

Written by by Jacqueline Zote

Published on  April 13, 2023

Reading time  10 minutes

Blindly putting out content or products and hoping for the best is a thing of the past. Not only is it a waste of time and energy, but you’re wasting valuable marketing dollars in the process. Now you have a wealth of tools and data at your disposal, allowing you to develop data-driven marketing strategies . That’s where market research comes in, allowing you to uncover valuable insights to inform your business decisions.

Conducting market research not only helps you better understand how to sell to customers but also stand out from your competition. In this guide, we break down everything you need to know about market research and how doing your homework can help you grow your business.

Table of contents:

What is market research?

Why is market research important, types of market research, where to conduct market research.

• Steps for conducting market research
• Tools to use for market research

Market research is the process of gathering information surrounding your business opportunities. It identifies key information to better understand your audience. This includes insights related to customer personas and even trends shaping your industry.

Taking time out of your schedule to conduct research is crucial for your brand health. Here are some of the key benefits of market research:

Understand your customers’ motivations and pain points

Most marketers are out of touch with what their customers want. Moreover, these marketers are missing key information on what products their audience wants to buy.

Simply put, you can’t run a business if you don’t know what motivates your customers.

And spoiler alert: Your customers’ wants and needs change. Your customers’ behaviors today might be night and day from what they were a few years ago.

Market research holds the key to understanding your customers better. It helps you uncover their key pain points and motivations and understand how they shape their interests and behavior.

Figure out how to position your brand

Positioning is becoming increasingly important as more and more brands enter the marketplace. Market research enables you to spot opportunities to define yourself against your competitors.

Maybe you’re able to emphasize a lower price point. Perhaps your product has a feature that’s one of a kind. Finding those opportunities goes hand in hand with researching your market.

Maintain a strong pulse on your industry at large

Today’s marketing world evolves at a rate that’s difficult to keep up with.

Fresh products. Up-and-coming brands. New marketing tools. Consumers get bombarded with sales messages from all angles. This can be confusing and overwhelming.

By monitoring market trends, you can figure out the best tactics for reaching your target audience.

Not everyone conducts market research for the same reason. While some may want to understand their audience better, others may want to see how their competitors are doing. As such, there are different types of market research you can conduct depending on your goal.

Interview-based market research allows for one-on-one interactions. This helps the conversation to flow naturally, making it easier to add context. Whether this takes place in person or virtually, it enables you to gather more in-depth qualitative data.

Buyer persona research

Buyer persona research lets you take a closer look at the people who make up your target audience. You can discover the needs, challenges and pain points of each buyer persona to understand what they need from your business. This will then allow you to craft products or campaigns to resonate better with each persona.

Pricing research

In this type of research, brands compare similar products or services with a particular focus on pricing. They look at how much those products or services typically sell for so they can get more competitive with their pricing strategy.

Competitive analysis research

Competitor analysis gives you a realistic understanding of where you stand in the market and how your competitors are doing. You can use this analysis to find out what’s working in your industry and which competitors to watch out for. It even gives you an idea of how well those competitors are meeting consumer needs.

Depending on the competitor analysis tool you use, you can get as granular as you need with your research. For instance, Sprout Social lets you analyze your competitors’ social strategies. You can see what types of content they’re posting and even benchmark your growth against theirs.

Brand awareness research

Conducting brand awareness research allows you to assess your brand’s standing in the market. It tells you how well-known your brand is among your target audience and what they associate with it. This can help you gauge people’s sentiments toward your brand and whether you need to rebrand or reposition.

If you don’t know where to start with your research, you’re in the right place.

There’s no shortage of market research methods out there. In this section, we’ve highlighted research channels for small and big businesses alike.

Considering that Google sees a staggering 8.5 billion searches each day, there’s perhaps no better place to start.

A quick Google search is a potential goldmine for all sorts of questions to kick off your market research. Who’s ranking for keywords related to your industry? Which products and pieces of content are the hottest right now? Who’s running ads related to your business?

For example, Google Product Listing Ads can help highlight all of the above for B2C brands.

The same applies to B2B brands looking to keep tabs on who’s running industry-related ads and ranking for keyword terms too.

There’s no denying that email represents both an aggressive and effective marketing channel for marketers today. Case in point, 44% of online shoppers consider email as the most influential channel in their buying decisions.

Looking through industry and competitor emails is a brilliant way to learn more about your market. For example, what types of offers and deals are your competitors running? How often are they sending emails?

Email is also invaluable for gathering information directly from your customers. This survey message from Asana is a great example of how to pick your customers’ brains to figure out how you can improve your quality of service.

Industry journals, reports and blogs

Don’t neglect the importance of big-picture market research when it comes to tactics and marketing channels to explore. Look to marketing resources such as reports and blogs as well as industry journals

Keeping your ear to the ground on new trends and technologies is a smart move for any business. Sites such as Statista, Marketing Charts, AdWeek and Emarketer are treasure troves of up-to-date data and news for marketers.

And of course, there’s the  Sprout Insights blog . And invaluable resources like The Sprout Social Index™  can keep you updated on the latest social trends.

Social media

If you want to learn more about your target market, look no further than social media. Social offers a place to discover what your customers want to see in future products or which brands are killin’ it. In fact, social media is become more important for businesses than ever with the level of data available.

It represents a massive repository of real-time data and insights that are instantly accessible. Brand monitoring and social listening are effective ways to conduct social media research . You can even be more direct with your approach. Ask questions directly or even poll your audience to understand their needs and preferences.

The 5 steps for how to do market research

Now that we’ve covered the why and where, it’s time to get into the practical aspects of market research. Here are five essential steps on how to do market research effectively.

Step 1: Identify your research topic

First off, what are you researching about? What do you want to find out? Narrow down on a specific research topic so you can start with a clear idea of what to look for.

For example, you may want to learn more about how well your product features are satisfying the needs of existing users. This might potentially lead to feature updates and improvements. Or it might even result in new feature introductions.

Similarly, your research topic may be related to your product or service launch or customer experience. Or you may want to conduct research for an upcoming marketing campaign.

Step 2: Choose a buyer persona to engage

If you’re planning to focus your research on a specific type of audience, decide which buyer persona you want to engage. This persona group will serve as a representative sample of your target audience.

Engaging a specific group of audience lets you streamline your research efforts. As such, it can be a much more effective and organized approach than researching thousands (if not millions) of individuals.

You may be directing your research toward existing users of your product. To get even more granular, you may want to focus on users who have been familiar with the product for at least a year, for example.

Step 3: Start collecting data

The next step is one of the most critical as it involves collecting the data you need for your research. Before you begin, make sure you’ve chosen the right research methods that will uncover the type of data you need. This largely depends on your research topic and goals.

Remember that you don’t necessarily have to stick to one research method. You may use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. So for example, you could use interviews to supplement the data from your surveys. Or you may stick to insights from your social listening efforts.

To keep things consistent, let’s look at this in the context of the example from earlier. Perhaps you can send out a survey to your existing users asking them a bunch of questions. This might include questions like which features they use the most and how often they use them. You can get them to choose an answer from one to five and collect quantitative data.

Plus, for qualitative insights, you could even include a few open-ended questions with the option to write their answers. For instance, you might ask them if there’s any improvement they wish to see in your product.

Step 4: Analyze results

Once you have all the data you need, it’s time to analyze it keeping your research topic in mind. This involves trying to interpret the data to look for a wider meaning, particularly in relation to your research goal.

So let’s say a large percentage of responses were four or five in the satisfaction rating. This means your existing users are mostly satisfied with your current product features. On the other hand, if the responses were mostly ones and twos, you may look for opportunities to improve. The responses to your open-ended questions can give you further context as to why people are disappointed.

Step 5: Make decisions for your business

Now it’s time to take your findings and turn them into actionable insights for your business. In this final step, you need to decide how you want to move forward with your new market insight.

What did you find in your research that would require action? How can you put those findings to good use?

The market research tools you should be using

To wrap things up, let’s talk about the various tools available to conduct speedy, in-depth market research. These tools are essential for conducting market research faster and more efficiently.

Social listening and analytics

Social analytics tools like Sprout can help you keep track of engagement across social media. This goes beyond your own engagement data but also includes that of your competitors. Considering how quickly social media moves, using a third-party analytics tool is ideal. It allows you to make sense of your social data at a glance and ensure that you’re never missing out on important trends.

Email marketing research tools

Keeping track of brand emails is a good idea for any brand looking to stand out in its audience’s inbox.

Tools such as MailCharts ,  Really Good Emails  and  Milled  can show you how different brands run their email campaigns.

Meanwhile, tools like  Owletter  allow you to monitor metrics such as frequency and send-timing. These metrics can help you understand email marketing strategies among competing brands.

Content marketing research

If you’re looking to conduct research on content marketing, tools such as  BuzzSumo  can be of great help. This tool shows you the top-performing industry content based on keywords. Here you can see relevant industry sites and influencers as well as which brands in your industry are scoring the most buzz. It shows you exactly which pieces of content are ranking well in terms of engagements and shares and on which social networks.

SEO and keyword tracking

Monitoring industry keywords is a great way to uncover competitors. It can also help you discover opportunities to advertise your products via organic search. Tools such as  Ahrefs  provide a comprehensive keyword report to help you see how your search efforts stack up against the competition.

Competitor comparison template

For the sake of organizing your market research, consider creating a competitive matrix. The idea is to highlight how you stack up side-by-side against others in your market. Use a  social media competitive analysis template  to track your competitors’ social presence. That way, you can easily compare tactics, messaging and performance. Once you understand your strengths and weaknesses next to your competitors, you’ll find opportunities as well.

Customer persona creator

Finally, customer personas represent a place where all of your market research comes together. You’d need to create a profile of your ideal customer that you can easily refer to. Tools like  Xtensio  can help in outlining your customer motivations and demographics as you zero in on your target market.

Build a solid market research strategy

Having a deeper understanding of the market gives you leverage in a sea of competitors. Use the steps and market research tools we shared above to build an effective market research strategy.

But keep in mind that the accuracy of your research findings depends on the quality of data collected. Turn to Sprout’s social media analytics tools to uncover heaps of high-quality data across social networks.

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How to do market research in 4 steps: a lean approach to marketing research

From pinpointing your target audience and assessing your competitive advantage, to ongoing product development and customer satisfaction efforts, market research is a practice your business can only benefit from.

Learn how to conduct quick and effective market research using a lean approach in this article full of strategies and practical examples. 

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A comprehensive (and successful) business strategy is not complete without some form of market research—you can’t make informed and profitable business decisions without truly understanding your customer base and the current market trends that drive your business.

In this article, you’ll learn how to conduct quick, effective market research  using an approach called 'lean market research'. It’s easier than you might think, and it can be done at any stage in a product’s lifecycle.

How to conduct lean market research in 4 steps

What is market research, why is market research so valuable, advantages of lean market research, 4 common market research methods, 5 common market research questions, market research faqs.

We’ll jump right into our 4-step approach to lean market research. To show you how it’s done in the real world, each step includes a practical example from Smallpdf , a Swiss company that used lean market research to reduce their tool’s error rate by 75% and boost their Net Promoter Score® (NPS) by 1%.

Research your market the lean way...

From on-page surveys to user interviews, Hotjar has the tools to help you scope out your market and get to know your customers—without breaking the bank.

The following four steps and practical examples will give you a solid market research plan for understanding who your users are and what they want from a company like yours.

1. Create simple user personas

A user persona is a semi-fictional character based on psychographic and demographic data from people who use websites and products similar to your own. Start by defining broad user categories, then elaborate on them later to further segment your customer base and determine your ideal customer profile .

How to get the data: use on-page or emailed surveys and interviews to understand your users and what drives them to your business.

How to do it right: whatever survey or interview questions you ask, they should answer the following questions about the customer:

Who are they?

What is their main goal?

What is their main barrier to achieving this goal?

Pitfalls to avoid:

Don’t ask too many questions! Keep it to five or less, otherwise you’ll inundate them and they’ll stop answering thoughtfully.

Don’t worry too much about typical demographic questions like age or background. Instead, focus on the role these people play (as it relates to your product) and their goals.

How Smallpdf did it: Smallpdf ran an on-page survey for a couple of weeks and received 1,000 replies. They learned that many of their users were administrative assistants, students, and teachers.

Next, they used the survey results to create simple user personas like this one for admins:

Who are they? Administrative Assistants.

What is their main goal? Creating Word documents from a scanned, hard-copy document or a PDF where the source file was lost.

What is their main barrier to achieving it? Converting a scanned PDF doc to a Word file.

💡Pro tip: Smallpdf used Hotjar Surveys to run their user persona survey. Our survey tool helped them avoid the pitfalls of guesswork and find out who their users really are, in their own words. 

You can design a survey and start running it in minutes with our easy-to-use drag and drop builder. Customize your survey to fit your needs, from a sleek one-question pop-up survey to a fully branded questionnaire sent via email. 

We've also created 40+ free survey templates that you can start collecting data with, including a user persona survey like the one Smallpdf used.

2. Conduct observational research

Observational research involves taking notes while watching someone use your product (or a similar product).

Overt vs. covert observation

Overt observation involves asking customers if they’ll let you watch them use your product. This method is often used for user testing and it provides a great opportunity for collecting live product or customer feedback .

Covert observation means studying users ‘in the wild’ without them knowing. This method works well if you sell a type of product that people use regularly, and it offers the purest observational data because people often behave differently when they know they’re being watched. 

Tips to do it right:

Record an entry in your field notes, along with a timestamp, each time an action or event occurs.

Make note of the users' workflow, capturing the ‘what,’ ‘why,’ and ‘for whom’ of each action.

Don’t record identifiable video or audio data without consent. If recording people using your product is helpful for achieving your research goal, make sure all participants are informed and agree to the terms.

Don’t forget to explain why you’d like to observe them (for overt observation). People are more likely to cooperate if you tell them you want to improve the product.

💡Pro tip: while conducting field research out in the wild can wield rewarding results, you can also conduct observational research remotely. Hotjar Recordings is a tool that lets you capture anonymized user sessions of real people interacting with your website. 

Observe how customers navigate your pages and products to gain an inside look into their user behavior . This method is great for conducting exploratory research with the purpose of identifying more specific issues to investigate further, like pain points along the customer journey and opportunities for optimizing conversion .

With Hotjar Recordings you can observe real people using your site without capturing their sensitive information

How Smallpdf did it: here’s how Smallpdf observed two different user personas both covertly and overtly.

Observing students (covert): Kristina Wagner, Principle Product Manager at Smallpdf, went to cafes and libraries at two local universities and waited until she saw students doing PDF-related activities. Then she watched and took notes from a distance. One thing that struck her was the difference between how students self-reported their activities vs. how they behaved (i.e, the self-reporting bias). Students, she found, spent hours talking, listening to music, or simply staring at a blank screen rather than working. When she did find students who were working, she recorded the task they were performing and the software they were using (if she recognized it).

Observing administrative assistants (overt): Kristina sent emails to admins explaining that she’d like to observe them at work, and she asked those who agreed to try to batch their PDF work for her observation day. While watching admins work, she learned that they frequently needed to scan documents into PDF-format and then convert those PDFs into Word docs. By observing the challenges admins faced, Smallpdf knew which products to target for improvement.

“Data is really good for discovery and validation, but there is a bit in the middle where you have to go and find the human.”

3. Conduct individual interviews

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. They allow you to dig deep and explore their concerns, which can lead to all sorts of revelations.

Listen more, talk less. Be curious.

Act like a journalist, not a salesperson. Rather than trying to talk your company up, ask people about their lives, their needs, their frustrations, and how a product like yours could help.

Ask "why?" so you can dig deeper. Get into the specifics and learn about their past behavior.

Record the conversation. Focus on the conversation and avoid relying solely on notes by recording the interview. There are plenty of services that will transcribe recorded conversations for a good price (including Hotjar!).

Avoid asking leading questions , which reveal bias on your part and pushes respondents to answer in a certain direction (e.g. “Have you taken advantage of the amazing new features we just released?).

Don't ask loaded questions , which sneak in an assumption which, if untrue, would make it impossible to answer honestly. For example, we can’t ask you, “What did you find most useful about this article?” without asking whether you found the article useful in the first place.

Be cautious when asking opinions about the future (or predictions of future behavior). Studies suggest that people aren’t very good at predicting their future behavior. This is due to several cognitive biases, from the misguided exceptionalism bias (we’re good at guessing what others will do, but we somehow think we’re different), to the optimism bias (which makes us see things with rose-colored glasses), to the ‘illusion of control’ (which makes us forget the role of randomness in future events).

How Smallpdf did it: Kristina explored her teacher user persona by speaking with university professors at a local graduate school. She learned that the school was mostly paperless and rarely used PDFs, so for the sake of time, she moved on to the admins.

A bit of a letdown? Sure. But this story highlights an important lesson: sometimes you follow a lead and come up short, so you have to make adjustments on the fly. Lean market research is about getting solid, actionable insights quickly so you can tweak things and see what works.

💡Pro tip: to save even more time, conduct remote interviews using an online user research service like Hotjar Engage , which automates the entire interview process, from recruitment and scheduling to hosting and recording.

You can interview your own customers or connect with people from our diverse pool of 200,000+ participants from 130+ countries and 25 industries. And no need to fret about taking meticulous notes—Engage will automatically transcribe the interview for you.

4. Analyze the data (without drowning in it)

The following techniques will help you wrap your head around the market data you collect without losing yourself in it. Remember, the point of lean market research is to find quick, actionable insights.

A flow model is a diagram that tracks the flow of information within a system. By creating a simple visual representation of how users interact with your product and each other, you can better assess their needs.

You’ll notice that admins are at the center of Smallpdf’s flow model, which represents the flow of PDF-related documents throughout a school. This flow model shows the challenges that admins face as they work to satisfy their own internal and external customers.

Affinity diagram

An affinity diagram is a way of sorting large amounts of data into groups to better understand the big picture. For example, if you ask your users about their profession, you’ll notice some general themes start to form, even though the individual responses differ. Depending on your needs, you could group them by profession, or more generally by industry.

We wrote a guide about how to analyze open-ended questions to help you sort through and categorize large volumes of response data. You can also do this by hand by clipping up survey responses or interview notes and grouping them (which is what Kristina does).

“For an interview, you will have somewhere between 30 and 60 notes, and those notes are usually direct phrases. And when you literally cut them up into separate pieces of paper and group them, they should make sense by themselves.”

Pro tip: if you’re conducting an online survey with Hotjar, keep your team in the loop by sharing survey responses automatically via our Slack and Microsoft Team integrations. Reading answers as they come in lets you digest the data in pieces and can help prepare you for identifying common themes when it comes time for analysis.

Hotjar lets you easily share survey responses with your team

Customer journey map

A customer journey map is a diagram that shows the way a typical prospect becomes a paying customer. It outlines their first interaction with your brand and every step in the sales cycle, from awareness to repurchase (and hopefully advocacy).

The above  customer journey map , created by our team at Hotjar, shows many ways a customer might engage with our tool. Your map will be based on your own data and business model.

📚 Read more: if you’re new to customer journey maps, we wrote this step-by-step guide to creating your first customer journey map in 2 and 1/2 days with free templates you can download and start using immediately.

Next steps: from research to results

So, how do you turn market research insights into tangible business results? Let’s look at the actions Smallpdf took after conducting their lean market research: first they implemented changes, then measured the impact.

Implement changes

Based on what Smallpdf learned about the challenges that one key user segment (admins) face when trying to convert PDFs into Word files, they improved their ‘PDF to Word’ conversion tool.

We won’t go into the details here because it involves a lot of technical jargon, but they made the entire process simpler and more straightforward for users. Plus, they made it so that their system recognized when you drop a PDF file into their ‘Word to PDF’ converter instead of the ‘PDF to Word’ converter, so users wouldn’t have to redo the task when they made that mistake. 

In other words: simple market segmentation for admins showed a business need that had to be accounted for, and customers are happier overall after Smallpdf implemented an informed change to their product.

Measure results

According to the Lean UX model, product and UX changes aren’t retained unless they achieve results.

Smallpdf’s changes produced:

A 75% reduction in error rate for the ‘PDF to Word’ converter

A 1% increase in NPS

Greater confidence in the team’s marketing efforts

"With all the changes said and done, we've cut our original error rate in four, which is huge. We increased our NPS by +1%, which isn't huge, but it means that of the users who received a file, they were still slightly happier than before, even if they didn't notice that anything special happened at all.”

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Market research (or marketing research) is any set of techniques used to gather information and better understand a company’s target market. This might include primary research on brand awareness and customer satisfaction or secondary market research on market size and competitive analysis. Businesses use this information to design better products, improve user experience, and craft a marketing strategy that attracts quality leads and improves conversion rates.

David Darmanin, one of Hotjar’s founders, launched two startups before Hotjar took off—but both companies crashed and burned. Each time, he and his team spent months trying to design an amazing new product and user experience, but they failed because they didn’t have a clear understanding of what the market demanded.

With Hotjar, they did things differently . Long story short, they conducted market research in the early stages to figure out what consumers really wanted, and the team made (and continues to make) constant improvements based on market and user research.

Without market research, it’s impossible to understand your users. Sure, you might have a general idea of who they are and what they need, but you have to dig deep if you want to win their loyalty.

Here’s why research matters:

Obsessing over your users is the only way to win. If you don’t care deeply about them, you’ll lose potential customers to someone who does.

Analytics gives you the ‘what’, while research gives you the ‘why’. Big data, user analytics , and dashboards can tell you what people do at scale, but only research can tell you what they’re thinking and why they do what they do. For example, analytics can tell you that customers leave when they reach your pricing page, but only research can explain why.

Research beats assumptions, trends, and so-called best practices. Have you ever watched your colleagues rally behind a terrible decision? Bad ideas are often the result of guesswork, emotional reasoning, death by best practices , and defaulting to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO). By listening to your users and focusing on their customer experience , you’re less likely to get pulled in the wrong direction.

Research keeps you from planning in a vacuum. Your team might be amazing, but you and your colleagues simply can’t experience your product the way your customers do. Customers might use your product in a way that surprises you, and product features that seem obvious to you might confuse them. Over-planning and refusing to test your assumptions is a waste of time, money, and effort because you’ll likely need to make changes once your untested business plan gets put into practice.

Lean User Experience (UX) design is a model for continuous improvement that relies on quick, efficient research to understand customer needs and test new product features.

Lean market research can help you become more...

Efficient: it gets you closer to your customers, faster.

Cost-effective: no need to hire an expensive marketing firm to get things started.

Competitive: quick, powerful insights can place your products on the cutting edge.

As a small business or sole proprietor, conducting lean market research is an attractive option when investing in a full-blown research project might seem out of scope or budget.

There are lots of different ways you could conduct market research and collect customer data, but you don’t have to limit yourself to just one research method. Four common types of market research techniques include surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer observation.

Which method you use may vary based on your business type: ecommerce business owners have different goals from SaaS businesses, so it’s typically prudent to mix and match these methods based on your particular goals and what you need to know.

1. Surveys: the most commonly used

Surveys are a form of qualitative research that ask respondents a short series of open- or closed-ended questions, which can be delivered as an on-screen questionnaire or via email. When we asked 2,000 Customer Experience (CX) professionals about their company’s approach to research , surveys proved to be the most commonly used market research technique.

What makes online surveys so popular?  

They’re easy and inexpensive to conduct, and you can do a lot of data collection quickly. Plus, the data is pretty straightforward to analyze, even when you have to analyze open-ended questions whose answers might initially appear difficult to categorize.

We've built a number of survey templates ready and waiting for you. Grab a template and share with your customers in just a few clicks.

💡 Pro tip: you can also get started with Hotjar AI for Surveys to create a survey in mere seconds . Just enter your market research goal and watch as the AI generates a survey and populates it with relevant questions. 

Once you’re ready for data analysis, the AI will prepare an automated research report that succinctly summarizes key findings, quotes, and suggested next steps.

An example research report generated by Hotjar AI for Surveys

2. Interviews: the most insightful

Interviews are one-on-one conversations with members of your target market. Nothing beats a face-to-face interview for diving deep (and reading non-verbal cues), but if an in-person meeting isn’t possible, video conferencing is a solid second choice.

Regardless of how you conduct it, any type of in-depth interview will produce big benefits in understanding your target customers.

What makes interviews so insightful?

By speaking directly with an ideal customer, you’ll gain greater empathy for their experience , and you can follow insightful threads that can produce plenty of 'Aha!' moments.

3. Focus groups: the most unreliable

Focus groups bring together a carefully selected group of people who fit a company’s target market. A trained moderator leads a conversation surrounding the product, user experience, or marketing message to gain deeper insights.

What makes focus groups so unreliable?

If you’re new to market research, we wouldn’t recommend starting with focus groups. Doing it right is expensive , and if you cut corners, your research could fall victim to all kinds of errors. Dominance bias (when a forceful participant influences the group) and moderator style bias (when different moderator personalities bring about different results in the same study) are two of the many ways your focus group data could get skewed.

4. Observation: the most powerful

During a customer observation session, someone from the company takes notes while they watch an ideal user engage with their product (or a similar product from a competitor).

What makes observation so clever and powerful?

‘Fly-on-the-wall’ observation is a great alternative to focus groups. It’s not only less expensive, but you’ll see people interact with your product in a natural setting without influencing each other. The only downside is that you can’t get inside their heads, so observation still isn't a recommended replacement for customer surveys and interviews.

The following questions will help you get to know your users on a deeper level when you interview them. They’re general questions, of course, so don’t be afraid to make them your own.

1. Who are you and what do you do?

How you ask this question, and what you want to know, will vary depending on your business model (e.g. business-to-business marketing is usually more focused on someone’s profession than business-to-consumer marketing).

It’s a great question to start with, and it’ll help you understand what’s relevant about your user demographics (age, race, gender, profession, education, etc.), but it’s not the be-all-end-all of market research. The more specific questions come later.

2. What does your day look like?

This question helps you understand your users’ day-to-day life and the challenges they face. It will help you gain empathy for them, and you may stumble across something relevant to their buying habits.

3. Do you ever purchase [product/service type]?

This is a ‘yes or no’ question. A ‘yes’ will lead you to the next question.

4. What problem were you trying to solve or what goal were you trying to achieve?

This question strikes to the core of what someone’s trying to accomplish and why they might be willing to pay for your solution.

5. Take me back to the day when you first decided you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this goal.

This is the golden question, and it comes from Adele Revella, Founder and CEO of Buyer Persona Institute . It helps you get in the heads of your users and figure out what they were thinking the day they decided to spend money to solve a problem.

If you take your time with this question, digging deeper where it makes sense, you should be able to answer all the relevant information you need to understand their perspective.

“The only scripted question I want you to ask them is this one: take me back to the day when you first decided that you needed to solve this kind of problem or achieve this kind of a goal. Not to buy my product, that’s not the day. We want to go back to the day that when you thought it was urgent and compelling to go spend money to solve a particular problem or achieve a goal. Just tell me what happened.”

— Adele Revella , Founder/CEO at Buyer Persona Institute

Bonus question: is there anything else you’d like to tell me?

This question isn’t just a nice way to wrap it up—it might just give participants the opportunity they need to tell you something you really need to know.

That’s why Sarah Doody, author of UX Notebook , adds it to the end of her written surveys.

“I always have a last question, which is just open-ended: “Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” And sometimes, that’s where you get four paragraphs of amazing content that you would never have gotten if it was just a Net Promoter Score [survey] or something like that.”

What is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research?

Qualitative research asks questions that can’t be reduced to a number, such as, “What is your job title?” or “What did you like most about your customer service experience?” 

Quantitative research asks questions that can be answered with a numeric value, such as, “What is your annual salary?” or “How was your customer service experience on a scale of 1-5?”

 → Read more about the differences between qualitative and quantitative user research .

How do I do my own market research?

You can do your own quick and effective market research by 

Surveying your customers

Building user personas

Studying your users through interviews and observation

Wrapping your head around your data with tools like flow models, affinity diagrams, and customer journey maps

What is the difference between market research and user research?

Market research takes a broad look at potential customers—what problems they’re trying to solve, their buying experience, and overall demand. User research, on the other hand, is more narrowly focused on the use (and usability ) of specific products.

What are the main criticisms of market research?

Many marketing professionals are critical of market research because it can be expensive and time-consuming. It’s often easier to convince your CEO or CMO to let you do lean market research rather than something more extensive because you can do it yourself. It also gives you quick answers so you can stay ahead of the competition.

Do I need a market research firm to get reliable data?

Absolutely not! In fact, we recommend that you start small and do it yourself in the beginning. By following a lean market research strategy, you can uncover some solid insights about your clients. Then you can make changes, test them out, and see whether the results are positive. This is an excellent strategy for making quick changes and remaining competitive.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter System, Net Promoter Score, NPS, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Fred Reichheld, and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.

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Customer Research: The Key to Meeting Customer Needs

Learn how to conduct market research that provides insights into your customers' behaviors, preferences, and pain points.

Digital marketing isn’t just ads and social media posts. Your digital marketing efforts will require you to deeply understand the wants, needs, and preferences of your customers. If you don’t understand your target audience, then your marketing and sales activities will probably suffer exponentially.

Every stage of marketing has something to do with customer research and meeting customer needs. For these and many other reasons, customer research should hold key importance in any marketing or sales effort you intend to embark on now and in the future.

While it’s important to know your customer inside and out, you may have to start from the beginning to figure things out.

For example, it’s a good idea to start with an ideal customer or customer persona that fits the goals of your business, but you might find through your marketing efforts and data collection that the people who gravitate to your brand are nothing like what you assumed.

For these and many, many other reasons, customer research is of the utmost importance. But what does customer research mean for a business? It’s far more than just the sum of the words. Here is a deeper look at customer research and how it forms the key to meeting customer needs.

What is customer research?

The term itself tells you what customer research entails. However, to formalize it, you can consider target market research as gathering and analyzing data about your target market or audience with the goal of learning:

• The needs of your potential customers
• What your customers prefer
• Behavior patterns of your customers
• Common customer problems and pain points

Armed with this information, your business can create effective marketing and sales strategies that target the right people, have a higher level of conversions, and generate far more sales.

No matter the goals of your brand, customer research will help you obtain them faster, more efficiently, and with less required trial and error to do so.

Customer or market research

Customer research and marketing research both help businesses understand their target audience and create effective marketing strategies. You may come across the terms customer research and market research used interchangeably. These are, in fact, two different things.

Customer research (also called target market research) focuses on gathering data about customers' needs, preferences, behavior, and pain points. Marketing research covers a broader area of research and includes customer research under its umbrella.

When researching a market, you will gather data about trends, competition, and various other factors, along with your customer research. That information will also factor into your marketing, sales, and growth strategies.

Benefits of customer research in marketing

Customer research comes along with several benefits, many of them absolutely crucial to your digital marketing or any other type of marketing effort. This is especially true for a new business, product, or service.

• Identifying target audience. You will come to know precisely who your brand should target as customer research will help you learn the demographics, interests, pain points, and behaviors of those people who your brand can benefit most.
• Understanding customer behavior. You will learn the habits and patterns of your ideal customer. What they do, where they hang out online, and what kind of activity they engage in.
• Creating relevant content. Knowing more about your customer will allow you to create marketing materials and content that speaks directly to them.
• Improving customer experience. Customer research allows for greater personalization, which increases the customer experience.
• Increasing conversion rates. Of course, all the benefits of target market research create more qualified leads and better conversions.

Every benefit of customer research creates and builds another benefit of customer research. You may not even know who your customers might be at the start, which is what makes this type of research an excellent place to start.

No matter the size of the business, initiative, or group, there are always benefits associated with customer research and continuing target market research.

Why is quantitative research key to building a business strategy?

Customer research forms a cornerstone of all business, marketing, and sales strategies. If you don’t know who to target, then your campaigns won’t work as intended, or won’t work at all.

Each of the previously mentioned benefits of customer research point to exactly why you should look at this research as key to building a business strategy.

Helps businesses understand customer needs

What does your ideal customer need? And, can your brand provide them with that need? These important questions can help you form the blueprint of your entire business or brand strategy . Understanding the needs of your ideal customer will help you deliver to them precisely what they’re looking for.

Knowing customer needs will also help you craft highly effective campaigns that do far more for your brand or business in both the short and long term.

Delivers insights for improving products and services

As you form your business strategy around the insights gained through your own market research, you can improve your products and services to cater to your ideal customer. This also applies to new products or services as well.

For example, you may find you have an underperforming content marketing strategy. Your customer research insights might inform you that the reason the strategy underperforms is that you’re using generic content, or it’s not speaking to anyone specifically.

Now that you know who your customers are, what they want, and how they consume content, you transform that underperforming content into content that actively engages and converts the potential leads your business needs the most.

Assists businesses to make informed decisions

Business strategy forms based on a series of decisions. If your decisions aren’t backed by data and analysis, then it might not work quite as well as you would like. Primary research insights can help to inform business decisions at every level.

Yes, you can use customer research data to create excellent marketing funnels, but you can also use that data to create full business plans, goals, and growth strategies for the entirety of your organization. This is the type of thing that large corporations do routinely.

A small business or even a single person with a marketable skill can use primary market research data to figure out in which direction they should point the overall efforts of their business.

Increases customer satisfaction and loyalty

People love to feel catered to. Consumer research helps you to facilitate that feeling in people by providing them with solutions to problems and giving them content that speaks directly to them. This process will give your brand satisfied and loyal customers.

Keep in mind that customer satisfaction and loyalty also lead to:

• Repeat business and increased lifetime value
• Cheerleading and positive word of mouth
• Increased reputation

Loyal customers become repeat customers , as they tend to return to brands they trust when it’s time to purchase again. They may stick around for a long time, which can lead to more customers with higher customer lifetime values ( CLV ).

That satisfaction and loyalty will also prompt customers, especially modern-day customers, to write reviews, cheerlead, and spread the good word about your brand or its offerings. Word-of-mouth is actually a viable form of marketing, a powerful one, and one you can passively receive benefits from.

Provides a competitive advantage

Customer research that informs business decisions will help you stay ahead of your competition. You can use consumer research to find more potential leads, but you can also use it to find new opportunities.

For example, your data may point to gaps in the market or underserved segments of people. While your competitors focus on what’s right in front of them, you can start making efforts to capture segments that can often go overlooked. Compare your potential results from these ventures against your competitors and you might see how you can outdistance them in one or more ways.

Enables businesses to establish long-term relationships with customers

As a brand or business, you want customers who will stay with you for the long term. Customer retention starts with a brand understanding their customer. Under most circumstances, people will not stick with a brand they feel doesn’t get them. Identifying needs and offering solutions to problems isn’t something that stays static.

Customer research will help you stay in step with your audience and they, in turn, will stay loyal to your brand. You can only achieve that kind of synergistic relationship through ongoing consumer research.

How to conduct target market research

You can perform customer market research in many ways. At a basic level, practically any effort you take that leads to greater customer insight counts as quantitative research. However, you’ll want to use methods that offer you more quantifiable data that you can use to make actionable decisions.

1. Define the research objectives and target audience

Start with a clear objective and define a target audience. Make a statement that defines why you’re conducting this customer research. What do you hope to accomplish with your research?

As indicated, if you don’t have data of your own to figure out who to target while conducting customer research, you can look to various sources to learn more about the people who may have pain points your brand can soothe.

2. Choose the research method and develop the research questions

With an objective and target audience defined, you can then look at the methods available to you for gathering customer insights.

You can break customer research methods down into several types. Primary research basically means research you conduct directly with your targets. Having a target audience also allows you to choose the type of research method that will serve you and them best. Interviews, surveys, and focus groups represent some types of primary research.

Secondary research comes from third parties. When you dig through the data compiled by and offered by others, you’re conducting secondary research. You should strive to conduct customer research in as many ways as you comfortably can. In this way, you can gain both quantitative and qualitative research data with which to conduct further research and create business strategies.

You may notice that most customer research methods have to do with answering questions. It's important to make your research questions specific and to the point. You want answers you can compare directly between research methods. Craft questions that directly tell you something about the customer.

Some examples include:

• What solutions did you try before you tried our service?
• How can we improve our product?
• What information do you feel our website is missing?
• What kind of promotion featuring our service would you have the most interest in?

Keep your questions focused and use your stated goal or objective to help you figure out which questions to ask and what information to seek from customers.

3. Collect, analyze, and interpret data

Once you have data, you need to analyze and interpret it to see exactly what it all means for your business marketing or sales strategies. Continue to collect and analyze data so that you can build one or more potential solutions for your brand. Look for patterns and common themes in the data and dig out the key insights you can leverage the most.

4. Use the research findings

You have the data; you have the insights, you’ve crunched numbers, identified trends, and know everything you need to know about your target audience. It’s time for implementation.

How that implementation looks will vary from business to business, but, at this point, you’ll want to look at marketing techniques and sales strategies that will work best with what you now know about your target audience.

Also, use your insights for your brand or business as well. Customer research data doesn’t just reveal things about your customers or potential customers, it can also reveal a lot about your business. If you find areas where you can and should improve, then use your data to work on those areas.

What are some customer research best practices?

Customer research will work differently between businesses, but there are a few things every brand or business can do to make the most of customer research.

Use more than one method to conduct target market research

Gain as much information as you can by running different customer research methods. Not all methods work best for all businesses, so it’s a good idea to try more than one method, regardless.

As you’ll want both quantitative and qualitative research data, it’s always more beneficial to conduct research geared toward one or the other. Then, you can combine the data. In addition, you may not know which methods actually work best for you, so you’ll want to test these methods until you find the ones that offer you the most benefit.

Always define your research goals and objectives

Before beginning your research, have a goal or objective. Defining what you want to achieve will always help you choose the research methods and research questions that will best serve your goal. Keep your customer research focused. Without a goal or objective, you can garner poor data, waste time, and waste valuable resources for very little gain.

Use professional tools and resources whenever possible

Many tools, services, and professionals exist specifically for helping brands to conduct customer research and other types of market research. When possible, you should always use those professional and polished assets.

For example, you’ll find a tremendous number of survey and quiz providers you can use for research, but you’ll quickly discover they’re not all built to scale. Some services will certainly have the tools you absolutely need, and some may even already have insight into the types of questions your business should ask the survey participants.

Look for knowledge and expertise when you’re looking for customer research solutions.

Follow up and repeat

Your customers will grow and change. Your customer research efforts will also need to grow in change. Your target market may age out of your product or service, while the new generation that fits that demographic may have no interest. Consider ongoing customer research as an absolute necessity for your brand.

Choose a service with customer research tools that can scale along with your brand while also staying with the times. When looking into how to do market research, you’ll probably notice just how many services you might need to involve.

Mailchimp offers a wide variety of professional audience management and marketing tools, including customer journey roadmaps and professional surveys. If you want to start or elevate a customer research strategy, then MailChimp can give you the tools and resources to give you the results you need.

What is customer and market research?

Customer and market research is fundamental in helping product marketers gain an invaluable understanding of the sphere in which they’re operating, the people they’re targeting, whilst also gaining essential feedback to improve their product or service.

This phase is critical in gauging an understanding of:

• What you need to provide for your customer,
• How well a product or service has performed, and
• Where changes can be made in the future.

But where do you get such insights? How do you get customer and prospects to speak to you? What do you ask them when you do chat to them? How do you consolidate all that information? What actions do you need to put in place.

Lots of questions. All the answers.

In this guide, we'll be unpacking:

• Customer & market research essentials
• Why communication is important
• When customer and market research is needed

Alternative access to buyer insights

• Getting started with research

Market and customer research unpacked

Trying to bring a product to life with no understanding of your customers and market is like boarding a plane with no wings – you won’t get anywhere, anytime soon.

Customer and market research is fundamental in helping product marketers gain an invaluable understanding of the sphere in which they’re operating, and the people they’re targeting, whilst also gaining essential feedback to improve their product or service.

Market and customer research are crucial components of developing a successful business strategy. By understanding target markets, customer needs, behaviors, and preferences, companies can create products, services, and marketing campaigns that attract and retain happy customers.

Customer and market research involves gathering insights into customer perspectives and market dynamics in to order inform and improve strategic decision-making. This process often involves quantitative surveys as well as qualitative research like focus groups and interviews. Key areas of focus typically include understanding customer demographics, psychographics, attitudes, behaviors, pain points, and needs.

Customer and market research is a fundamental component of product marketing . It serves as the perfect opportunity for PMMs to see the world from the perspective of the consumer, and the responses gleaned from this process are critical in gauging an understanding of:

• How well a product or service performed, and

There can be a degree of confusion surrounding the topic of market research, and it’s common for some to cross their wires, and confuse it with win/loss interviews .

You may fall into the same boat. If so, don’t sweat it. You’re not on your own, and we’re here to help.

Customer and market research allows companies to refine their product pre-launch, by addressing the pain points of their prospective customers and also confronting any flaws in the product that may need to be ironed out, after it’s gone to market.

Things worth having don’t land in your lap; you’ve got to work for it. Product marketers need to plan meticulously, and customer and market research is very much a part of the recipe for success, as we’ve highlighted in our essential checklist .

What's the difference between market research and customer research?

What is market research.

Market research is the systematic process of gathering data on target markets or industries as a whole. Its goal is to identify market trends, sizes, growth potential, pricing models, competition levels, and customer demographics.

It typically involves quantitative research methods like surveys, polls, and data analysis. It serves to answer questions like:

• Who makes up the target market?
• How big is the total market size?
• What macro-level trends are shaping the market?
• How are competitors positioned?
• What are average prices and price sensitivity?

This high-level information allows companies to:

• Validate market opportunities
• Develop new products or features
• Set competitive pricing
• Position brands effectively
• Allocate resources to the most lucrative segments
• Maximize marketing ROI

Market research refers to understanding the competitive environment and overall market that your company operates within. This allows you to position your product more effectively in the market.

Why is market research important?

Market research provides the critical big-picture view of trends, opportunities, and competition that successful businesses need. Consider these key benefits:

Validating business ideas

Every new product, service, or business model is just a speculative idea until validated by market research. Surveys, focus groups, and interviews can determine if target customers both want and need what you plan to offer.

This insight de-risks major investments in development and launch plans. It also steers strategic decisions toward the most promising opportunities.

Sizing up opportunities

How big could your market be? Are there adjacent segments ripe for expansion? Market research surfaces crucial data on market size, growth rates, and demographic factors that make new ventures viable.

It also maps out expansion opportunities beyond early adopters by revealing underserved consumer needs in a category.

Benchmarking against competitors

Monitoring competitors goes hand-in-hand with understanding customers. Market research tracks factors like competitor market share, brand awareness, consumer sentiment, pricing, promotional strategies, and product perceived strengths/weaknesses.

These benchmarks help position your business competitively. They also illuminate tactical advantages to better meet customer needs in an evolving marketplace.

Informing business strategy

Market analysis illuminates trends that shape corporate strategy and planning. It provides actionable data to guide decisions around market selection, product/service development, marketing, sales, distribution models, and competitive differentiation.

Optimizing marketing spend

No marketing budget is infinite. Market research identifies high-potential customer segments so you can allocate marketing spend for maximum ROI.

It also surfaces media consumption habits and influencers to refine messaging and choose cost-efficient channels. The end goal is better conversion rates and lower customer acquisition costs.

What is customer research?

While market research explores the wider marketplace, customer research focuses directly on understanding and interacting with customers. It's all about understanding your customers' needs and behaviors in order to appeal to them and create messaging that is relevant to them, in order to sell your product in a meaningful way.

It typically involves more qualitative research approaches like in-depth interviews, ethnographies, usability testing, social listening, and feedback surveys. The goal is to gain specific insights into the end-user experience with a company's brand, products, services, and communications. 

Key questions it can answer include:

• Who are the customers and ideal buyer personas ?
• What are their daily challenges, needs, and desires?
• How do they feel about the company and its competitors?
• What excites them or frustrates them?
• How can the customer experience be improved?

Armed with this granular feedback, PMMs can:

• Build detailed buyer personas
• Create tailored marketing campaigns
• Develop customer-focused products
• Improve usability and service
• Increase satisfaction and loyalty

The power of customer research

While market research works top-down to size up opportunities, customer research works bottom-up to optimize the customer experience. Its strategic power comes from providing a detailed view of real people that data alone often misses.

Building buyer personas

Buyer personas represent different consumer groups that make up your broader target audience. They include descriptive details on demographics, attitudes, behaviors, pain points, and brand perceptions.

This data comes straight from talking to living, breathing customers through interviews, focus groups, and surveys. Vivid personas guide product design and all marketing decisions.

Crafting tailored messaging

Communicating effectively starts with understanding motivations. Customer interviews and focus groups provide context on why people buy certain products and what messaging best resonates with their needs or desires.

These perspectives enable you to craft relevant, compelling messaging and campaigns that get results. It also reveals how customers describe your products in their own words, which you can integrate into selling points.

Driving referrals and loyalty

Loyal customers spend more and refer others. But you can’t engender true loyalty without delighting people with outstanding products, services, and support.

In-depth customer feedback exposes pain points and unmet needs you can address to boost satisfaction. It also uncovers potential new offerings or upgrades to make customers rave fans.

Improving products and services

Usability testing and customer co-creation sessions help optimize every aspect of your offerings. Seeing real people interact with products provides insights that lead engineers, designers, and product marketers would never uncover on their own.

Identifying new opportunities

Customer research also illuminates latent needs and new product ideas you may never have considered. These seeds often sprout into disruptive innovations or entirely new lines of business.

Guiding business decisions

Customer perspectives provide tangible guidance on where to invest resources versus where to cut losses. Their feedback steers everything from new market entry to repositioning brands.

8 ways market research supports customer research

Market and customer studies ultimately seek the same goal: To make the right strategic decisions by deeply understanding consumers.

Here are 8 ways market research complements customer research:

1. Validating market segments

Market data indicates segments with distinct needs. Customer research explores those needs with real people.

2. Sizing target markets

Macro-level market research gauges potential sales volume for new products or services. Customer research assesses actual interest and buying criteria.

3. Identifying customer archetypes

Market data reveals demographic clusters. In-depth interviews turn those statistics into living buyer personas.

4. Comparing against competitors

Market share metrics show key rivals. Customer studies reveal why people prefer them over you.

5. Selecting new markets

High-level market scans uncover blue ocean opportunities. Customer studies determine product-market fit.

6. Forecasting industry trends

Market forecasts predict future shifts. Customer input guides strategies to leverage them.

7. Choosing marketing channels

Market research identifies major media outlets and influencers. Customer interviews reveal which touchpoints matter most.

8. Pricing products or services

Industry benchmarking provides pricing ranges. Conjoint analysis finds optimal price points.

Why is communication important?

Product marketers need to communicate with their customers. Period.

Don’t just take our word for it; 80% of respondents we surveyed in the State of Product Marketing Report 2023 identified strong communication as the leading skill PMMs need to succeed.

Which brings us to our next question: When was the last time you spoke to your customer?

After all, they’re the people who use your product, sing its praises, but most importantly, let people know when you’re not ticking the boxes.

Word of mouth spreads like wildfire, so you need to pick up the phone, schedule a Zoom call, and make sure your understanding of your customers is tip-top.

There are a whole bunch of key questions you should be asking yourself:

• Why market to current customers?
• How can qualitative interviews be used to gain essential information?
• Why does the customer trust you, buy from you, and recommend your product?
• Plus, who are your customers, and have they changed over time?

Are these questions enough to set your pulse racing? If so, relax.

When is customer and market research needed?

Put simply, communication needs to be at the heart of a product marketers’ practice; a silent PMM will orchestrate their downfall.

The more a product marketer speaks with their customers, the more feedback they’ll get , and the more they’ll be able to refine their practice. On the other hand, if you don’t reach out to the people who matter the most, i.e. your customer, you’ll be stabbing in the dark and relying on your assumptions.

No number’s been set aside from the PMM gods as far as frequency is concerned, but as we’d alluded to previously, the more you speak, the more you’ll gain.

Do Hershey’s launch a new candy bar without taste tests? Do ad campaigns get signed off without test screenings? Or do fast-food chains launch new burgers without checking out what the punters’ tastebuds are craving?

Answer: A resounding no. Rather than acting on a whim, the company completes meticulous market research beforehand, to improve their chances of a hit, and reduce the likelihood of an expensive pink elephant.

In a nutshell, market research spills the beans on what prompts customers to put their hand in their pocket, buy products and services, and part with their cash.

The process is critical to ensure that the best decisions are made by a company. But how does it help, and why should every company sit up and take notice? All shall be revealed...

The benefits of conducting market research

It helps you identify your customer base.

It’s impossible to build a successful product unless you communicate with prospective customers . Market research provides a set of definitive answers to key questions, including:

• Who is your product aimed at?
• Who are your customer personas?
• What features do they want from your product?
• How much are they willing to spend?

The market research process allows you to clearly paint an image of:

a) your ideal customer – gender, age, location, income, etc.

b) the product you’re going to create, as dictated by the needs of the customer.

When you’ve identified who and what you’re creating, you’re able to successfully tailor your marketing strategy and pricing plans , accordingly.

It can prevent sloppy mistakes

Before launching a product , it’s important to conduct rigorous research and testing , to avoid silly (and expensive) errors.

Let prospective buyers test it out beforehand, so you can iron out any imperfections by conducting market research.

While your hunch may tell you your product will resonate with consumers, it’s not recommended to make a decision based on gut instinct; if things go wrong, you’ll be left rueing your choice not to conduct simple testing.

Focus groups are a great source of customer and market feedback . If things go swimmingly, you’ve got the peace of mind you need and you can push on with the launch. If there are areas for improvement, just go back to the drawing board and make your service even better.

You can protect your business

Market research not only indicates what the market is like now, it allows you to forecast how your industry could shape up in the future.

Proactivity helps you exploit potential gaps in the market other companies may not have spotted, so always stay on your toes and keep your eyes peeled for market opportunities .

Take HMV, for example. While they continued to channel their efforts into the sales of CDs and DVDs, Spotify and Netflix researched the market and developed mobile platforms offering music and film on demand, in line with emerging trends. In 2019, Netflix’s assets were $34.9bn, Spotify was being heralded as ‘the savior of the music industry’, while HMV called in administrators for the second time in six years.

Winner: Market research, by knockout.

Surpass rivals with competitive intelligence

Competitive intelligence can help you and your product marketing team understand the methods being used by your competitors, how their products work, key features and USPs, and pricing strategies , to name a few.

Business is cut-throat, and when a rival poaches customers, it’s often because they’re better prepared and have completed more in-depth research.

Preparation is key for any company, and this remains the same as far as market research is concerned. Don’t get caught in the shadow of your rivals – make them chase you. Seek valuable insights and use your findings to create an innovative strategy that’ll not only generate new leads but also improve customer retention and reduce customer churn .

How to share competitive intelligence findings

To make the most of competitive intelligence, you need to communicate your findings so your teams can use the information to develop and evolve your product.

Results are useless if you keep them to yourself – you need to share the knowledge. Our Competitive Intelligence Trends Report 2022 revealed 87% of product marketers share their findings with Sales teams, closely followed by Product (83%).

Previously, it’s been suggested there’s room for improvement in relations between product marketers and leadership teams. However, it was encouraging to see a significant proportion of people taking part (77%) saying they discuss their findings with executives and leaders.

When we dug a little deeper and explored the preferred methods for sharing competitor intel findings, we found knowledge was shared in-person on a team-by-team basis, and by segmented emails to each relevant team.

Both of these areas accounted for 34% of responses, while a further quarter indicated they send blanket emails to relevant teams within the organization.

Of the 25% of people who fell into the ‘Other’ category, the likes of battle cards, Slack channels, and tools such as Klue were identified as the chosen method of communication. With so many different ways of sharing information, we spoke with Matt Powell, Product Marketing Manager at Docebo , to get an insight into how competitor intel findings are shared at his company:

“I don’t think there is a silver bullet for effectively sharing competitive intel – it’s completely dependent on the realities of your business. I do, however, think that it’s all about creating a culture internally in which everyone is as actively involved in gathering and sharing competitive intel as possible. That’s a big behavioral change when it becomes less about having one or a few people gathering and sharing intel, and instead extending it as a responsibility of everyone in the revenue organization. That’s when good things start to happen – the activity becomes more collaborative and is focused on problem-solving rather than just information sharing.

“We share our intel on a team-to-team basis leveraging our competitive intelligence platform to develop regularly cadenced newsletters. They’re good and they’re actionable, but we find the juicy stuff is the intel that happens in real-time. But, I’ve found the most effective way to share intel and have great conversations in the flow of work around competitive intel is through Slack. Our company is a big-time Slack shop – everything happens there. However, there was a lot of good intel being lost in the scroll of conversations. To combat that, we turned it into an opportunity by installing a two-way integration that allows us to send competitive intel to our CI platform directly from Slack.

“This has been a bit of a game-changer in making sure that as much information as possible isn’t lost. The great thing about these kinds of Slack channels is that the intel is only the tipping point, the conversations that happen in the threads afterward generally end up being the context you need to make the intel actionable.”

How does behavioral research improve consumer experience?

Your customers won’t always tell you what they think – or know what they will do next. Using behavioral research can help you to avoid this bias in qualitative consumer research. This isn’t to say that qualitative research has no value. But by mapping and analyzing what your customers are actually doing (instead of what they say they’re going to do) you can better understand behavior patterns.

This can help you to appeal to your customers by allowing you to send the right marketing messages at the right time, to make the biggest difference in your customer's behavior.

Primary vs. secondary research in customer market research

There are two forms of data PMMs can collect when researching: Primary and secondary.

Primary data

Primary information is collected yourself or by a specialist who has been hired to collect the data on your behalf.

For example, the PMA team collected primary data for our State of Product Marketing report, while we’re asking questions to the 1000s of product marketers who are members of our Slack community , daily.

Primary research is based on two types of information: Exploratory or specific.

Exploratory research is open-ended, with respondents usually providing their views in an unstructured interview scenario.

On the other hand, specific research tends to be more structured, to solve a particular problem highlighted during the exploratory phase.

When arranging primary research, it’s important to identify the preferred method of communication, whether this is direct mail, phone, or interviews.

These should be considered carefully, given the response rate for each method varies. For example, people tend to prefer a quick chat on the phone, rather than taking more time to respond via direct mail.

Social media is also a widely used tool for conducting market research. Features such as Instagram stories allow companies to gather opinions from 1,000s of followers in a short space of time.

Secondary data

Secondary data has been completed for you and is organized for reference. This data includes things like:

• Government websites.

Information for secondary data is often available to the public and can be found in libraries, educational institutions, etc.

Media outlets such as newspaper publishers and TV stations host a breadth of information that can be used when gathering secondary data. This includes demographic information outlining income, age, gender, etc.

What is quantitative data?

Quantitative research includes cold, hard facts that can be easily converted into graphs and charts. The research is usually carried out using surveys and questionnaires with closed-ended questions, yes or no questions, checkbox or multiple-choice questions, and questions with intervals or ratios. It’s structured, statistical, and number-based.

What are the benefits of quantitative data?

Quantitative data is useful for conclusive answers, it’s easy to analyze and can help prove or disprove hypotheses. The questions are also quicker and easier to answer, so you’re likely to get more responses.

What is qualitative data?

Qualitative data is non-statistical and consists of impressions, opinions, and views. It’s generally used to answer ‘why’ questions. It’s investigative in nature and asks open-ended questions. Qualitative data can be generated through:

• Texts and documents
• Audio and video recordings
• Images and symbols
• Interview transcripts and focus groups
• Observations and notes

What are the benefits of qualitative data?

Qualitative research gives you a deeper insight into the motivations behind the statistics. It’s used to theorize and interpret, and instead of asking how many people buy your product, it asks why they buy or why they’re not buying it.

Which data is better for research?

Whether or not you decide to use qualitative or quantitative data will depend on the results you’re looking for.

If, for example, your product was an app that maps bike routes, using qualitative questions like “What do you think of our app?” will lead to many, many different answers, they might focus on speed, responsiveness, and price, which could actually be really invaluable information for you to look at.

However, if you want a specific question answering, like: “How responsive is this app?”

• Super responsive
• Sometimes responsive

Then, quantitative data is your best bet.

Types of primary research

There are a few different ways to conduct primary research – this section will discuss a few.

Surveys are where you ask your customers a series of questions. These can help you to gain lots of quantitative data and answer specific questions. You can also gather some qualitative data through a survey but this isn’t normally very detailed.

2. Interviews

Interviews allow you to talk to your customers while you ask them questions. This can allow you to gain more insights and qualitative data, as you can ask follow up questions if an answer is particularly interesting.

3. Focus groups

Focus groups can let you ask specific questions about your products by letting customers use your product, feedback, and discuss with each other. This may allow more accurate feedback on your product since it is being used during the session.

4. Customer observations

Customer observations involve watching or tracking customers’ behavior while using your product. This will help you to understand how your product is actually being used and can show areas where users make mistakes or get stuck.

How to identify the right people to engage in market and customer research

How to choose your sample.

It’s essential to gain the opinions of those who matter, i.e. people with your buyer personas . To form a perfect sample, there are some guidelines we recommend you don’t flout:

• Aim for 10 participants per buyer persona : There may be some instances when you decide to focus on multiple personas, in which case, source separate sample groups for each, and be sure to include roughly 10 people in each.
• Search recent surveys : If you’ve completed a recent survey, tap into your existing resources. If the sample has had recent exposure to your company, their recollections will be more reliable.

Mix it up: While a sample formed wholly of your loyal fanbase may massage your ego, it’ll compromise the quality of your market research. So, mix it up a little, and seek a variety of opinions. Include people who’ve purchased your product, fans of your competitor, or people who may be on the fence. Throw yourself out of your comfort zone, put on your hard hat, and prepare for a mixed response; criticism is your friend, not your enemy.

How to engage your audience

Market research firms have a catalogue of participants readily available at their fingertips, but not every company has the same luxury, meaning we need to get our hands dirty and find people ourselves.

It may seem a pain in the ass, but in reality, there are several ways to recruit respondents for your group.

• Incentives. It’s often the case people want to be compensated for their time, and a small incentive will, more often than not, give them the impetus to agree to research. Whether it’s a small payment, or a shopping voucher, it’s a small price to pay to get your research over the line. If you can’t afford to offer incentives, give them access to members content on your website, or loyalty points towards future purchases.
• Be social. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn all share one trait: They house your fans (or followers) in one place, meaning you can send a blanket rallying call asking for support and take your pick. Piece of cake.
• Use your CRM. Your CRM system should be your best friend when it comes to picking a sample, as it saves precious time. With the click of a button, you can immediately apply a filter to applicable time periods, genders, ages, etc. and contact the relevant people for your study. Also, be sure to liaise with sales teams who will be able to help, if you need support accessing accounts.
• Spread the word. Whether it’s your family members, friends, colleagues, tell everyone you can possibly think of you’re conducting a study and need help. Share posts on LinkedIn and ask others to like and share, and before you know it, your initial post will reach 1,000s of prospective respondents. The more creative you are, the more people you’ll attract.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: When you aren’t clued up about your buyer, we can virtually guarantee the campaign you’ve worked endlessly to bring to life will die a slow and painful death.

Which (surprise, surprise), customer and market research is worth its weight in gold; when you execute it properly, you’ll know your buyer like the back of your hand.

However, there are other means you can explore, not necessarily to replace customer and market research but to supplement your efforts and make the result even stronger.

For instance, you can unearth a breadth of information by talking with your sales department, who’ll be able to provide you with a berth of insights relating to prospects and customers, such as needs and wants, budget holders, etc.

Similarly, conversations with prospects and existing customers at trade shows are useful, while a host of information can be found via digital data, as well as customer support days within your company.

Remember: Don’t be blinkered by the common assumption customer and market research is limited to picking up a phone and having a conversation. Sure, this is essential , but if you cast the net even further, your bounty will be much greater

How to conduct effective customer market research

Once you understand why customer research is invaluable, the next step is learning how to conduct illuminating studies. Follow this 5-step approach:

1. Define your goals: Go in with a blueprint

First, clarify the strategic business questions you need answered. Is it improving customer retention? Identifying new product opportunities? Optimizing pricing? Defining goals focuses your methods.

2. Determine your target participants: Engage both current and potential customers

Talking to existing customers helps improve satisfaction and loyalty. Yet you don’t want research to simply confirm what you already believe about your business. Welcome "naive" or skeptical voices to get the full picture.

Ultimately, for retention, talk to long-time customers. For new products, engage non-customers. Create a recruiting screener to find the right mix.

3. Choose your research methods: Mix quantitative surveys with qualitative insights

Select techniques that best provide the insights sought. Possibilities include interviews, focus groups, surveys, usability testing, ethnographies, and social listening.

Why not mix quantitive surveys with qualitative insights? Surveys easily gather wide-ranging feedback from many customers. But open-ended interviews and ethnographies provide the depth of understanding to transform findings into human-centered insights. Balance both for a comprehensive perspective.

4. Create a discussion guide: Start with clear business questions

Don’t conduct research just for its own sake. Begin by framing specific questions that will guide upcoming strategic decisions if answered. This focus helps determine the right research methods and participants.

For interviews, focus groups, and usability tests, prepare open-ended questions that probe your research goals. Avoid jargon and keep language conversational.

5. Analyze and share findings: Be generous with your knowledge

Don’t silo research within a single department. Make sure all teams apply insights to enhance products, services, and experiences. Look for key themes, insights, and representative quotes. Produce an executive summary, then disseminate learnings across all teams to drive solutions.

Additional tips for success include:

• Mix quantitative surveys with qualitative techniques for comprehensive data.
• Engage both current and potential customers to avoid confirmation bias.
• Observe real customer behaviors as well as soliciting opinions.
• Keep an open mind to learn something new rather than validating assumptions.
• Make the research experience positive to build goodwill.
• Follow up with participants to share how their feedback impacted business decisions.

The more your company incorporates ongoing customer perspectives, the better it will understand and serve its market. Over time, you’ll spot insights faster and research efforts will scale. But avoid analysis paralysis – take action on the feedback received to maximize its value.

Here are some examples of customer and market research questions

In some instances, some product marketers understand the importance of getting feedback from their customers but don’t have access to the relevant tools to do so.

If you’re not accustomed with customer and market research, don’t worry, we’ve got plenty to get you going. Our customer feedback questions master list can serve as your much-needed source of inspiration and help you as you search for the answers you so desperately crave.

We’ve also got a win-loss interview question master list for you to pick and choose from:

And tons of product marketing presentations from every PMM Summit to-date. For a taster of what’s to come in our all access, OnDemand video section, check out PMMfixx:

Customer and market research toolkits

Recommended research tools.

There’s very little margin for error for product marketers when it comes to market research. Thankfully, there's a whole bunch of customer and market research tools and toolkits you can use to make the process seamless and reduce the likelihood of any mistakes.

What's inside our customer and market research toolkit?

Everything you need to truly embody the voice of the customer , that's what. Tap into the tried and tested research methodologies of product marketers at some of the world's biggest brands, and take your research game to a whole new level.

Part 1: Presentations

Part 2: templates, part 3: research guides, customer and market research: a recap.

Market research and customer research serve complementary roles for businesses seeking strategic advantage. While market studies analyze macro forces, customer inquiry micro-targets the needs of real humans.

Together, these lenses provide the situational awareness needed to sustain growth and profitability through ever-changing market conditions. They turn data into actionable insights that focus teams and ensure customer-centric decision-making.

In today’s highly competitive economy, no company can afford to fly blind without market research or fail to listen to customer voices. Businesses that regularly invest time in both types of investigation will make smarter choices, build brand loyalty, and stay ahead of disruptive change.

Want to learn more?

Market research is an invaluable part of not just product marketing, but the overall organizational function. It helps us to understand what prompts the customer to purchase products within the market and, ultimately, identify how we can position our products in such a way that they stand out from the crowd.

Our Market Research Certified: Masters course has been designed to help you streamline your approach for success. By the end of this course you’ll:

🧠 Understand the importance and benefits of research for making the most impactful and strategic decisions.

🧐 Know about the different types of data and where best to source it.

🔬 Be aware of the best research methods available for conducting valuable data for your company.

✌️ Be able to consider the ethical implications of market research and data collection.

Product marketing is and always will be a customer-centric role.

A core part of your job is to value the voice of the customer and advocate for their wants, needs, and pain points. It’s your responsibility to make them feel heard. Therefore, customer marketing is an integral part of what you need to do to ensure that you’re staying true to this.

The Customer Marketing Certified: Core course has been designed to give you invaluable, practical insights into streamlining your customer marketing approach so that you can ensure that:

• Your customers are happy,
• Your products are the best they truly can be,
• Your brand reputation is consistently positive, and
• That you bring in increased revenue for your organization.

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Customer Research 101: Definition, Types, and Methods

12 February 2024

Table Of Contents

What is Customer Research?

Why is customer research important, types of customer research.

• 6 Customer Research Methods
• How SurveySparrow Can Help

Do you want to improve your marketing or product? Then, customer research can help.

Your customer is at the heart of all your business decisions. In fact, everything revolves around a customer. A business is about having a paying customer, and it wouldn’t exist without one.

The effectiveness of your product or marketing depends on how well you know your customers. When you know your customers better, you can make better product or marketing decisions.

In this article, we break down:

• What customer research is
• Why it’s valuable for your business
• Different types of customer research
• Six customer research methods you can use to refine and grow your business

Customer research (or consumer research ) is a set of techniques used to identify the needs, preferences, behaviors, and motivations of your current or potential customers.

Simply put, the consumer research process is a way for businesses to collect information and learn from their customers so they can serve them better.

Businesses typically conduct customer research to uncover new insights on their customers. They then use these newly uncovered insights to improve their product, craft an effective marketing strategy, and more.

Here are 2 key questions customer research helps you answer:

• Who are my ideal customers? Who is the best fit (or worst fit) for our product?
• What channels can I use to find and communicate with my ideal customers?

Online survey tools like SurveySparrow can help you answer these questions. With omnichannel survey distribution, snazzy data visualization, and 1,500+ integrations with your favorite tools, SurveySparrow simplifies customer research for your GTM and product teams.

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A. How well do you know your customers? Not knowing enough about your customers can cost you time and money.

For example, a recent survey revealed that 46% of customers broke up with a brand because they received irrelevant content pushes.

Successful marketers realize that research is necessary to understand and cater to the ever-changing needs of today’s customers. According to a study by Coschedule:

• Successful marketers are 242% more likely to conduct audience research at least once every quarter.
• 56% of the study’s most elite marketers research at least once a month.

B. You shouldn’t make assumptions about your customers’ preferences or needs. You have to go out there and get opinions from real customers.

C. You need to go beyond your general idea about your customers. The more you understand your customers, the better you’ll be able to serve them with your product or service.

D. If you want to make your product the best in the market, you need to identify any unmet needs and learn how well your product serves the needs of your current customers.

E. Customer research helps you learn more about your customers, both the potential and existing ones. Serving your customers better than the alternatives starts with understanding them better and more deeply.

F. Here are other key reasons why you should research customers:

• Know the Why : Your analytics dashboard merely tells you what your customers do. Only research can help you understand why they do that.
• Validate Assumptions and Best Practices : In most cases, guesswork leads to terrible decisions. Your customers might not need what you think they need. And what works for most businesses might not work for you. The only real way to know is to talk to your customers.

Customer research can be done in two distinct ways: primary and secondary.

Primary research

Primary research is research you conduct yourself. In other words, in primary research, you collect the data yourself. Some examples of primary research are face-to-face interviews, surveys, and social media interactions.

Secondary research

Secondary research (or desk research ) is done by someone else. In secondary research, you make use of data that’s been collected by other people. A few examples of secondary research are forums or communities, industry reports, and online databases.

Primary and secondary research can be further broken down into two kinds of data: qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative data

Qualitative data is descriptive and conceptual. And the nature of the data makes it subjective and interpretive. Examples of qualitative data include descriptions of certain attributes, such as blue eyes or chocolate-flavored ice cream .

Quantitative data

Quantitative data can be expressed using numbers, which means it can be counted or measured. As opposed to qualitative data, it’s objective and conclusive. Examples of quantitative data include numerical values such as measurements , length , cost , or weight .

Customer Research Methods that Work in 2024 (and Beyond)

Now that you know what customer research is and why it’s important, read on to learn the different consumer research methods you can use to make the most of it.

In a survey, you ask a series of questions to your customers regarding a subject or concept.

You can conduct a survey in person, over the phone, through emails, or online forms.

Here are some advantages of conducting customer research through surveys:

• Quickly collect a ton of insightful data without the high costs.
• The data you collect using surveys is simple to analyze.
• You can ask various questions since you get a wide range of question formats.

When it comes to surveys, it’s all about how you ask. Clear and concise questions can help you get reliable information.

An online survey tool is your best bet for quickly gathering customer information. All you need to do is create a survey with a ready-to-use template and send your customers a link to take it.

If you’re in need of a cost-free and easy-to-use solution for conducting customer research surveys and beyond, consider exploring SurveySparrow . This tool aids in gathering essential data by enabling you to conduct thorough data analysis via its user-friendly and conversational survey format.

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In an interview, you speak directly to your customers and ask them open-ended questions.

• Interviews allow you to have deep, one-on-one conversations with your customers and explore a topic in-depth.
• You can go into the details, obtain data beyond surface-level information, and gather deeper insights.

While interviews allow you to probe deeper into a subject, success depends on the expertise and skills of the researcher (or interviewer) conducting the interviews.

Conducting interviews isn’t easy. It’s time-consuming and costly. However, the information you collect can be invaluable for your company’s growth.

You can meet your customers in person to conduct your interviews. Or you can use video conferencing tools such as Google Meet or Zoom to converse with your customers online.

Your analytics dashboard lets you in on your customers’ actions within your product.

Just a glance at it and you’ll know what your customers do and how they engage with your product.

The irony is that customers don’t know what they want or why. They might think they need something but that might not be the case.

What they say they need doesn’t equate to what they do.

The point is that customer-reported behavior is different from actual behavior. That’s why it pays to track and observe your customers’ behavior.

You can use heatmaps, click tracking, scroll mapping, and user-recorded sessions to gain insights into your users’ actions and behavior.

Focus Groups

In this method, you combine a small group based on certain criteria such as demographic, firmographic, or behavioral attributes.

And you ask this group about whatever topic or concept. It could be about your product, marketing message, or something else that’s related to your customers or business.

The idea is to get them to talk to each other and have meaningful conversations.

A moderator helps facilitate the conversations between the individuals in this group. The moderator will try to draw meaningful insights from these conversations and discussions.

You mainly use this technique to understand a certain topic or subject better.

Competitive Analysis

Studying your competitors’ strategies and tactics is a great way to learn more about the target market and the existing solutions.

You can analyze both your direct and indirect competitors depending on the needs you address and the customers you cater to.

You can conduct a competitive analysis from a marketing or product perspective.

If you conduct your analysis from a marketing perspective, you study your competition’s SEO strategy , landing page copy, blog content, PR coverage, social media presence, etc.

You can also conduct your competitive analysis from a product perspective and analyze your competitors’ user experience, features, pricing structure, etc.

Review Mining

The reviews of you and your competitors are another great way to get inside your customer’s head. This method can be especially valuable if you are a SAAS company.

It helps you better understand your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses as well as your own. This understanding helps you improve your own products and better address the needs of your ideal customers.

This kind of data is easy to acquire as it’s publicly available, and you can get them on:

• Review sites such as G2Crowd and Capterra.
• Forums and niche communities such as ProductHunt, Reddit, Quora, etc.

Why SurveySparrow is the Best Customer Research Tool

SurveySparrow facilitates comprehensive customer research by enabling businesses to efficiently collect, analyze, and act on customer feedback, leading to better informed and customer-centric decisions.

• Collect Feedback Easily : Create simple surveys to find out what customers think about your products or services.
• Understand Satisfaction : Use surveys to figure out how happy customers are with what you offer.
• Learn Buying Habits : Find out why customers buy certain products, which helps in planning what to sell.
• Get Product Opinions : Ask customers what they like or don’t like about your products to make improvements.
• See How People View Your Brand : Understand how customers see your brand, which is important for your marketing.
• Keep Up with Trends : Regular surveys help you stay updated on what your customers want or need.
• Group Customers : Identify different types of customers to target them more effectively with your marketing.
• Improve Customer Experience : Learn where you can make the buying process better for your customers.
• Test New Ideas : Before launching new products, check if your customers would be interested.
• Check Customer Loyalty : Find out if customers would keep using your products or recommend them to others.

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Businesses that deeply understand their customers have a huge advantage over the ones that don’t. Period.

Whatever you’re looking to learn or achieve, it becomes a lot clearer with a little research.

When done right, customer research can be your competitive advantage.

Be sure to pick a method that’s right for your situation. What are you looking to learn and achieve? Think through each research method carefully and pick the one that works best for you.

Have you conducted customer research? What did you learn? And how did it go? Tell us about that in the comment section below.

And if you’re looking to conduct customer research through surveys, feel free to check out SurveySparrow .

I'm a developer turned marketer, working as a Product Marketer at SurveySparrow — A survey tool that lets anyone create beautiful, conversational surveys people love to answer.

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A guide to conducting market research

Assumptions only get you so far when it comes to developing a product and growing your business. Market research can provide you with crucial insights into what your audience and customers need from you. Armed with this data, you can differentiate your product from your competitors and work towards winning your market.

In this article, you will learn what market research is, the four approaches to it, and the steps you need to take to make more informed product decisions.

What is market research?

Market research is the process of gathering information about potential and current customers and your target audience. The data can reveal the viability of a new product idea based on customer needs and wants. Market research is an essential part of developing products and services that are desirable to consumers.

Market research is also used to:

• Evaluate customer attitude toward a newly released product or feature
• Discover customer pain points
• Understand brand perception
• Develop product differentiation
• Craft a marketing strategy that resonates with the target audience
• Find opportunities for product improvement
• Test your assumptions about your product or audience
• Create a competitive advantage

Market research is a critical part of research and development (R&D) . Bad market research can lead to making decisions based on assumptions, emotional reasoning, and other guesswork. Ultimately, market research is the only way to make informed decisions about what you need to develop for your product.

What are the 4 ways to do market research?

Market research falls into two categories: Primary and secondary. Primary research is gathered by the company, while secondary research comes from outside sources. Both of these options provide valuable information on your target audience.

For this article, let’s focus on primary research. There are four methods you can use to collect primary data for your market research:

Interviews are face-to-face meetings with an individual. This can be one of the most insightful market research methods since there is no interaction with outside influences that may affect the opinion of the interviewee. It allows an interviewer to ask deeper questions, while also providing a chance to observe body language.

Surveys are a useful method for collecting data quickly. Surveys can appear on the company website or app and ask questions directly to consumers. You can have multiple choice, scales, or yes and no questions to gain several types of data points. It’s also a relatively easy and cost-effective method to deploy.

Focus groups

Focus groups are a tricky method of market research. Participants of a focus group make up the company’s target audience. When done well, they can provide insights into a group’s perceptions of a company’s products, advertising, or competitors. However, it requires a trained moderator to ensure participation from all members of the focus group and prevent a minority party from leading the conversation.

Customer observation

Customer observation is a powerful way to gain an understanding of how customers are interacting with your product. You can learn a lot from how they react to the product, what obstacles they encounter, and what questions they have while using it.

While you can observe in person, you could also use tools like a heat map to conduct customer observation. Alternatively, you can also ask participants to test out a competitor’s product to see how they engage with the product.

While interviews, surveys, focus groups, and customer observations are the 4 most common types of market research, companies can also use these other methods to do their research, including:

• Buyer persona research
• Market segmentation research
• Competitive analysis
• SWOT analysis
• Pricing research
• Customer satisfaction and loyalty research
• Brand research
• Campaign results

A step-by-step guide to conducting market research

Market research can seem like a large and daunting project. To help you break it down into manageable tasks, here is a basic step-by-step guide to conducting market research.

1. Determine the market research goal

Begin by determining what you want to learn from the market research. You’ll get the best results when you can clearly define the problem or question. Once you have defined your market research goal, then you can choose which market research method would work best.

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Let’s explore this example throughout the guide: Your company wants to know if your product is satisfying the needs of your current customers

2. Identify what persona group to engage

If you don’t know who your customers are, then you should create buyer personas before you move further along in the market research process.

The next step is to identify which buyer persona or persona groups have the information you need to answer your market research goal. Choosing the right personas to participate is necessary to avoid wasting resources.

Example: You want to collect data from active users. You may also receive valuable insights from users who use your product infrequently or didn’t purchase the product

3. Prepare questions and collect data

At this stage, you can determine which research methods are best for collecting data. You’ll also form the right questions to ask. All questions should be open-ended to give participants the chance to share their opinions freely without feeling judged or influenced by the moderator.

Preparing questions in advance helps you stay focused on the market research. However, if you’re conducting interviews or focus groups, then it’s important to stay flexible and ask deeper questions based on how the conversation is going. You should consider these core principles while interviewing an individual or a group:

• Don’t ask leading questions — A leading question is when moderator bias appears and steers the participant toward a certain answer. For example, “Did you think the new product feature was great?” is leading. An objective question is “Did the new product feature solve your problem?”
• Don’t ask loaded questions — Loaded questions have a built-in assumption the participant may disagree with and limits replies. For example, “Why are we better than our competitor?” is loaded because it assumes the participant thinks your company is better than your competition. An objective question might be, “How do you feel about our competitor?”

Once the methods and questions are determined, you can start to collect your data.

Example: To collect data from current users, a pop-up survey will appear when a user logs into their account. It has a scale of 1-10 and asks “How satisfied are you with our product?” Once a user answers, they have the option to provide a short answer on what the product could do better

4. Analyze data

When analyzing data, you should look for themes or patterns in responses. You can also utilize data visualization tools to help detect any trends. Once you have analyzed your data, you can create a report based on the findings. It may include items like:

• What are the main problems participants faced while using a product
• What participants consider when choosing a product
• What feature was a deal breaker or clincher

Most importantly, your report should include an action plan on how to resolve issues discovered in the market research. This could involve creating more useful user guides, creating or modifying a new feature, or a more efficient onboarding process.

Example: Results from the survey showed that unhappy customers frequently didn’t know where to go to get help on using the product. An action plan is created to develop how-to tutorials

5. Implement changes

The market research report is presented to executives, and they need to decide on the best way to move forward. It may involve approving the action plan or finding alternative solutions. The good news is that they are going to make a data-based decision because they have accurate information on their customers and target audience.

Once a plan is approved, product managers or other departments can begin working on implementing changes.

Example: Executives approve an action plan to develop how-to tutorials. A knowledge base is created for users filled with written and video tutorials on how to use product features

6. Test results

Market research is not a one-time-only project. It should be continually conducted to provide insights into your product, industry, trends, and other factors that could affect your business. The market research process will help you maintain a competitive advantage while ensuring every iteration of your product is meeting the needs of your target audience.

Key takeaways

Market research is more than something you do to confirm if there is customer interest in your product idea. It’s there to support you for nearly every important pillar of your business, including product development, marketing, and business growth. Continuously conducting market research will help your company stay in touch with your customers and emerging trends.

Market research can be as simple as a one-question survey to 30-minute interviews with your target market. Regardless of the method, you stand to glean valuable insights that you can turn into a data-informed action plan.

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• What is customer research?

Last updated

14 February 2023

Reviewed by

Designing products that both delight customers and solve their problems is essential in a competitive landscape.

But how do you identify what your customers want and need, let alone who your customers really are?

Customer research enables you to learn more about your customers, understand their motivations, and get to grips with their behavior on a deeper level. You can use all this knowledge to create truly user-centric products.

Customer research is how you understand your customers—their needs, pain points, and demographics.

It also allows you to dive into key aspects of customers’ motivations and behaviors. It’s about learning how customers act and what will encourage them to take certain actions.

This is important when developing products. Deeply understanding your customers helps you deliver products that are easy to use, satisfying, and better at solving problems.

You’ll keep designing products that fall short if you don’t know your customers well and can’t see things from their point of view.

• What’s the difference between customer research, market research, and user research

You may have heard the terms customer research, market research, and user research. They might sound similar and have some related functions, but they are distinct types of research.

Market research is generally conducted in the early stages of product creation. Its role is to generate an understanding of the whole market, including what people need and want from products. This type of research typically identifies market readiness, size, competition, and demographics.

While market research is broad, customer research is more specific. It’s a process by which data and information collected during market research are analyzed, grouped, and evaluated. You can think of it as an extension of market research, though some organizations may perform these functions simultaneously.

The focus of user research is generally on understanding what is and isn’t working with current products and where helpful innovation can occur.

• Types of customer research

Primary and secondary research are some of the main types of customer research.

Quantitative and qualitative data are two types of data.

It’s helpful to know the difference between these groups to ensure you collect the right data and information for your project.

Primary vs. secondary research

Primary research is data collected directly by the organization from customers. It is obtained through research methods like surveys, focus groups, or analytics.

The advantage of primary research is having the power to obtain the data that’s most relevant for you. Knowing exactly what data has been collected and how to collate that information into meaningful insights is also more simple.

Secondary research is data collected by external sources, such as research groups, governments, and other companies. You can use it to discover more about customers.

Using data collected by other sources gives you less control, but it can save you money.

Ideally, a combination of both primary and secondary research will help you build a true picture of who your customers are.

Qualitative vs. quantitative data

You also need to understand which type of data will be most helpful for the relevant project.

Qualitative data is obtained directly from users, usually through methods such as in-depth interviews, focus groups, usability testing, and field studies.

This type of data can help designers understand why users do things and gain insights into how to solve their issues.

Quantitative data consists of numeral value measurements gained indirectly from users.

This type of data usually involves measurements like how much, how many, and how many times. Surveys, metrics, and user tests are some of the methods through which it can be collated.

• The best customer research methods

The best customer research method will be the one that’s most relevant and useful for your project. So, what works for one product may not be the best match for another. 

Before deciding on a customer research method, asking the following questions can be helpful:

What do we most need to know about our customers?

What do we not know about our customers?

Are we satisfied that our product has a market?

Do we truly understand our competitors?

Do we deeply understand our target market?

Is our product solving a real-world issue for people? Do we have data to back that up?

Is this product the best possible solution for our customers?

These questions can act as a starting point to discover knowledge gaps. They can also help your team choose the research methods that can plug any of these holes.

Customer surveys

Surveys involve asking customers a series of targeted questions. They’re a popular research method because they can be conducted in several ways, such as with an online questionnaire, phone call, or email.

Surveys can help organizations quickly discover large amounts of useful information. They are also relatively inexpensive, as many free templates are available online.

Keep in mind that a survey is only as good as its questions. Ensure that you’re asking questions that will help you discover the most relevant and helpful data about your customers.

Surveys that follow best practices include the following:

Open-ended questions to get the most information from customers

Consistent ranking scales to avoid ambiguity

Questions that are relevant to the team’s end goal

A short series of questions to avoid overwhelming participants

Customer interviews

Interviewing customers is one of the most straightforward and helpful ways to discover their views, wants, and needs.

Customer interviews include a team member or neutral party having a discussion with a customer. They offer the chance to discover new insights that might not otherwise have been uncovered.

This technique won’t enable you to gather quantitative data, but you will gain new insights into how your customers think and perceive products.

Here are some best practices to follow when conducting customer interviews:

Clarify answers. If there’s any ambiguity in what a customer said, make sure you follow up with further questions to aid true understanding.

Challenge your assumptions. Don’t bring any assumptions to the table. Instead, ask customers how they really think and feel. Having a neutral moderator can help remove any bias the team may bring.

Keep things open. Asking open-ended questions and offering a safe space to share answers are essential steps. Doing so will help you gain real thoughts, not hear what participants think they should say.

The benefit of real data should never be overlooked when it comes to customers. People might say they act in certain ways, but their behavior can show otherwise.

Analytics (in a product dashboard or other data collection method, for example) will reveal a great deal of information about customer behavior. It can help streamline your business, remove areas of friction, and improve the overall customer experience .

Metrics like heat maps, time spent, click tracking, and number of sessions can help you build a picture of your customer’s behavior.

Are customers failing to complete their payment information? Are people landing on your page and immediately clicking away? Is a particular aspect of your experience retaining your customers’ attention? These are just a few useful questions you can ask as you go through your analytics.

Focus groups

Focus groups are a well-known and popular research method. They help teams discover a large amount of information in a short time period.

In a focus group, a small number of people—usually eight or fewer—gather together to discuss products, pain points, preferences, and how they might engage with products.

Focus groups are run by a moderator or a person from the organization who can act neutrally. The moderator will set out a series of questions or topics for the group to discuss.

The benefits of focus groups include the following:

Gaining insights into how users perceive your product

Spontaneous responses you may not have discovered otherwise

Information about key problems and pain points

An understanding of what your users want from a solution

However, focus groups also present some challenges. Louder voices in a group may sway others to agree with the consensus rather than share their real opinions. To combat this, offer all members of the group a safe space to share their thoughts. Encourage varying responses.

Competitor analysis

Competitor analysis helps you dive into what the market is currently offering. It shows what competitors are doing well and what could be done better. This helps you create new products that solve your customers’ problems more effectively.

The following are best practices for conducting competitor analysis

Be clear on who your competitors are

Identify your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses

Clarify who holds the largest market share and why

Analyze online presence, reviews, and product information

Speak to competitors’ customers

Competitor analysis isn’t just about discovering information about your competitors; another goal is to turn information into action. You’ll ideally want to improve on what a competitor currently offers and provide a product that’s more satisfying for customers.

• How to conduct customer research

The following key steps will enable you to conduct useful customer research.

Set clear objectives

There’s a broad range of data and information that can be collected with customer research. However, not all of it will be relevant to your specific project. 

That’s why setting clear objectives from the outset is critical. All methods and data should lead back to these objectives.

Use multiple methods

One research method is unlikely to gather enough information for your project. And no one method is perfect.

Conducting multiple forms of research ensures you discover more about your customers and that your team gathers enough helpful data.

Find the right people

Your research won’t be effective if you’re talking to the wrong customer group. But how do you find the right people?

If you already have a product, it would be enormously beneficial to speak to your current customers . They have proven that they’re in your target audience.

Forums, advertising, local groups, and organizations are good ways to identify potential customers to participate.

Let’s say you’re designing a dog-sitting app. In this case, you’ll need to speak to dog owners who would like more flexibility to travel. You could find these people in online groups, through a local meeting, or even at a park that’s popular for dog walking.

Consider incentives

It’s also worth considering incentives. These can encourage the right people to get on board. For example, you might offer participants the chance to win a voucher or give them a small amount of cash to participate.

Ensure any incentives are meaningful for your target audience.

Develop meaningful insights

Collecting a range of data and information from multiple methods is helpful. However, it’s ultimately meaningless if that data isn’t collated into useful insights .

Ensure that data is accurately grouped and represented clearly and concisely so that the entire business can benefit from the learnings. You might need to hire a data analyst.

• Surprise and delight your customers

Keeping customers at the center of what you do is the only way to create products that are helpful for people.

All products should help customers, whether that’s by solving a problem, making their life a little bit easier, or entertaining them in some way. Customers should want to use your product and enjoy the process.

By researching your customers, you can truly understand how they feel , where their pain points are, how they behave in real-life situations, and what solutions would please them. Ultimately, all this helps you better serve your customers.

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• Product management
• Collections: Customer research

A complete guide to customer research — with templates

What makes your product great? What problems does it solve? People will look to you — the product manager — as the expert on these questions. But you know that the answers are not based solely on your own opinions and experience. The most important input often comes from somewhere else: customers.

Understanding customers is integral to developing a lovable product . As a product manager, you will want to explore everything from your users' demographics to their inner motivations and struggles. This process of sussing out their needs and challenges is called customer research.

Conducting customer research is complex and dynamic work, where your curiosity is a tremendous asset. To plan, gather, and analyze feedback, product managers use a wide variety of methods — qualitative, quantitative, and a mix of both. You can take a highly sophisticated approach to this, but many times effective customer research entails talking to customers and using simple tools or templates to analyze their feedback.

In this guide, you will learn the fundamentals of conducting primary research so you can better understand the folks you are trying to help. You can try seven customer research templates to help you experiment with different methods and save time in the research process.

Engage a community and analyze feedback in Aha! Ideas. Start a free trial .

With Aha! Ideas you can host live empathy sessions with your customers to learn more about their need and preferences.

Why should you do customer research?

Customer research is an essential component of product strategy — alongside competitor analysis , market research, and overall business needs. The insights you glean from meeting and surveying customers help to shape your strategic initiatives , ensuring that your team is poised to deliver what people really want from your product.

A key reason to perform customer research is to gain new perspectives on your product. Your customers may tell you things you never realized — hidden problems, unique ways of completing tasks, and even alternate use cases. What you believe matters most about your product may not even be on your customers' radar.

Let's say your product has a reporting feature with low usage . Your team decides to give the reporting interface a major upgrade. You spend the time and resources to build these updates — only to scratch your head when there is no uptick in usage. What went wrong?

If you breezed past talking to your customers, it is possible that the interface was not the factor keeping them from engaging. Maybe they prefer to use a separate reporting tool — in which case, an integration capability would have been a much more valuable feature to build.

Customer research helps you avoid spending time solving proble ms that do not exist — and highlights the ones that are real and deserving of your attention. This way, you know where to focus your efforts for the best chance of making your customers happy and meeting business goals.

Jump to customer research templates

How much customer feedback is the right amount?

The short answer? It depends. Your specific goals, the scope of your research, and the stage of your product's development all play a role. Here are some things to keep in mind when determining the right amount of customer feedback to collect:

Understand your goals Are you looking to validate a new product idea or improve an existing product? Do you need to better understand customer pain points or gather usability insights? These answers will shape your product development goals and dictate the depth and breadth of feedback required.

Define your sample size Consider the size of your target audience and customer base. In some cases, a smaller sample size can provide valuable insights, especially if you are conducting in-depth qualitative research . For quantitative research, a larger sample size might be necessary to ensure statistical relevancy.

Ensure diversity of perspective Aim for variety in your feedback pool. Different demographic groups, usage patterns, and customer segments can provide a more comprehensive understanding of customer needs and preferences.

Include a mix of feedback channels Analyzing feedback from different channels can provide unique perspectives and insights. Experiment with a variety of feedback methods and channels — such as releasing surveys, conducting interviews , and reviewing your social media and customer support interactions.

Consider resource constraints Think about the time, budget, and staff you have available for collecting and analyzing feedback. Balance the scope of your research with what you can realistically manage.

Remember, customer feedback is often collected in iterations. Start with a small group of users for early insights, then expand your feedback pool as you make improvements. Each iteration helps you refine your product and strategy.

And while quantity matters, the quality of feedback is crucial. Sometimes a few detailed, insightful responses can be more valuable than a large number of superficial ones.

Primary vs. secondary customer research

Product managers will use both primary and secondary customer research to gather information. Briefly, the difference is:

Primary customer research refers to gathering your own data and feedback firsthand via interviews, focus groups, surveys, and other methods.

Secondary customer research refers to findings gleaned from external sources like analyst reports and third-party surveys.

Both types can be valuable, but when it comes to your goals as a product manager, primary research is superior. While secondary research will help you understand demographics and broader trends, primary research allows you to drill down into the details of your specific product and target audience.

Your customers' own experiences are invaluable and one of the surest signals to creating a lovable product. For this guide, we will focus on the fundamentals of conducting primary research.

How do product managers gather customer feedback?

How do product managers come up with new ideas for a product?

How to conduct customer research

On a basic level, customer research entails reaching out to current or potential customers and gathering feedback from them via direct conversations or more indirect methods (like online surveys). Advanced tools such as product analytics and idea management software can certainly augment your approach — but are not necessary to get started.

Follow these steps to conduct your own primary customer research:

1. Define your objective Outline your research goals and determine what it is you really want to learn. For example, your objective could be to learn broadly about your customers' business goals or gain a deeper understanding of their experience with a specific feature set.

2. Decide which customers to contact Your objectives will help you decide who to speak with — especially if your product caters to a diverse group of customers. Think about current and potential customers and form a list of people to reach out to.

3. Prepare If you are leading an interview or focus group, meet with your product teammates to prepare your questions. Keep in mind you may need to coordinate with other team members who want to sit in on discussions. If you are conducting a survey, build it — then decide how and when to distribute it.

4. Start your research Conduct your interviews or hit "send" on your survey When talking directly with customers, remember to listen more than you speak. Ask meaningful follow-up questions to encourage deeper thinking and discussion.

5. Analyze, summarize, and share your findings Look for trends in the feedback you received. What did customers agree on? What were the most popular ideas or recurring pain points? Find common threads and share the findings with your team. Together, you can discuss and prioritize the customer ideas that support your overall goals — and promote those ideas to your product roadmap .

6. Repeat Customer research is an ongoing part of product management. You will need to collect feedback from many customers to make informed product decisions. And with every new product launch or major release, you may need to start fresh with a new objective and customer set.

Because it is ongoing, it helps to keep all of your customer research organized. You want to be clear on how your findings will inform the features you develop. For example, the Research tab in Aha! software is a way you can collect whiteboards, interview notes, and ideas right on the feature card.

Related: 35+ customer questions for product innovation

Get started with customer research templates

Customer research templates offer a simple way to start discovering who your audience really is and what matters to them. Using templates helps you add much-needed structure to your customer research process. Below, you will find an assortment of templates to try — from planning to interviews, surveys, and summarizing your findings.

Aha! Knowledge customer interview template

Customer research planning template, customer interview notes template.

Customer survey template

Customer feedback poll template

Customer focus group discussion template, customer research presentation template.

This customer interview template is a great one to start with. It is a guided template with helpful prompts and instructions in each section. This makes it simple to plan your conversations with customers so you can get the most out of each interview. It is available in Aha! Knowledge — which gives you a central place to document and organize your findings.

Start using this template now

This planning template helps you define your objectives, identify which customers to talk to, and prepare for your research session. It includes sections for customer profiles (personas, segments, and companies) to add context to your research group.

An interview template will keep your notes organized during conversations with customers. It will also help you guide the flow of the interview and note any takeaways or action items to proceed with after the session ends. Feel free to customize the discussion questions to match your objective.

Customer research survey template

Customer surveys allow you to gather insights from more people in less time — with the added benefit of built-in reporting via online survey tools. This template will help you learn how to design an effective customer research survey and plan the demographic, use case, and customer satisfaction questions that you want to ask. It includes a blend of question types for both fixed and open-ended responses.

Polls offer a simple way to incorporate a quantitative component into your qualitative research. For example, you can quickly gauge the group's opinion on an idea by inserting a poll in an online focus group or empathy session . This template will help you jot down ideas for future polls.

Similar to the customer interview template, this focus group template will help you structure your session. It emphasizes a well-planned agenda over note-taking — encouraging you to be present in the discussion when you are facilitating a focus group. You can always record the focus group session to revisit later and take detailed notes.

After you have conducted your research, showcase your findings. Sharing results with your team makes customer research even more impactful — customer opinions matter at every level of the business and every stage of the product development process . This template will help you convey your top takeaways in a presentation.

Customer research has long been a core tenet of product management — and will continue to be. Templates like these will help you streamline your research process so you can focus on interacting with your audience and distilling insights from what they share.

When you are ready for a more comprehensive solution beyond simple templates, give idea management software like Aha! Ideas a try. With Aha! Ideas, you can crowdsource feedback via ideas portals, engage your community with empathy sessions, and analyze trends at the individual, organization, and segment levels. This helps you prioritize customer feedback with ease, then promote the ideas that support your business goals directly to your product roadmap.

Discover exactly what your customers want. Start a free Aha! Ideas trial today.

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How to conduct your own market research survey (with example)

After watching a few of those sketches, you can imagine why real-life focus groups tend to be pretty small. Even without any over-the-top personalities involved, it's easy for these groups to go off the rails.

So what happens when you want to collect market research at a larger scale? That's where the market research survey comes in. Market surveys allow you to get just as much valuable information as an in-person interview, without the burden of herding hundreds of rowdy Eagles fans through a product test.

Table of contents:

What is a market research survey?

Why conduct market research, primary vs. secondary market research.

6 types of market research surveys

How to write and conduct a market research survey

Tips for running a market research survey.

Market research survey campaign example questions

Market research survey template

Use automation to put survey results into action

A market research survey is a questionnaire designed to collect key information about a company's target market and audience that will help guide business decisions about products and services, branding angles, and advertising campaigns.

Market surveys are what's known as "primary research"—that is, information that the researching company gathers firsthand. Secondary research consists of data that another organization gathered and published, which other researchers can then use for their own reports. Primary research is more expensive and time-intensive than secondary research, which is why you should only use market research surveys to obtain information that you can't get anywhere else. 

A market research survey can collect information on your target customers':

Experiences

Preferences, desires, and needs

Values and motivations

The types of information that can usually be found in a secondary source, and therefore aren't good candidates for a market survey, include your target customers':

Demographic data

Consumer spending data

Household size

Lots of this secondary information can be found in a public database like those maintained by the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics . There are also a few free market research tools that you can use to access more detailed data, like Think with Google , Data USA , and Statista . Or, if you're looking to learn about your existing customer base, you can also use a CRM to automatically record key information about your customers each time they make a purchase.

If you've exhausted your secondary research options and still have unanswered questions, it's time to start thinking about conducting a market research survey.

The first thing to figure out is what you're trying to learn, and from whom. Are you beta testing a new product or feature with existing users? Or are you looking to identify new customer personas for your marketers to target? There are a number of different ways to use a marketing research survey, and your choice will impact how you set up the questionnaire.

Here are some examples of how market research surveys can be used to fill a wide range of knowledge gaps for companies:

A B2B software company asks real users in its industry about Kanban board usage to help prioritize their project view change rollout.

A B2C software company asks its target demographic about their mobile browsing habits to help them find features to incorporate into their forthcoming mobile app.

A printing company asks its target demographic about fabric preferences to gauge interest in a premium material option for their apparel lines.

A wholesale food vendor surveys regional restaurant owners to find ideas for seasonal products to offer.

Market surveys are what's known as "primary research"—that is, information that the researching company gathers firsthand. Secondary research consists of data that another organization gathered and published, which other researchers can then use for their own reports. 

Primary research is more expensive and time-intensive than secondary research, which is why you should only use market research surveys to obtain information that you can't get anywhere else. 

Lots of this secondary information can be found in a public database like those maintained by the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics . There are also a few free market research tools that you can use to access more detailed data, like Think with Google , Data USA , and Statista . 

Or, if you're looking to learn about your existing customer base, you can also use a CRM to automatically record key information about your customers each time they make a purchase.

6 types of market research survey

Depending on your goal, you'll need different types of market research. Here are six types of market research surveys.

1. Buyer persona research

A buyer persona or customer profile is a simple sketch of the types of people that you should be targeting as potential customers. 

A buyer persona research survey will help you learn more about things like demographics, household makeup, income and education levels, and lifestyle markers. The more you learn about your existing customers, the more specific you can get in targeting potential customers. You may find that there are more buyer personas within your user base than the ones that you've been targeting.

2. Sales funnel research

The sales funnel is the path that potential customers take to eventually become buyers. It starts with the target's awareness of your product, then moves through stages of increasing interest until they ultimately make a purchase. 

With a sales funnel research survey, you can learn about potential customers' main drivers at different stages of the sales funnel. You can also get feedback on how effective different sales strategies are. Use this survey to find out:

How close potential buyers are to making a purchase

What tools and experiences have been most effective in moving prospective customers closer to conversion

What types of lead magnets are most attractive to your target audience

3. Customer loyalty research

Whenever you take a customer experience survey after you make a purchase, you'll usually see a few questions about whether you would recommend the company or a particular product to a friend. After you've identified your biggest brand advocates , you can look for persona patterns to determine what other customers are most likely to be similarly enthusiastic about your products. Use these surveys to learn:

The demographics of your most loyal customers

What tools are most effective in turning customers into advocates

What you can do to encourage more brand loyalty

4. Branding and marketing research

The Charmin focus group featured in that SNL sketch is an example of branding and marketing research, in which a company looks for feedback on a particular advertising angle to get a sense of whether it will be effective before the company spends money on running the ad at scale. Use this type of survey to find out:

Whether a new advertising angle will do well with existing customers

Whether a campaign will do well with a new customer segment you haven't targeted yet

What types of campaign angles do well with a particular demographic

5. New products or features research

Whereas the Charmin sketch features a marketing focus group, this one features new product research for a variety of new Hidden Valley Ranch flavors. Though you can't get hands-on feedback on new products when you're conducting a survey instead of an in-person meeting, you can survey your customers to find out:

What features they wish your product currently had

What other similar or related products they shop for

What they think of a particular product or feature idea

Running a survey before investing resources into developing a new offering will save you and the company a lot of time, money, and energy.

6. Competitor research

You can get a lot of information about your own customers and users via automatic data collection , but your competitors' customer base may not be made up of the same buyer personas that yours is. Survey your competitors' users to find out:

Your competitors ' customers' demographics, habits, and behaviors

Whether your competitors have found success with a buyer persona you're not targeting

Information about buyers for a product that's similar to one you're thinking about launching

Feedback on what features your competitors' customers wish their version of a product had

Once you've narrowed down your survey's objectives, you can move forward with designing and running your survey.

Step 1: Write your survey questions

A poorly worded survey, or a survey that uses the wrong question format, can render all of your data moot. If you write a question that results in most respondents answering "none of the above," you haven't learned much. 

You'll find dozens of question types and even pre-written questions in most survey apps . Here are a few common question types that work well for market surveys.

Categorical questions

Also known as a nominal question, this question type provides numbers and percentages for easy visualization, like "35% said ABC." It works great for bar graphs and pie charts, but you can't take averages or test correlations with nominal-level data.

Yes/No: The most basic survey question used in polls is the Yes/No question, which can be easily created using your survey app or by adding Yes/No options to a multiple-choice question. 

Multiple choice: Use this type of question if you need more nuance than a Yes/No answer gives. You can add as many answers as you want, and your respondents can pick only one answer to the question. 

Checkbox: Checkbox questions add the flexibility to select all the answers that apply. Add as many answers as you want, and respondents aren't limited to just one. 

Ordinal questions

This type of question requires survey-takers to pick from options presented in a specific order, like "income of $0-$25K, $26K-$40K, $41K+." Like nominal questions, ordinal questions elicit responses that allow you to analyze counts and percentages, though you can't calculate averages or assess correlations with ordinal-level data.

Dropdown: Responses to ordinal questions can be presented as a dropdown, from which survey-takers can only make one selection. You could use this question type to gather demographic data, like the respondent's country or state of residence. 

Ranking: This is a unique question type that allows respondents to arrange a list of answers in their preferred order, providing feedback on each option in the process. 

Interval/ratio questions

For precise data and advanced analysis, use interval or ratio questions. These can help you calculate more advanced analytics, like averages, test correlations, and run regression models. Interval questions commonly use scales of 1-5 or 1-7, like "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree." Ratio questions have a true zero and often ask for numerical inputs (like "How many cups of coffee do you drink per day? ____").

Ranking scale: A ranking scale presents answer choices along an ordered value-based sequence, either using numbers, a like/love scale, a never/always scale, or some other ratio interval. It gives more insight into people's thoughts than a Yes/No question. 

Matrix: Have a lot of interval questions to ask? You can put a number of questions in a list and use the same scale for all of them. It simplifies gathering data about a lot of similar items at once. 

Example : How much do you like the following: oranges, apples, grapes? Hate/Dislike/Ok/Like/Love

Textbox: A textbox question is needed for collecting direct feedback or personal data like names. There will be a blank space where the respondent can enter their answer to your question on their own. 

Step 2: Choose a survey platform

There are a lot of survey platforms to choose from, and they all offer different and unique features. Check out Zapier's list of the best online survey apps to help you decide.

Most survey apps today look great on mobile, but be sure to preview your survey on your phone and computer, at least, to make sure it'll look good for all of your users.

If you have the budget, you can also purchase survey services from a larger research agency. 

Step 3: Run a test survey

Before you run your full survey, conduct a smaller test on 5%-10% of your target respondent pool size. This will allow you to work out any confusing wording or questions that result in unhelpful responses without spending the full cost of the survey. Look out for:

Survey rejection from the platform for prohibited topics

Joke or nonsense textbox answers that indicate the respondent didn't answer the survey in earnest

Multiple choice questions with an outsized percentage of "none of the above" or "N/A" responses

Step 4: Launch your survey

If your test survey comes back looking good, you're ready to launch the full thing! Make sure that you leave ample time for the survey to run—you'd be surprised at how long it takes to get a few thousand respondents. 

Even if you've run similar surveys in the past, leave more time than you need. Some surveys take longer than others for no clear reason, and you also want to build in time to conduct a comprehensive data analysis.

Step 5: Organize and interpret the data

Unless you're a trained data analyst, you should avoid crunching all but the simplest survey data by hand. Most survey platforms include some form of reporting dashboard that will handle things like population weighting for you, but you can also connect your survey platform to other apps that make it easy to keep track of your results and turn them into actionable insights.

You know the basics of how to conduct a market research survey, but here are some tips to enhance the quality of your data and the reliability of your findings.

Find the right audience: You could have meticulously crafted survey questions, but if you don't target the appropriate demographic or customer segment, it doesn't really matter. You need to collect responses from the people you're trying to understand. Targeted audiences you can send surveys to include your existing customers, current social media followers, newsletter subscribers, attendees at relevant industry events, and community members from online forums, discussion boards, or other online communities that cater to your target audience. 

Take advantage of existing resources: No need to reinvent the wheel. You may be able to use common templates and online survey platforms like SurveyMonkey for both survey creation and distribution. You can also use AI tools to create better surveys. For example, generative AI tools like ChatGPT can help you generate questions, while analytical AI tools can scan survey responses to help sort, tag, and report on them. Some survey apps have AI built into them already too.

Focus questions on a desired data type: As you conceptualize your survey, consider whether a qualitative or quantitative approach will better suit your research goals. Qualitative methods are best for exploring in-depth insights and underlying motivations, while quantitative methods are better for obtaining statistical data and measurable trends. For an outcome like "optimize our ice cream shop's menu offerings," you may want to find out which flavors of ice cream are most popular with teens. This would require a quantitative approach, for which you would use categorical questions that can help you rank potential flavors numerically.

Establish a timeline: Set a realistic timeline for your survey, from creation to distribution to data collection and analysis. You'll want to balance having your survey out long enough to generate a significant amount of responses but not so long that it loses relevance. That length can vary widely based on factors like type of survey, number of questions, audience size, time sensitivity, question format, and question length.

Define a margin of error: Your margin of error shows how much the survey results might differ from the real opinions of the entire group being studied. Since you can't possibly survey every single person in your desired population, you'll have to settle on an acceptable percentage of error upfront, a percentage figure that varies by sample size, sample proportion, and confidence interval. According to University of Wisconsin-Madison's Pamela Hunter , 95% is the industry standard confidence level (though small sample sizes may get by with 90%). At the 95% level, for example, an acceptable margin of error for a survey of 500 respondents would be 3%. That means that if 80% of respondents give a positive response to a question, the data shows that between 77-83% respond positively 95 out of 100 times.

Market research survey campaign example

Let's say you own a market research company, and you want to use a survey to gain critical insights into your market. You prompt users to fill out your survey before they can access gated premium content.

Survey questions: 

1. What size is your business? 

<10 employees

11-50 employees

51-100 employees

101-200 employees

>200 employees

2. What industry type best describes your role?

3. On a scale of 1-4, how important would you say access to market data is?

1 - Not important

2 - Somewhat important

3 - Very important

4 - Critically important

4. On a scale of 1 (least important) to 5 (most important), rank how important these market data access factors are.

Accuracy of data

Attractive presentation of data

Cost of data access

Range of data presentation formats

Timeliness of data

5. True or false: your job relies on access to accurate, up-to-date market data.

Survey findings: 

63% of respondents represent businesses with over 100 employees, while only 8% represent businesses with under 10.

71% of respondents work in sales, marketing, or operations.

80% of respondents consider access to market data to be either very important or critically important.

"Timeliness of data" (38%) and "Accuracy of data" (32%) were most commonly ranked as the most important market data access factor.

86% of respondents claimed that their jobs rely on accessing accurate, up-to-date market data.

Insights and recommendations: Independent analysis of the survey indicates that a large percentage of users work in the sales, marketing, or operations fields of large companies, and these customers value timeliness and accuracy most. These findings can help you position future report offerings more effectively by highlighting key benefits that are important to customers that fit into related customer profiles. 

Market research survey example questions

Your individual questions will vary by your industry, market, and research goals, so don't expect a cut-and-paste survey to suit your needs. To help you get started, here are market research survey example questions to give you a sense of the format.

Yes/No: Have you purchased our product before?

Multiple choice: How many employees work at your company?

<10 / 10-20 / 21-50 / 51-100 / 101-250 / 250+

Checkbox: Which of the following features do you use in our app?

Push notifications / Dashboard / Profile customization / In-app chat

Dropdown: What's your household income? 

$0-$10K / $11-$35K / $36-$60K / $61K+

Ranking: Which social media platforms do you use the most? Rank in order, from most to least.

Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / LinkedIn / Reddit

Ranking scale: On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate our customer service? 

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Textbox: How many apps are installed on your phone? Enter a number: 

Market research survey question types

Good survey apps typically offer pre-designed templates as a starting point. But to give you a more visual sense of what these questions might look like, we've put together a document showcasing common market research survey question types.

You're going to get a lot of responses back from your survey—why dig through them all manually if you don't have to? Automate your survey to aggregate information for you, so it's that much easier to uncover findings. 

Related reading:

Poll vs. survey: What is a survey and what are polls?

The best online survey apps

The best free form builders and survey tools

How to get people to take a survey

This article was originally published in June 2015 by Stephanie Briggs. The most recent update, with contributions from Cecilia Gillen, was in September 2023.

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Amanda Pell

Amanda is a writer and content strategist who built her career writing on campaigns for brands like Nature Valley, Disney, and the NFL. When she's not knee-deep in research, you'll likely find her hiking with her dog or with her nose in a good book.

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Customer Research

What is customer research.

Customer research is conducted so as to identify customer segments, needs, and behaviors. It can be carried out as part of market research, user research, or design research. Even so, it always focuses on researching current or potential customers of a specific brand or product in order to identify unmet customer needs and/or opportunities for business growth.

Customer research can focus on simple demographics of an existing or potential customer group (such as age, gender, and income level). Indeed, these considerations are vital determinants of a product’s target audience. However, such research also often seeks to understand various behaviors and motivators —factors which place a product’s use and potential on a higher level of study. Thus, the goal of such research is to expose clear details about who is—or will be—using a product as well as the reasons behind their doing so and how they go about using it (including the contextual areas of “where” and “when”). Customer research may be conducted via a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods such as interviews, surveys, focus groups, and ethnographic field studies. It also commonly involves doing desk research of online reviews, forums, and social media to explore what customers are saying about a product.

While customer research is usually conducted as part of a design project, it is also often conducted in other departments of an organization. In some cases, customer research is part of marketing—for instance, to ensure that marketing campaigns have the right focus. In other cases, it can be carried out as part of concept development or ideation so as to identify opportunities for future products, services, or features. In any case, such research is an essential ingredient in keeping the end users in clear sight long before the end of any design phase.

Literature on Customer Research

Here’s the entire UX literature on Customer Research by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Customer Research

Take a deep dive into Customer Research with our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices .

How do you plan to design a product or service that your users will love , if you don't know what they want in the first place? As a user experience designer, you shouldn't leave it to chance to design something outstanding; you should make the effort to understand your users and build on that knowledge from the outset. User research is the way to do this, and it can therefore be thought of as the largest part of user experience design .

In fact, user research is often the first step of a UX design process—after all, you cannot begin to design a product or service without first understanding what your users want! As you gain the skills required, and learn about the best practices in user research, you’ll get first-hand knowledge of your users and be able to design the optimal product—one that’s truly relevant for your users and, subsequently, outperforms your competitors’ .

This course will give you insights into the most essential qualitative research methods around and will teach you how to put them into practice in your design work. You’ll also have the opportunity to embark on three practical projects where you can apply what you’ve learned to carry out user research in the real world . You’ll learn details about how to plan user research projects and fit them into your own work processes in a way that maximizes the impact your research can have on your designs. On top of that, you’ll gain practice with different methods that will help you analyze the results of your research and communicate your findings to your clients and stakeholders—workshops, user journeys and personas, just to name a few!

By the end of the course, you’ll have not only a Course Certificate but also three case studies to add to your portfolio. And remember, a portfolio with engaging case studies is invaluable if you are looking to break into a career in UX design or user research!

We believe you should learn from the best, so we’ve gathered a team of experts to help teach this course alongside our own course instructors. That means you’ll meet a new instructor in each of the lessons on research methods who is an expert in their field—we hope you enjoy what they have in store for you!

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Home Market Research

Consumer Research: Examples, Process and Scope

What is Consumer Research?

Consumer research is a part of market research in which inclination, motivation and purchase behavior of the targeted customers are identified. Consumer research helps businesses or organizations understand customer psychology and create detailed purchasing behavior profiles.

It uses research techniques to provide systematic information about what customers need. Using this information brands can make changes in their products and services, making them more customer-centric thereby increasing customer satisfaction. This will in turn help to boost business.

LEARN ABOUT: Market research vs marketing research

An organization that has an in-depth understanding about the customer decision-making process, is most likely to design a product, put a certain price tag to it, establish distribution centers and promote a product based on consumer research insights such that it produces increased consumer interest and purchases.

For example, A consumer electronics company wants to understand, thought process of a consumer when purchasing an electronic device, which can help a company to launch new products, manage the supply of the stock, etc. Carrying out a Consumer electronics survey can be useful to understand the market demand, understand the flaws in their product and also find out research problems in the various processes that influence the purchase of their goods. A consumer electronics survey can be helpful to gather information about the shopping experiences of consumers when purchasing electronics. which can enable a company to make well-informed and wise decisions regarding their products and services.

LEARN ABOUT:  Test Market Demand

Consumer Research Objectives

When a brand is developing a new product, consumer research is conducted to understand what consumers want or need in a product, what attributes are missing and what are they looking for? An efficient survey software really makes it easy for organizations to conduct efficient research.

Consumer research is conducted to improve brand equity. A brand needs to know what consumers think when buying a product or service offered by a brand. Every good business idea needs efficient consumer research for it to be successful. Consumer insights are essential to determine brand positioning among consumers.

Consumer research is conducted to boost sales. The objective of consumer research is to look into various territories of consumer psychology and understand their buying pattern, what kind of packaging they like and other similar attributes that help brands to sell their products and services better.

LEARN ABOUT: Brand health

Consumer Research Model

According to a study conducted, till a decade ago, researchers thought differently about the consumer psychology, where little or no emphasis was put on emotions, mood or the situation that could influence a customer’s buying decision.

Many believed marketing was applied economics. Consumers always took decisions based on statistics and math and evaluated goods and services rationally and then selected items from those brands that gave them the highest customer satisfaction at the lowest cost.

However, this is no longer the situation. Consumers are very well aware of brands and their competitors. A loyal customer is the one who would not only return to repeatedly purchase from a brand but also, recommend his/her family and friends to buy from the same brand even if the prices are slightly higher but provides an exceptional customer service for products purchased or services offered.

Here is where the Net Promoter Score (NPS) helps brands identify brand loyalty and customer satisfaction with their consumers. Net Promoter Score consumer survey uses a single question that is sent to customers to identify their brand loyalty and level of customer satisfaction. Response to this question is measured on a scale between 0-10 and based on this consumers can be identified as:

Detractors: Who have given a score between 0-6.

Passives: Who have given a score between 7-8.

Promoters: Who have given a score between 9-10.

Consumer market research is based on two types of research method:

1. Qualitative Consumer Research

Qualitative research  is descriptive in nature, It’s a method that uses open-ended questions , to gain meaningful insights from respondents and heavily relies on the following market research methods:

Focus Groups: Focus groups as the name suggests is a small group of highly validated subject experts who come together to analyze a product or service. Focus group comprises of 6-10 respondents. A moderator is assigned to the focus group, who helps facilitate discussions among the members to draw meaningful insights

One-to-one Interview: This is a more conversational method, where the researcher asks open-ended questions to collect data from the respondents. This method heavily depends on the expertise of the researcher. How much the researcher is able to probe with relevant questions to get maximum insights. This is a time-consuming method and can take more than one attempt to gain the desired insights.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

Content/ Text Analysis: Text analysis is a qualitative research method where researchers analyze social life by decoding words and images from the documents available. Researchers analyze the context in which the images are used and draw conclusions from them. Social media is an example of text analysis. In the last decade or so, inferences are drawn based on consumer behavior on social media.

Learn More: How to conduct Qualitative Research  

2.Quantitative Consumer Research

In the age of technology and information, meaningful data is more precious than platinum. Billion dollar companies have risen and fallen on how well they have been able to collect and analyze data, to draw validated insights.

Quantitative research is all about numbers and statistics. An evolved consumer who purchases regularly can vouch for how customer-centric businesses have become today. It’s all about customer satisfaction , to gain loyal customers. With just one questions companies are able to collect data, that has the power to make or break a company. Net Promoter Score question , “On a scale from 0-10 how likely are you to recommend our brand to your family or friends?”

How organic word-of-mouth is influencing consumer behavior and how they need to spend less on advertising and invest their time and resources to make sure they provide exceptional customer service.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Targeting

Online surveys , questionnaires , and polls are the preferred data collection tools. Data that is obtained from consumers is then statistically, mathematically and numerically evaluated to understand consumer preference.

Learn more: How to carry out Quantitative Research

Consumer Research Process

The process of consumer research started as an extension of the process of market research . As the findings of market research is used to improve the decision-making capacity of an organization or business, similar is with consumer research.

LEARN ABOUT:  Market research industry

The consumer research process can be broken down into the following steps:

• Develop research objectives: The first step to the consumer research process is to clearly define the research objective, the purpose of research, why is the research being conducted, to understand what? A clear statement of purpose can help emphasize the purpose.
• Collect Secondary data: Collect secondary data first, it helps in understanding if research has been conducted earlier and if there are any pieces of evidence related to the subject matter that can be used by an organization to make informed decisions regarding consumers.
• Primary Research: In primary research organizations or businesses collect their own data or employ a third party to collect data on their behalf. This research makes use of various data collection methods ( qualitative and quantitative ) that helps researchers collect data first hand.

LEARN ABOUT: Best Data Collection Tools

• Collect and analyze data: Data is collected and analyzed and inference is drawn to understand consumer behavior and purchase pattern.
• Prepare report: Finally, a report is prepared for all the findings by analyzing data collected so that organizations are able to make informed decisions and think of all probabilities related to consumer behavior. By putting the study into practice, organizations can become customer-centric and manufacture products or render services that will help them achieve excellent customer satisfaction.

LEARN ABOUT: market research trends

After Consumer Research Process

Once you have been able to successfully carry out the consumer research process , investigate and break paradigms. What consumers need should be a part of market research design and should be carried out regularly. Consumer research provides more in-depth information about the needs, wants, expectations and behavior analytics of clients.  

By identifying this information successfully, strategies that are used to attract consumers can be made better and businesses can make a profit by knowing what consumers want exactly. It is also important to understand and know thoroughly the buying behavior of consumers to know their attitude towards brands and products.

The identification of consumer needs, as well as their preferences, allows a business to adapt to new business and develop a detailed marketing plan that will surely work. The following pointers can help. Completing this process will help you:

• Attract more customers  
• Set the best price for your products  
• Create the right marketing message  
• Increase the quantity that satisfies the demand of its clients  
• Increase the frequency of visits to their clients  
• Increase your sales  
• Reduce costs  
• Refine your approach to the customer service process .

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Research

Consumer Research Methods

Consumers are the reason for a business to run and flourish. Gathering enough information about consumers is never going to hurt any business, in fact, it will only add up to the information a business would need to associate with its consumers and manufacture products that will help their business refine and grow.

Following are consumer research methods that ensure you are in tandem with the consumers and understand their needs:

The studies of customer satisfaction

One can determine the degree of satisfaction of consumers in relation to the quality of products through:

• Informal methods such as conversations with staff about products and services according to the dashboards.   
• Past and present questionnaires/ surveys that consumers might have filled that identify their needs.   

T he investigation of the consumer decision process

It is very interesting to know the consumer’s needs, what motivates them to buy, and how is the decision-making process carried out, though:

• Deploying relevant surveys and receiving responses from a target intended audience .

Proof of concept

Businesses can test how well accepted their marketing ideas are by:

• The use of surveys to find out if current or potential consumer see your products as a rational and useful benefit.  
• Conducting personal interviews or focus group sessions with clients to understand how they respond to marketing ideas.

Knowing your market position

You can find out how your current and potential consumers see your products, and how they compare it with your competitors by:

• Sales figures talk louder than any other aspect, once you get to know the comparison in the sales figures it is easy to understand your market position within the market segment.
• Attitudes of consumers while making a purchase also helps in understanding the market hold.      

Branding tests and user experience

You can determine how your customers feel with their brands and product names by:

• The use of focus groups and surveys designed to assess emotional responses to your products and brands.  
• The participation of researchers to study the performance of their brand in the market through existing and available brand measurement research.   

Price changes

You can investigate how your customers accept or not the price changes by using formulas that measure the revenue – multiplying the number of items you sold, by the price of each item. These tests allow you to calculate if your total income increases or decreases after making the price changes by:

• Calculation of changes in the quantities of products demanded by their customers, together with changes in the price of the product.   
• Measure the impact of the price on the demand of the product according to the needs of the client.   

Social media monitoring

Another way to measure feedback and your customer service is by controlling your commitment to social media and feedback. Social networks (especially Facebook) are becoming a common element of the commercialization of many businesses and are increasingly used by their customers to provide information on customer needs, service experiences, share and file customer complaints . It can also be used to run surveys and test concepts. If handled well, it can be one of the most powerful research tools of the client management . I also recommend reading: How to conduct market research through social networks.

Customer Research Questions

Asking the right question is the most important part of conducting research. Moreover, if it’s consumer research, questions should be asked in a manner to gather maximum insights from consumers. Here are some consumer research questions for your next research:

• Who in your household takes purchasing decisions?
• Where do you go looking for ______________ (product)?
• How long does it take you to make a buying decision?
• How far are you willing to travel to buy ___________(product)?
• What features do you look for when you purchase ____________ (product)?
• What motivates you to buy_____________ (product)?

See more consumer research survey questions:

Customer satisfaction surveys

Voice of customer surveys

Product surveys

Service evaluation surveys

Mortgage Survey Questions

Importance of Consumer Research

Launching a product or offering new services can be quite an exciting time for a brand. However, there are a lot of aspects that need to be taken into consideration while a band has something new to offer to consumers.

LEARN ABOUT: User Experience Research

Here is where consumer research plays a pivotal role. The importance of consumer research cannot be emphasized more. Following points summarizes the importance of consumer research:

• To understand market readiness: However good a product or service may be, consumers have to be ready to accept it. Creating a product requires investments which in return expect ROI from product or service purchases. However, if a market is mature enough to accept this utility, it has a low chance of succeeding by tapping into market potential . Therefore, before launching a product or service, organizations need to conduct consumer research, to understand if people are ready to spend on the utility it provides.
• Identify target consumers: By conducting consumer research, brands and organizations can understand their target market based on geographic segmentation and know who exactly is interested in buying their products. According to the data or feedback received from the consumer, research brands can even customize their marketing and branding approach to better appeal to the specific consumer segment.

LEARN ABOUT: Marketing Insight

• Product/Service updates through feedback: Conducting consumer research, provides valuable feedback from consumers about the attributes and features of products and services. This feedback enables organizations to understand consumer perception and provide a more suitable solution based on actual market needs which helps them tweak their offering to perfection.

Explore more: 300 + FREE survey templates to use for your research

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Everything You Need to Know About Customer Experience Research

Updated: January 20, 2023

Published: October 27, 2022

Think back to the last time you received amazing customer service . Remember how it made you feel and how you perceived that business before and after your experience. Compare that experience to the last negative encounter you had with a business, and the difference could not be more obvious.

With recent CX trends such as omni-channel marketing and support, along with the continued growth of e-commerce, it's necessary for companies to understand the customer experience (CX) from multiple angles to reduce pain points and improve customer satisfaction.

CX is not something that your company can just ignore, as nearly half of all customers report that CX is more important to them in 2021 than it was just a year ago. Given this surge in demand for a quality experience, how can your company pivot to meet your customers' rising expectations?

The answer lies in conducting extensive customer experience research. Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about CX research, or use the links below to jump ahead:

What is customer experience research?

Why is customer experience research important, customer experience research tips, customer experience research methods, start conducting your own customer experience research.

Customer experience is the summation of every interaction that a customer has with your company throughout their journey. From a cold call to a service inquiry or a coupon in the mail, each interaction between your company and a customer helps to create individual impressions, perceptions, and behaviors that together make up the customer experience.

Meanwhile, customer experience research represents the actionable steps that your company can take to understand CX. This includes collecting customer data — both pre-and post-sale — and then analyzing that data for trends that can lead to process, product, or service improvements.

Best practices in customer experience research programs include focusing on three core components:

• Development

Image source

Your company's CS research journey starts with a customer experience strategy that lays out your vision of your company's goals and maps out the customer journey as it stands and how you hope it to be.

Once you have a strategy in place, you can then put your ideas into action and develop tools and practices for measuring, organizing, and deciphering the data you'll need to validate any changes you make.

Finally, the research process ends with the tracking and implementation of findings that your company can use as a foundation for continuous improvements to CX design.

Customer Satisfaction vs. Customer Experience

To truly understand CX research, we must first take a moment to differentiate customer experience from customer satisfaction. Although the two terms are often used interchangeably, they are actually quite different and should not be conflated with one another.

Customer satisfaction is a measurement used to gauge how happy a customer is with your company's products, services, or brand overall.

It pays to have happy customers, with 89% of consumers admitting that they are more likely to make an additional purchase after a positive customer service experience.

While customer satisfaction aims to measure how a customer feels about your company — whether good, bad, or neutral — customer experience attempts to measure every interaction that your customers have throughout their entire relationship with your company.

Customer experience research can help you tease out key CX data points and measure your company's success against them. A few of those data points are highlighted in the image below.

All of these metrics and more combine to make up the customer experience. With carefully planned and executed customer experience research, your company can glean insights from these interactions that you can then use to enhance your CX design and raise client satisfaction.

There's nothing worse than losing a customer to a competitor due to a poor experience. Unfortunately, this reality is all too common, with 58% of American consumers reporting that they will switch companies because of a negative customer service experience.

Regardless of the industry, CX is highly correlated with brand loyalty, with the customers reporting the most positive experiences also scoring highest on surveys measuring brand loyalty.

On average, there is a 38% difference in likelihood to recommend a company between customers that rated a company's CX as "good" versus customers that rated that company's CX as "poor."

The ROI of conducting customer experience research is well worth the expense, especially when you stop to consider the alternatives.

After all, it's well known that lead generation is one of the most daunting tasks faced by any company. Yet, at the same time, it costs between 5 and 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.

It's no wonder that 48% of customer service professionals state that creating a positive customer experience is a top priority for their team.

There are as many methods to conduct customer experience research as there are ways that customers interact with businesses.

Some companies will choose to use deductive reasoning and use commonly held assumptions and perceptions from the market and their customers to map out the customer experience and make changes from there.

On the other hand, other companies will opt to use inductive reasoning and take small sample sets of observable data and use that information to create their CX map and inform their decision-making.

Whatever route your company chooses, it's important to drill down and identify the essential aspects of what you're hoping to gain from this research.

The questions highlighted in the image below are a great place to start.

These questions and more need to be addressed before your company attempts to analyze a shred of evidence. If you skip the planning and strategizing phase of the CX research process, then you're doomed to fail before you begin, because your company won't know what customer experience research questions it's trying to answer.

Once you've settled on your questions, it's time to start organizing the tools and resources you'll need to actually conduct your research.

Customer Experience Research Tools and Resources

Depending on your goals, you may choose to collect qualitative data that provides in-depth CX insights. However, this type of data is not easy to quantify. For example, long-form customer interviews provide a wealth of information about how customers see your CX but the results are difficult to reduce to actionable insights.

Alternatively, your company may decide to focus on measuring and tracking CX key performance indicators and highlight the collection of quantitative data. Surveys are one of the most commonly used mediums to collect quantitative data, as they allow companies to easily sort and organize responses into groups that can be used for statistical analysis and comparison.

Whatever customer experience research method your company chooses, it's essential that leadership is all on the same page to embrace CX research as a key aspect of your business. With as many as 93% of CX initiatives destined to fail, you want to make sure you're doing everything you can to make sure the time you're investing into CX research is well-spent and not just more money down the drain.

Traditionally speaking, most customer experience research was carried out by large marketing research firms that conducted the interviews, focus groups, and surveys that companies used to make changes to their CX design.

Today, the research landscape also includes data collection firms that help companies collate and store their data for easy retrieval and analysis.

That said, many companies also choose to conduct their own research in-house using a variety of research methods for collecting, organizing, and interpreting data.

As shown in the image above, some of the most common methods of collecting CX research data include:

• Feedback Software

Let's discuss each in more detail.

1. Interviews

Interviews provide a wealth of qualitative data, while surveys are highly customizable, allowing your company to tailor its surveys to collect any type of quantitative data. However, these methods are often more time-consuming and labor-intensive than other methods, so are usually conducted by larger organizations with more resources and time.

Two of the most popular surveys are also among the easiest methods of conducting CX research: NPS and CSAT.

Net promoter score (NPS) is a benchmark used to determine how likely a customer is to recommend your business to someone. NPS surveys are useful, as they measure how a customer feels overall about your brand, which allows your company to gather lots of big-picture information.

Then there's customer satisfaction score (CSAT), which measures customer satisfaction with a particular interaction, product, or service. CSAT surveys allow your company to get quantifiable data concerning every little detail of your business that can then be used to design specific solutions.

3. Feedback Software

In addition, many companies now turn to feedback software to help them collect, organize, and track CX data from multiple sources. These applications make it easy for companies to conduct CX research by bringing sophisticated analysis software and technology support all within one system.

Each type of CX method provides valuable information to the table that your company can use to improve the customer experience. Still, you'll need to make sure that you're following CX research best practices to ensure that you get the most out of your efforts.

Customers are no longer willing to settle for a bad shopping experience to get the best price or a superior product.

The new normal requires successful companies to be sensitive to their customers' needs and smooth pain points when and where they emerge. To do this, companies need to invest in CX research that paints a portrait of the customer journey, identifies areas of improvement, and urges leadership to implement actionable changes.

If your company is serious about prioritizing the customer experience, then you need to do the requisite research. That way, you can turn your assumptions into meaningful solutions that let your customers know you care about them.

And we all know there's nothing better than a satisfied customer.

Don't forget to share this post!

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100+ Market Research Questions to Ask Your Customers

Babu Jayaram

Head of Customer Success - ProProfs

Review Board Member

Babu Jayaram brings over 20 years of experience in sales and customer service to his role on the Qualaroo Advisory Board. With a profound understanding of sales and conversion strategies, ... Read more

Babu Jayaram brings over 20 years of experience in sales and customer service to his role on the Qualaroo Advisory Board. With a profound understanding of sales and conversion strategies, Babu is committed to delivering exceptional results and fostering robust customer relationships. His expertise extends beyond mere management, including adept handling of support tickets, overseeing internal and customer-facing knowledge bases, and training support teams across diverse industries to ensure exceptional service delivery. Read less

Product Manager at Qualaroo

Dwayne is a seasoned Product Manager 10+ years of experience. His articles offer a fresh perspective on the dynamic and ever-evolving world of customer-centric strategies.

Asking the right market research questions can help you understand your target customers and map their behavior and preferences. 

But what does it actually mean?

Let’s look at a sample from a market research survey report for mapping brand awareness:

From this simple Q&A report, you can:

• Visualize the proportions of demographic segments among your audience.
• Measure how your brand is performing in comparison to others.
• Pick the top preferred brand among the customers, explore what makes it stand out, and apply the same techniques to your brand.
• See how your target market perceives brand advertisements and promotional efforts.

Now imagine if this type of data set is available for different aspects of your business – product development, marketing campaigns, optimization plans, and more.

That’s what market research does for you.

With the evolution of customer interaction points and constantly changing market trends, more and more businesses are fueling efforts to do in-depth market research, as evidenced by the steady increase in the revenue of the market research industry worldwide.

Market research can help you develop essential business strategies and maintain a competitive advantage over other brands to increase conversions and customer base.

And it all starts with asking the right questions to the right audience.

That’s why we have created this collection of 100+ market research questions to ask your target market. Each question aims to uncover a specific attribute about your customers. You can use a combination of these customer research survey questions, interviews, and othe marketing questionnaires for customers.

We have also added key tips to help you write your own effective market analysis questions if the needed.

100+ Great Market Research Questions to Ask Your Customers

The main challenge while designing and conducting research is – “What questions should I ask in my customer research survey?

That’s why we have a carefully curated list of market research questions to help you get started.

To Explore New Product Opportunities

• What was your first reaction to the product?
• Would you purchase this product if it were available today?
• What feature would you like to see on the website/product?
• Which feature do you think will help improve the product experience for you?
• Of these four options, what’s the next thing you think we should build?
• What’s the one feature we can add that would make our product indispensable for you?
• Would implementing [this feature] increase the usability of the [product name]?
• Please let us know how we can further  improve this feature.
• What problem would you like to solve with our product?

To Collect Feedback on Existing Products

• Have you heard of [product name or category] before?
• How would you feel if [product name] was no longer available?
• How disappointed would you be if you could no longer use [Product/feature name?]
• How often do you use [product name]?
• How long have you been using [product name] for?
• When was the last time you used [product name]?
• Please rate the following product features according to their importance to you.
• According to you, In which area is this product/service lacking the most? Specify below.
• How does the product run after the update?
• Rate our product based on the following aspects:
• Have you faced any problems with the product? Specify below.
• What feature did you expect but not find?
• How are you planning to use [product or service]?
• How satisfied are you with the product?

To Segment the Target Market

Please specify your age.

• Please specify your gender.
• Select your highest level of education.
• What is your current occupation?
• What is your monthly household income?
• What is your current marital status?

• What is the name of your company?
• Where is your company’s headquarters located?
• Please specify the number of employees that work in your company.
• What is your job title?
• In which location do you work?
• Which activity do you prefer in your free time?
• Which other physical activities do you take part in?
• Where is your dream holiday destination?
• Please rate the following as per their priority in your life – Family, work, and social life?
• Are you happy with your current work-life balance?
• Do you describe yourself as an optimist or a pessimist?
• How often do you give to charity?
• How do you travel to work?
• How do you do your Holiday shopping?

To Conduct a Competition Analysis

• Which product/service would you consider as an alternative to ours?
• Rate our competitor based on the following:
• Have you seen any website/product/app with a similar feature?
• How would you compare our products to our competitors? 
• Why did you choose to use our [product] over other options?
• Compared to our competitors, is our product quality better, worse, or about the same?
• Which other options did you consider before choosing [product name]?
• Please list the top three things that persuaded you to use us rather than a competitor.
• According to you, which brand best fits each of the following traits.

To Gauge Brand Awareness

• [Your brand name] Have you heard of the brand before?
• How do you feel about this brand?
• How did you hear about us?
• Describe [brand name] in one sentence.
• If yes, please tell us what you like the most about [your brand name]?
• If no, please specify the reason.
• How likely are you to purchase a product from this company again?
• If yes, where have you seen or heard about our brand recently? (Select all that apply)
• Do you currently use the product of this brand?
• Have you purchased from this brand before?
• Of all the brands offering similar products, which do you feel is the best brand?
• Please specify what makes it the best brand for you in the category.
• Which of the following products have you tried? (Select all that apply)
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you recommend this brand to a friend or colleague?

To Map Customers’ Preferences

• Have you ever boycotted a brand? If so, which brand and why?
• What influences your purchase decision more – price or quality of the item?
• How many hours do you spend on social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc.?
• How do you do your monthly grocery shopping – online or through outlets?
• How do you search for the products you want to buy?
• Rate the factors that affect your buying decision for [product].
• What persuaded you to purchase from us?
• How likely are you to purchase a product from us again?
• Please rate the following aspects of our product based on their importance to you.
• What is the most important value our product offers to you?
• Which of the following features do you use least?
• How well does the product meet your needs?

To Map Customers’ Reservations

• Is there anything preventing you from purchasing at this point?
• What’s preventing you from starting a trial?
• Do you have any questions before you complete your purchase?
• What is the main reason you’re canceling your account?
• What are your main reasons for leaving?
• What was your biggest fear or concern about purchasing from us?
• What is the problem that the product/service helped to solve for you?
• What problems did you encounter while using our [product]?
• How easy did we make it to solve your problem?
• What is your greatest concern about [product]?
• Have you started using other similar products? If yes, what made you choose that product?

To Perform Pricing Analysis

• Would you purchase the product at [price]
• According to you, what should be the ideal price of the [product name]?
• Is our product pricing clear?
• According to you, what is the ideal price range for the product?

To Collect Feedback on Website Copy

• Please rate the website based on the following aspects:
• How well does the website meet your needs?
• Was the information easy to find?
• Was the information clearly presented?
• What other information should we provide on our website?
• How can we make the site easier to use?
• What could we do to make this site more useful?
• Is there anything on this site that doesn’t work the way you expected it to?
• How easy was it to find the information you were looking for?
• Have feedback or an idea? Leave it here!
• Help us make the product better. Please leave your feedback.

To Assess Website/Product Usability

• Are you satisfied with the website layout?
• What features do you think are missing on our website?
• What features do you not like on our website?
• Was our website navigation simple and user-friendly?
• How much time did it take to find what you were looking for on our website?
• Was it easy to find the products you are looking for?
• Was the payment process convenient?

To Uncover Market Trends and Industry Insights

• Did you purchase our product out of peer influence or individual preference?
• How do you form your opinion about our product?
• Do you follow trends of the product, or do you prefer to go with what you know?
• Do discounts or incentives impact your decision-making process?

Market Research Survey Templates

One of the easiest ways to conduct market research is to use survey templates. They can help you save time and effort in creating your own market research surveys.

There are many types of market research survey templates available, depending on your objectives and target audience. Some of the most popular ones are:

• Demographic Templates: These templates help you segment your customers based on their location. It can help you tailor your marketing strategies and offers to different customer groups.

• Consumer Behavior Templates: These templates help you keep your pulse on your target market.

Industry Insights Templates: These templates help you get detailed information about your target industry and business.

Breakdown of Different Market Research Questions

The answer choices in a market research survey question can significantly impact the quality and reliability of the response data you collect from the audience.

Some answer types help categorize the audience, while others measure their satisfaction or agreement. 

So, before listing the customer research survey questions to ask your target audience, let’s understand their types:

Multiple Choice

A multiple-choice question type lets users select more than one answer from the given options. These questions are great for collecting multiple data sets using the same question and gauging people’s preferences, opinions, and suggestions .

Single Choice

In a single-choice question, the respondent can select only one answer from the given options. This question type is great for:

• Segregating the users.
• Prioritizing product updates based on user consensus.
• Disqualifying irrelevant respondents by placing the question at the start of your customer research survey.

Matrix Match

A matrix matching grid can combine multiple market research questions into one to make the survey shorter . There is only one condition – the individual questions should have the same response anchors as shown in the image below:

The questions are arranged in rows while the answer options occupy the grid columns.

Ranking Question

A ranking question can help map customers’ preferences and set priorities for product development . This question type asks the respondent to arrange the given options in their decreasing/increasing preference.

Dichotomous

A dichotomous question poses a simple yes or no scenario to the respondent. These question types can help disqualify irrelevant people from the survey and categorize the users into two groups .

Likert Scale

Likert scale market research questions can help you measure the extent of respondents’ agreement/disagreement with the given statement . The answer options are arranged from positive to negative sentiments or vice-versa, with the neutral option in the middle.

There are two types of Likert scales: 5-point and 7-point .

Open-ended market questions let you explore the respondents’ minds without adding any restrictions to the answer . This question type is followed by a blank space for the respondent to add a free-text response.

You can add an open-ended question as a follow-up after the first question to explore the reasons for the customer’s previous answer. It also lets you collect more in-depth information about their issues, pain points, and delights.

Tools like Qualaroo offer tons of different question types for your surveys. Just pick the question and match its answer option type from the drop-down. To make it more effective, you can add branching to the survey.

How to Write Your Marketing Research Questions

It’s imperative to have a dedicated repository of market research questions for your surveys. But nothing’s better than crafting your questions.

For this, you need to sit with your team and discuss what information you require from the customers. It lets you analyze and document how much data you already have in your system, which can help set the market research scope.

We have listed some questions you need to ask yourself before asking market research questions to your potential customers or target market:

Audience Segmentation Questions

Audience segmentation questions help to size up your target market and provide a granular view of the audience . Not all customers are equal, and audience segmentation makes it possible to focus on each group individually to address their issues, fears, and expectations.

Here’s what you need to know before you start writing customer research survey questions to understand your audience:

• Do we understand the demographics of the new market we are trying to target? (Age, location, ethnicity, education, company, annual income, etc.)
• What are the locations that drive the most customers to our business? How are these locations different from others?
• What are the interests, preferences, and fears of people from our new target market? Have we addressed these situations for our current customer base?
• What are the psychographics attributes of the current customers and potential market? Are we targeting these in our campaigns?
• What are the most popular engagement channels for our customers? Which channels drive the most traffic to our website?
• Do we have enough data to perform value segmentation to separate high-value customers from low-value customers? 
• How often do these high-value customers make a purchase?

Product-Based Market Research Questions

Product-based market research questions can produce precious insights to channel into your product development and optimization strategies . You can see how changing technology affects customers’ behavior, what new features they want to see in your product, and how they perceive your products and services over the competition.

Start by gathering information about the following:

• How does our product compare to the competition based on the features?
• What products do our competitors offer?
• What new features do customers want to see in our products? Do we have a product roadmap to deliver these updates?
• What unique solutions do our products offer? What is the value proposition that reflects this offering?
• Does our product incorporate the latest technological advancements?
• What channels do we use to collect product feedback from our users?
• What are customers’ preferences while choosing our products over competitors?

Pricing Market Research Questions

Pricing analysis can help you make your product more affordable to different customer segments while maintaining the desired gross margin. It also lets you restructure the pricing tiers to provide features depending on the customers’ requirements and company size .

Watch: (1/5) Supercharge Your Revenue With Data-Driven Pricing

Your sales and marketing team can help you hone in on the market research questions to ask your customers for running pricing analysis:

• Do the customers ever complain about the difficulty in finding the pricing information?
• What is the pricing structure of our competitors for the same products? What features do they include for a specific price?
• How do customers find our pricing when compared to the competitors?
• Do our products provide value for money to the customers? Does the sales pitch reflect this point?
• Can we restructure the pricing, and how will it affect the revenue?
• Are there any customer segments that have high-value potential but find the current pricing unaffordable? What are the plans for such customers?
• Are we in a situation to offer a basic free plan to encourage customers to try our product before upgrading?
• What promotions can we run to attract more customers?
• Should we target customers based on income, company size, or type of solution to set our product prices?

Brand Reputation Market Research Questions

A brand reputation questionnaire for marketing research gives you information on how well your target market knows about your brand. You can uncover previously unidentified channels to increase brand awareness and find potential customers to promote your brand .

Start by gauging what customers are saying about your brand:

• Which channels receive mentions of our brand? Are these posts positive or negative?
• Do we have a system in place to analyze and monitor these reviews and posts?
• What are the reviews of our brand on different sites? What is the overall impression of our brand in the market?
• How are we currently addressing the negative reviews and complaints? What do our customers think about the handling process?
• What is the impression of our brand in our target market?
• What brand awareness campaigns are our competitors running?
• Is our brand among the top choices of our target customers?

Advertisement & Campaign-Based Questions

These customer research survey questions let you assess the effectiveness of your current value propositions and campaigns . You can channel the customer insights into your advertising strategies to design targeted campaigns for different customer segments to reduce the overall acquisition cost and increase conversions.

Ask the following questions to collect information about the different marketing campaigns that are performing:

• What are the best modes to run the advertisement campaigns to reach our target audience?
• What is the estimated lifetime value of customers acquired from current campaigns? Is it higher or lower than the acquisition costs?
• Which campaigns bring the most ROI and why?
• How well do our advertisements present our value proposition to the customers? Do they address customers’ fears and expectations to attract them?
• Are we running A/B tests to improve our online campaigns? How are we gathering data to build the A/B test hypotheses – surveys, heatmaps, eye tracking, etc.?
• What advertisement campaigns do our competitors run?

7 Question Types to Use in Market Research Surveys

We mentioned earlier that market research questions provide important data for different operations like product development, marketing campaigns, sales pipeline and more.

But to what extent?

Let’s break it down to individual processes and understand how insights from customer research surveys can impact them:

To Know Your Target Market

Understanding your target audience is the fundamental aspect of market research, be it a new target market or existing customers. If you know what marketing research survey questions to ask your target market, you can identify different customer types’ unique traits and preferences.

The data can help you segment the users based on demographic, psychographic, geographic, and other attributes. These include their behavior, purchase preferences, age, location, habits, delights, frustrations, and more.

You can then create various customer personas and fuel your sales strategies to maximize ROI.

Case study – How Avis increased its revenue per customer

Avis, a leading car rental company, was looking to enhance customer experience by offering useful car add-ons like navigation systems, child seats, insurance, etc., to customers with their booking. So, it reached out to AWA Digital to find a way to promote these products and increase their sales.

AWA digital implemented customer research campaigns using targeted surveys to determine which add-ons were popular among the customers and why. 

Using these insights, the team added an interstitial pop-up just before the booking page to show relevant add-ons to the customers.

This simple update dramatically increased the sales of add-on items and helped Avis generate more revenue per customer.

Read the entire case study here .

To Plan the Product Roadmap

A product roadmap is a visual representation of the current status of your product and planned updates over time. It shows a high-level summary of planned activities and priorities for different teams to take the product to the next level.

Steve Jobs famously said – “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology then try to figure out where to sell it.”

And market research helps to align your product strategies with the customer demand. Using targeted marketing survey questions, you can gauge what new features or functionality customers want to see in your products.

It helps to plan product development strategies based on customers’ consensus to prioritize the ideas that can have the most impact on customers and replace intuition-based approaches with data-backed decisions.

Customers’ demands change with market trends and technological advancements. That’s why your product map also needs to evolve constantly with time to reflect these changes in your product development cycle.

By designing targeted market research questions to ask the customers, you can uncover their expectations to deliver optimal product solutions. 

That’s what our next case study demonstrates.

Case study – How customer research drives Twilio’s operations  

Twilio, a cloud communications platform places customer discovery and research at the core of their product development strategies. It helps its teams to anticipate customer needs in a constantly changing market.

Lack of time and budget are the two biggest challenges that the company faces in its product development cycle. So, the team uses targeted market research questionnaires for a product to understand the challenges the customers face today and the ones they will face tomorrow. 

With an abundance of ideas and no time to test them all, the feedback data from surveys is used to prioritize the hypotheses to run the tests. It makes the process more efficient and effective in producing positive results. 

This data-backed approach is used across 18 different teams at Twilio to release new functionality every week and deliver optimal solutions to the clients.

Read the complete case study here .

To Reduce Acquisition Costs

Your customer base consists of multiple customer segments with different preferences and purchase potential. That’s why you cannot sell to everyone and need to find the right audience for your products.

If an acquired customer doesn’t bring in more revenue than it costs to acquire them, it will increase your acquisition costs over time.

We don’t want that, do we?

For example, let’s say you are targeting the entire market population using the same campaign. If your acquisition cost per customer is $300 and you acquire 20 customers from one campaign, you need to make more than $6000 to register profits.

The difficulty is you don’t know about these customers’ purchase behavior and capacity, so you cannot be sure if you will reach your goals. It adds unnecessary risks to your marketing ventures.

But, if you were targeting a specific segment with high income, regular shopping habits, or proven history of brand loyalty, You can obtain better results.

Now, the question is – 

How will you separate these potential long-term customers from one-time buyers and high-value targets from other segments?

One way to do this is by building customer personas using the data from the market research survey questions. A buyer persona defines different attributes of a particular customer segment so you can hone in on the right audience to funnel your marketing efforts.

Here’s what a typical persona includes:

• Target regions
• Target demographic (age, marital status, gender)
• Ideal psychographics (hobbies, social channels, activities they indulge in, goals)
• Preferred interaction channels
• Favorite brands and products
• Total revenue till date
• Estimated lifetime value

Once you have a clearer picture of different customers, you can find high-value prospects with the potential to be long-term customers looking for product solutions that your business offers. 

You can then design the correct pitch using the market research data to bring in these customers and control the overall acquisition costs.

For example:

• Plugin the demographic and psychographic data into CRM software like BIGContacts or Salesforce to convert high-value targets.
• Use your CRM to create segmented lists of prospects based on estimated value, location, current status, and more. Then target these groups individually with personalized value propositions to increase conversion rates.
• Identify their preferred mode of communication and technographic inclinations to find the right opportunities to pitch your product offering at the precise moment.

Even if acquiring and retaining such customers costs more, their overall revenue can balance the acquisition costs to deliver higher profits.

To Design Targeted Marketing Campaigns

By knowing how your target audience behaves and interacts with your business, you can find the exact opportunities to target them with personalized campaigns.

• You can use mail campaigns to target website users with app-exclusive offers to encourage them to download your app and improve app adoption.
• Add in-app broadcast messages about upcoming offers, exclusive membership benefits, and other incentives for new users to push them towards the end of the funnel.
• Create multiple landing pages to target different customer types.
• Design location-based ad campaigns with personalized value propositions based on audience preferences and problems at each location. 

Case Study – How Canon’s campaigns generated 700% ROI

AWA digital was tasked by Canon, one of the biggest electronics companies worldwide, to assess and increase the demand for their products in different geographies. So, the AWA team conducted customer research using target market survey questions and discovered the following attributes about customers’ purchase behavior and reservations:

• In some regions, people were reluctant to spend money on a Canon camera as they weren’t sure if Canon was an authoritative brand.
• In other regions, authority was not as important to the users.

Using these insights, AWA optimized the ads campaigns’ messaging for different locations to include what consumers deemed important purchase factors.

The results?

With in-depth customer feedback, Canon generated an overall ROI of 700% in all regions using personalized campaigns to target the audience.

To Improve Brand Awareness

Whether you are into soft drinks or not, You probably would have heard of Coca-Cola’s 2011 Share-A-Coke ad. This single campaign put the Coke brand back on the map and reversed the 10-year steady decline in sales in the US.  

Coke understood what motivates their customers and delivered a product offering that appealed to the masses to increase its brand equity- the excitement to get a Coca-Cola bottle with their name on it.

How did they do it?

In 2011, Coca-Cola rolled out its share-a-coke campaign in Australia. The company debranded the traditional Coke logo from the bottle and replaced it with the phrase “Share a Coke with” followed by a name.

The campaign used the list of the country’s most popular names (nicknames). The purpose was to make people go out and find the Coke bottle with their name on it and share it with their friends. The campaign was subsequently rolled out in 80 countries.

How did it impact Coca-Cola as a brand:

• In Australia, it’s estimated that the campaign increased Coke’s share by 4% and increased consumption among young adults by 7%.
• #ShareACoke became the top trending hashtag on Twitter globally and received over 1 billion impressions.
• In the USA, the campaign increased Coke’s market share by over 2% and brought 11% more sales compared to the previous year.

It’s not limited to big brands only.  

Understanding the customers and placing your product’s value offering along with their habits, lifestyle, and behavior can help you extend your brand’s reach.

Today, there are multiple touchpoints to connect with your customers and map their journey to uncover their issues, motivations, and fears to address in your campaigns.

• Monitor brand mentions on social media and engage with the users to cultivate an online community and promote your brand.
• Reach out to satisfied customers and turn them into your brand ambassadors.
• Use targeted ad campaigns that connect people’s emotions and general behavior to imprint your brand’s image in their minds.

Quick Tips for Writing Awesome Market Research Survey Questions

With the inter-team research complete, you are ready to write your own market research questions to ask your target audience. Keep these general dos and don’ts in mind to ensure that the market survey fulfills the purpose without affecting the data quality or response rate.

Use Mutually Exclusive Response Options

If you are using response anchors with specific ranges like age group or income, check that the options do not overlap . Otherwise, it will produce an irregular data set.

Please specify your age:

In the above example, the respondent lying on either extremity of the given age ranges may get confused on which option to choose. For example, a 28-year-old respondent can choose from both second or third options.

Plus, two different respondents of the same age may select different options, which will skew your demographic data.

You can avoid this confusion by creating mutually exclusive groups as shown below:

Always Add A “Not Applicable” Or “Rather Not Say” Option

Since market research questions extract personal information, some respondents may not want to share such details with you. These include questions about age, income, gender, hobbies, social activities, and more.

Forcing such questions on the customers without allowing them to skip can irate them and lead to survey abandonment .

That’s why you can also use Qualaroo’s skip and branching logic to create smart surveys that only ask relevant questions to your respondents based on their previous answers.

Calculate the Required Sample Size

Sample size plays a vital role in your market research questions to determine the reliability of your response data.

If the response volume is low, the results may not be conclusive to point towards customers’ consensus. On the other hand, a larger sample size than required means a waste of the company’s valuable resources and time.

That’s why it’s important to calculate the required sample size to estimate the number of responses you need for your market research survey questions.

You can use any survey sample size calculator available online to get started. Just fill in the required details to get the required sample size.

For example, to reach a statistical significance of 99%, you need at least 3145 responses to your market research questionnaire.

Consider Adding Incentives

Studies show that incentivized customer research surveys or questionnaires fetch higher response rates than general surveys.

The incentives encourage customers to invest their time in a survey and get something in return.

It means creating a gated questionnaire for market research can help you reach the required sample size quickly . The incentive can be a simple discount code, free shipping coupon, free ebook, or other freebies.

However, there is a possibility that irrelevant respondents may fill out the survey randomly just to get to the offer, which may skew the results. You can use screening questions to filter out unsuitable respondents.

Avoid Double-Barreled Market Research Questions

A double-barreled question poses two questions into one. The problem with such questions is that the respondent may have opposing views about the two statements in the questions. It makes it harder for them to choose one answer from the options .

“Please rate the [product name] on a scale of 1-10 based on overall quality and price?”

Here, the respondent may find the product quality appreciable while thinking it to be overpriced at the same time. In such a case, they may skip the question or select any option randomly.

You can easily sidestep this hurdle by breaking your double-barreled market research question into two to make it less confusing for the respondents.

Importance of Market Research

We mentioned earlier that market research questions provide important data for different operations like product development, marketing campaigns, sales pipeline, and more.

Understanding your target audience is the fundamental aspect of market research, be it a new target market or existing customers. If you know what customer research survey questions to ask your target market, you can identify different customer types’ unique traits and preferences.

AWA Digital implemented research campaigns using targeted customer research surveys to determine which add-ons were popular among the customers and why.

Steve Jobs famously said – “You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and then try to figure out where to sell it.”

And market research helps to align your product strategies with the customer demand. Using targeted customer research survey questions, you can gauge what new features or functionality customers want to see in your products.

Image Source: Slide Team

By designing targeted market research questions to ask the customers, you can uncover their expectations to deliver optimal product solutions.

Case study – How customer research drives Twilio’s operations

Twilio, a cloud communications platform, places customer discovery and research at the core of its product development strategies. It helps its teams to anticipate customer needs in a constantly changing market.

Lack of time and budget are the two biggest challenges that the company faces in its product development cycle. So, the team uses targeted market research questionnaires for a product to understand the challenges the customers face today and the ones they will face tomorrow.

With an abundance of ideas and no time to test them all, the feedback data from customer research surveys is used to prioritize the hypotheses to run the tests. It makes the process more efficient and effective in producing positive results.

Your customer base comprises multiple customer segments with different preferences and purchase potential. That’s why you cannot sell to everyone and need to find the right audience for your products.

For example, let’s say you target the entire market using the same campaign. If your acquisition cost per customer is $300 and you acquire 20 customers from one campaign, you must make over $6000 to register profits.

But, if you were targeting a specific segment with high income, regular shopping habits, or a proven history of brand loyalty, you could obtain better results.

Now, the question is –

Image Source: brightspark

• Plug the demographic and psychographic data into CRM software like BIGContacts or Salesforce to convert high-value targets.
• Use your CRM to create segmented lists of prospects based on estimated value, location, current status, and more. Then, target these groups individually with personalized value propositions to increase conversion rates.

• Add in-app broadcast messages about upcoming offers, exclusive membership benefits, and other incentives for new users to push them toward the end of the funnel.

AWA Digital was tasked by Canon, one of the biggest electronics companies worldwide, to assess and increase the demand for their products in different geographies. So, the AWA team conducted a customer research survey using target market questions and discovered the following attributes about customers’ purchase behavior and reservations:

• In other regions, authority was not so important to the users.

Whether you are into soft drinks or not, you probably would have heard of Coca-Cola’s 2011 Share-A-Coke ad. This single campaign put the Coke brand back on the map and reversed the 10-year steady decline in sales in the US.  

Coke understood what motivates its customers and delivered a product offering that appealed to the masses to increase its brand equity- the excitement to get a Coca-Cola bottle with its name on it.

• In Australia, it’s estimated that the campaign increased Coke’s share by 4% and consumption among young adults by 7%.

It’s not limited to big brands only. 

Market Research: A Key to Your Business’ Success

Market research is a vital process for any business wanting to understand its customers and market better. By asking the right questions and using the right tools like Qualaroo, you can gain valuable insights that can help you improve your products or services, enhance your customer experiences, and grow your business.

In this blog, we have shared some of the best market research questions to ask your customers, as well as some of the best customer research survey templates to find market trends and industry insights. We hope that this blog has helped you learn more about market research and how to conduct it effectively.

About the author

Dwayne charrington.

Dwayne Charrington is a seasoned Product Manager with 10+ years of experience. He brings a wealth of expertise to the world of UX improvement and user research. Dwayne's also an insightful author who writes compelling pieces that assist entrepreneurs and organizations in navigating the intricate landscape of customer experience. He shares in-depth industry insights and practical tips on delivering exceptional customer experience and creating genuinely happy customers through the Qualaroo blog post.

Home • Market research services • Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction research .

Optimize customer interactions across different channels to minimize churn rate and grow your business.

Small improvements in the customer experience can deliver big value for your business. By understanding your customers’ views, you can prioritize the areas to address.

We can help you to map the gap between customers’ expectations and your actual performance throughout the customer journey, helping to identify the priority areas for improvement.

By bringing together qualitative and quantitative methods, we can determine the key focus areas that will deliver the most for your business and explore pain points to help you better meet your customers’ needs.

We can also integrate our customer satisfaction research with your CRM, helping you to identify those with high satisfaction and high loyalty, so you can target this lucrative segment.

Here are just some of the benefits of working with Kadence on your next customer satisfaction research project:

• Gain Valuable Insights: Our comprehensive customer satisfaction research provides you with valuable insights into your customers’ perceptions and expectations. By understanding their views, you can make informed decisions and implement targeted improvements that will have a significant impact on your business.
• Uncover Opportunities for Growth: Our research allows you to map the gap between your customers’ expectations and your actual performance across the entire customer journey. This enables you to identify specific areas where small improvements can lead to substantial business growth.
• Tailored Approach: We employ a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to provide a holistic understanding of your customers’ experiences. By analyzing both qualitative feedback and quantitative data, we can pinpoint the key focus areas that will deliver the most significant value for your business.
• Identify Pain Points: Our research dives deep into customer pain points, allowing you to gain a comprehensive understanding of the challenges they face. By addressing these pain points, you can better meet your customers’ needs and enhance their overall satisfaction.
• Seamless Integration with CRM: Our customer satisfaction research seamlessly integrates with your CRM system, enabling you to leverage the data and identify customers with high satisfaction and loyalty. This information empowers you to tailor your marketing and customer retention strategies to target this lucrative segment effectively.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Our research approach is centered around data-driven decision making. By analyzing the feedback and insights gathered, you can make informed choices based on real customer perceptions, ensuring your business is aligned with their expectations.
• Continuous Improvement: Customer satisfaction is an ongoing process, and our research helps you establish a foundation for continuous improvement. By regularly assessing and addressing customer feedback, you can stay ahead of the competition and maintain a high level of customer satisfaction.
• Actionable Recommendations: Our research goes beyond just providing data; we deliver actionable recommendations that enable you to implement changes effectively. Our insights and suggestions help you prioritize the areas that require immediate attention and guide your decision-making process.

The impact customer satisfaction research can have on your business:

Generate more from your loyal customers.

By linking satisfaction with loyalty, we can help you zone in on the segments that matter most.

Grow your customer base

Improving the customer experience will help you not only to increase repeat business but to leverage brand advocacy to attract new customers.

Improve internal process efficiencies

When you understand what’s important to customers you can revisit business processes, focusing your spend on the elements that have the greatest impact.

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Understanding the elements of value driving recommendations for Panasonic

Interviews with consumers have helped Panasonic determine NPS scores and benchmark themselves against the competition.

Embedding a customer-centric culture to inform all areas of business strategy for Havells

An ongoing customer understanding program has helped Havells understand emerging needs, trends and competitor perceptions amongst its customers across various categories.

Validating an internal brand proposition for SMU’s Post-Graduate Programme

A multiphase regional study helped SMU understand resonance and perceptions towards an internal branding effort for the postgraduate track.

A fresh approach to market research.

Our global footprint makes us the go-to partner for international market research. We offer all qualitative and quantitative methodologies across our office network and beyond.

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Market research in Japan – our capabilities

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Conducting online market research in asia: the go-to guide.

What online methodologies work best in India? How do you get the most out of respondents through digital methodologies in China? Experts across our global boutique share best practice tips and techniques for conducting online market research in Asia Pacific.

5 must-have principles for any customer experience strategy

How do you create customer delight? Our latest research sought to explore what matters to customers in 11 markets which match our international footprint: the UK, US, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, India and China and Hong Kong. As part of the research, we uncovered 5 must-have principles for any global customer experience […]

Customer Journey Mapping in Market Research.

Just like we need a GPS to take us from point A to Point B, businesses need to intuitively map their customer’s journey to ensure they are moving through the process. But instead of plotting it physically on a map, brands need to use technology to visualize each touchpoint the customers interact with when they […]

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With over 30 years in the business of market research, we have extensive experience and a depth of knowledge across a range of sectors.

We bring this to bear to design the very best approach to meet your objectives.

We’ve been working with Kadence on a couple of strategic projects, which influenced our product roadmap roll-out within the region. Their work has been exceptional in providing me the insights that I need. Senior Marketing Executive Arla Foods

We have been engaged with Kadence since 2016. Since our first partnership, Kadence has been instrumental in supporting our business efforts and have continuously proven their value in research, insights and analysis that have helped us to gain many wins. Kadence consistently pushes the boundaries and offer inspirations that provide deep business insights and drive business strategies. Head of Research Bloomberg

Kadence’s reports give us the insight, conclusion and recommended execution needed to give us a different perspective, which provided us with an opportunity to relook at our go to market strategy in a different direction which we are now reaping the benefits from. Sales & Marketing Bridgestone

I have been working with Kadence for more than 4 years and they have always delivered consistently good outputs. Their ability to understand business goals and translate them to research objectives as well as a high degree of flexibility by collaborating with clients and providing recommendations that are otherwise overlooked differentiate them from other research agencies in the market. Head of Insights Discovery

Kadence has produced an exceptional body of work which plays a crucial part in planning marketing strategies and understanding the opportunities for our business as we continue to grow. We couldn’t ask for a better partner; they provided true expertise, valuable insights and commitment to quality across each project. Performance Marketing & Analytics Director Treatwell

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7 steps to small business success: a guide for entrepreneurs

In today's world, small businesses play a crucial role in the economy, driving innovation, creating jobs, and contributing to societal development. However, successfully managing a small business can be a challenge for entrepreneurs. In this article, we present seven key steps to help your small business achieve success.

1. Define goals and mission

Before starting a business , define what you want to achieve. Clearly articulate your goals and mission. Goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). Your business's mission should reflect its values and objectives.

• Establish Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) goals.
• Clearly articulate the mission of your business, reflecting its values and objectives.

2. Research the market and competitors

Conduct thorough market research to understand your target audience, trends, and customer needs. Study your competitors, their strengths, and weaknesses. This will help you develop a strategy to stand out in the market.

• Conduct thorough market research to understand target audience demographics, preferences, and behavior.
• Analyze industry trends and identify potential opportunities and threats.
• Study competitors to assess their strengths, weaknesses, and market positioning.

3. Develop a business plan

A business plan is the roadmap for your business. Include information about your target audience, competitors, marketing strategy, operational processes, financial forecasts, etc. A business plan will help you assess your capabilities and make informed decisions.

• Outline your target audience and market segmentation strategies.
• Website development
• Blog creation and content strategy
• Social media marketing tactics
• Partner platforms and collaborations
• Advertising campaigns
• Branding and identity design

4. Build a team

Hire talented and motivated employees who share your mission and values. Build an effective team capable of working together efficiently and achieving set goals.

• Recruit skilled and motivated employees who align with your business's mission and culture.
• Foster teamwork and collaboration within your team.
• Provide ongoing training and development opportunities to enhance employee skills and productivity.

5. Invest in marketing

Marketing plays a crucial role in the success of any business. Develop a marketing strategy to attract new customers and retain existing ones. Utilize various marketing tools such as social media, content marketing, advertising, and PR.

• Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy tailored to your target audience and business objectives.
• Social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Content marketing ( blog posts , videos, infographics, etc.)
• Email marketing campaigns
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
• Influencer partnerships
• Public relations efforts

6. Be ready for changes

Business is a dynamic field, so you need to be prepared for changes. Be flexible and adapt to new market conditions and technological trends. Don't be afraid to experiment and learn from your mistakes.

• Stay informed about market trends, technological advancements, and changes in consumer behavior.
• Remain flexible and adaptable to evolving business environments.
• Embrace innovation and continuously seek opportunities for improvement.

7. Focus on quality and customer service

Quality of product or service and customer service should be your priorities. Pay attention to customer feedback and constantly improve your product or service. Satisfied customers will be your best advocates and help your business grow.

• Prioritize delivering high-quality products or services that meet or exceed customer expectations.
• Establish effective customer service processes to address inquiries, concerns, and feedback promptly.
• Cultivate strong relationships with customers to foster loyalty and advocacy.

By following these seven steps, you can create a successful small business that thrives in the market and brings you satisfaction from achieving goals and success.

Copyright © 2024 SCORE Association, SCORE.org

Funded, in part, through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, and/or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA.

5 Market Research Trends To Reign In 2024

• AI Surveys : AI surveys personalize questions in real-time, leading to more reliable data. Machine learning predicts trends, helping anticipate market shifts.
• Open-Text Analysis and Categorization : AI processes open-text responses, extracting themes and categorizing them for nuanced customer insights without human bias.
• Sentiment Analysis through AI : AI algorithms rapidly assess consumer sentiment from text data, offering immediate insights into public perception of brands or products.
• Predictive Analytics and Consumer Behavior : AI forecasts future consumer behavior, informing product development and marketing strategy decisions. ‍
• Cross-Platform Analytics : Integrating user data from multiple digital platforms provides a comprehensive view of customer behavior, optimizing marketing strategies.

If you thought market research was as exciting as watching paint dry, prepare for a plot twist.

Understanding the latest market research industry trends is crucial for businesses and marketers aiming to stay ahead of the curve. These insights pinpoint what's influencing the ever-changing consumer preferences and suggest how to adjust your strategies effectively.

Dive into our rundown of the top five market research trends set to dominate in 2024 and discover how tapping into these movements can give your business the edge it needs to thrive.

Trend 1: AI and machine learning

Nobody's surprised we start our market research industry trends countdown with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. They are reshaping market research, offering powerful tools for analyzing complex datasets and extracting actionable insights .

AI surveys are transforming how we collect and interpret data. It also makes your job faster. With Survicate, creating a new survey with AI takes no more than 25 seconds. You need to describe your needs first.

Open-text analysis and feedback categorization

Open-ended questions provide rich, qualitative data that are invaluable to market researchers. AI excels in processing unstructured data, extracting themes, and categorizing responses without human bias.

This saves time and reveals customer insights that might be overlooked in manual analysis. Through natural language processing (NLP), AI tools can understand context, sarcasm, and nuanced language, turning open-text responses from your target audience into quantifiable data.

Sentiment analysis through artificial intelligence

It is a key component of market research that benefits significantly from AI. Advanced algorithms analyze text from social media, reviews, and customer feedback to determine the sentiment behind words, whether positive, negative, or neutral.

This automated process allows for the rapid assessment of consumer feelings towards a brand or product, providing a clear picture of public perception.

Predictive analytics and consumer behavior

Beyond analyzing current data, AI is instrumental in predictive analytics. By examining historical data and current market conditions, AI models can accurately forecast future consumer behavior.

These predictions enable businesses to make informed decisions about product development, marketing strategies, and inventory management.

Real-time data collection and processing

One of the most significant advantages of AI in market research is its ability to process data in real-time. This capability means you can react quickly to emerging trends and consumer feedback, staying ahead of the competition.

Real-time analytics also allows for the continuous improvement of products and services, as you can implement changes rapidly based on the latest consumer insights.

Incorporating AI and machine learning into market research methodologies provides a competitive edge, offering deep, data-driven insights essential for strategic decision-making in 2024.

Trend 2: Cross-platform analytics

Cross-platform analytics is essential for understanding consumer behavior across various digital environments.

It involves collecting and analyzing user behavior data across multiple digital platforms, such as websites, mobile apps, or CRM systems, to understand how users interact with content and services, providing a comprehensive view of the customer journey and improving marketing strategies.

The goal is to integrate data from all these sources to track and analyze the customer's interactions and experiences across different touchpoints.

Deeper insights from your customers

Cross-platform analytics examines interactions across mobile, desktop, and other devices to capture the full spectrum of consumer behavior. This approach provides a complete view of demographic data, habits, and preferences, revealing how customers engage with content and services in different contexts.

By integrating data from all platforms, you can map the digital journey , identifying key touchpoints and opportunities for engagement.

Improving customer journey understanding

A thorough analysis of the customer journey is crucial for brand strategy. Cross-platform analytics illuminates consumers' path from initial awareness to final purchase and beyond.

This visibility allows brands to craft tailored messages and offers that resonate with their audience at every stage of the journey, improving conversion rates and customer loyalty .

Advanced tracking and attribution

Effective cross-platform analytics hinges on sophisticated tracking and attribution models. These systems must accurately link user actions to the correct device and session, accounting for the complexity of multiple device usage.

Accurate attribution informs strategic decisions, ensuring that marketing efforts are evaluated correctly and budgets are allocated to the most effective channels.

Real-time decision-making

With real-time data, brands can make swift decisions to capitalize on emerging trends or address issues as they arise. This agility is vital in a fast-paced digital marketplace where consumer preferences can shift quickly.

Data integration challenges

Integrating valuable data from disparate sources remains a challenge. Ensuring data quality and consistency across platforms is paramount for reliable analysis.

You must invest in data and feedback management tools to unify and standardize data for accurate cross-platform insights.

Cross-platform analytics is a powerful solution to deliver tailored, personalized customer experiences . You can optimize your marketing strategies to drive tangible effects by tracking and attributing consumer behavior across devices.

Trend 3: Mobile-first research

With most internet users accessing content via mobile devices, mobile-first research ensures that studies are designed for consumers' platforms.

This approach allows for the capture of 'micro-moments,' the instances when consumers turn to their devices for quick decision-making, which is critical for understanding real-time consumer behavior .

Mobile surveys

Surveys and studies must be optimized for mobile interfaces to maximize response rates and data integrity.

This means designing concise, easy-to-navigate, responsive surveys across all mobile devices. The goal is to make participation as frictionless as possible, encouraging higher respondent engagement.

Look for survey tools that offer mobile surveys, like Survicate. You just need to install the mobile SDK, and you can start collecting honest feedback from your customers.

Enhancing data quality

Mobile optimization also improves data quality. By accommodating the user's mobile experience, researchers can reduce the likelihood of incomplete or inaccurate responses, which can occur when surveys are not mobile-friendly. This leads to more reliable data for analysis.

Real-time data collection

Mobile-first research allows for real-time data collection, providing immediate insights into consumer behavior. This enables businesses to quickly adapt to consumer needs and trends, offering a significant competitive advantage.

Integrating location-based insights

You can take advantage of mobile GPS capabilities to gather location-based insights, offering context to consumer behaviors and preferences. This geo-specific data is invaluable if you're looking to tailor your offerings to regional market conditions.

Mobile-first research aligns with contemporary consumer habits, offering a relevant and effective approach to gathering market insights in 2024.

By prioritizing mobile platforms and optimizing methodologies for these devices, researchers can obtain high-quality data that reflects the nuanced behaviors of today's consumers.

Trend 4: Behavioral analytics

Behavioral analytics delves into the vast amounts of big data to discern the driving forces behind consumer behaviors and decisions.

Uncovering consumer motivations

This trend involves analyzing detailed data sets to reveal patterns and trends in consumer actions. By leveraging big data, companies can predict future behaviors, tailor personalized experiences, and ultimately drive conversions by understanding what motivates their customers.

The rise of predictive modeling

Predictive modeling uses historical data to forecast consumer attitudes. By identifying the likelihood of future actions based on past behaviors, you can proactively adjust your strategies to meet anticipated market demands.

Growth of qualitative analytics

In contrast to the numerical focus of behavioral analytics, the growth of qualitative analytics represents a shift towards incorporating subjective data for a more nuanced market understanding.

Balancing numbers with narratives

While quantitative research offers a broad overview, qualitative analytics provides depth. It considers the human element by analyzing text responses, interviews, and other narrative data, giving context to the numbers.

Enhancing market understanding

Combining qualitative insights with quantitative data paints a comprehensive picture of the market. This holistic view helps businesses understand the 'what' and the 'why' behind consumer actions, leading to more informed decision-making.

Embracing mixed methods research

This approach allows for a more flexible and comprehensive market research, accommodating a wide range of consumer insights.

Behavioral analytics and the growth of qualitative analytics are crucial in understanding the market completely. Together, they enable businesses to tailor their strategies effectively, ensuring they meet their customers' evolving needs and motivations in 2024.

Trend 5: Personalization at scale

Personalization at scale is the strategic approach to delivering tailored marketing to vast audiences, which is crucial for enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Crafting customized messages

Personalized messages must be crafted using data-driven insights to engage a large customer base.

This involves segmenting audiences based on behaviors, preferences, and past interactions to deliver relevant content that resonates with individual consumers.

Leveraging machine learning

Machine learning algorithms are vital in analyzing customer data and predicting preferences.

This technology enables the automation of personalization, ensuring that each customer receives individualized attention without sacrificing efficiency.

➡️ Check how Taxfix boosts retention with personalized content

Personalization beyond email

While email has been a traditional medium for personalized marketing, expanding personalization across all digital touchpoints, including websites, apps, and social media, is essential.

Consistency across channels enhances the customer experience and reinforces brand loyalty.

Real-time personalization

Implementing real-time personalization techniques allows businesses to present offers and content that reflect the immediate context of a customer's journey.

This dynamic approach adapts to live interactions, improving engagement and conversion rates.

Measuring personalization effectiveness

To ensure personalization strategies are successful, it's important to measure their impact. Key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates, click-through rates, and customer lifetime value help gauge the effectiveness of personalized marketing efforts.

Personalization at scale is a powerful tool for businesses aiming to connect with their customers meaningfully. You can significantly improve customer satisfaction and foster loyalty by delivering customized marketing messages.

Try the best market research trends with Survicate

The market research competitive landscape is evolving rapidly, with AI and cross-platform analytics at the forefront of this transformation. Market research tools incorporating AI features are becoming indispensable as they manage and analyze feedback from various platforms, providing valuable insights that were once out of reach.

With its ability to conduct AI-powered surveys and perform open-text analysis, Survicate provides a comprehensive solution for businesses looking to stay ahead.

Survicate can help you keep pace with the rapid changes in market research and gain a deeper understanding of their customers. This understanding is crucial for creating effective, data-driven strategies that resonate with target audiences and drive growth.

To truly appreciate the impact of these advanced tools, consider trying Survicate for yourself. Start a 10-day free trial and experience all the Business Plan features . This hands-on approach will demonstrate how Survicate's innovative features can enhance market research efforts and inform strategic decisions.

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MIT Technology Review

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Scaling customer experiences with data and AI

Integrating data and AI solutions throughout the customer experience journey can enable enterprises to become predictive and proactive, says vice president of product marketing at NICE, Andy Traba.

• MIT Technology Review Insights archive page

In partnership with NICE

Today, interactions matter more than ever. According to data compiled by NICE, once a consumer makes a buying decision for a product or service, 80% of their decision to keep doing business with that brand hinges on the quality of their customer service experience, according to NICE research. Enter AI.

"I think AI is becoming a really integral part of every business today because it is finding that sweet spot in allowing businesses to grow while finding key efficiencies to manage that bottom line and really do that at scale," says vice president of product marketing at NICE, Andy Traba.

When many think of AI and customer experiences, chatbots that give customers more headaches than help often come to mind. However, emerging AI use cases are enabling greater efficiencies than ever. From sentiment analysis to co-pilots to integration throughout the entire customer journey, the evolving era of AI is reducing friction and building better relationships between enterprises and both their employees and customers.

"When we think about bolstering AI capabilities, it's really about getting the right data to train my models on so that they have those best outcomes."

Deploying any technology requires a delicate balance between delivering quality solutions without compromising the bottom line. AI integration offers investment returns by scaling customer and employee capabilities, automating tedious and redundant tasks, and offering consistent experiences based on collected and specialized data.

"I think as you're hopefully venturing into leveraging AI more to improve your business, the key recommendation I would provide is just to focus on those crystal clear high-probability use cases and get those early wins and then reinvest back into the business," says Traba.

While artificial intelligence has increasingly grabbed headlines in recent years, augmented intelligence—where AI tools are used to enhance human capabilities rather than automate them—is worthy of similar buzz for its potential in the customer experience space, says Traba.

Currently, the customer experience landscape is highly reactive. Looking ahead, Traba foresees a shift to proactive and predictive customer experiences that blend both AI and augmented intelligence. Say a customer’s device is reaching its end-of-life state. Rather than the customer reaching out to a chatbot or contact center, AI tools would flag the device’s issue early and direct the customer to a live chat with a representative, offering both the efficiency of automation and personalized help from a human representative.

"Where I see the future evolving in terms of customer experiences, is being much more proactive with the convergence of data, these advancements of technology, and certainly generative AI," says Traba.

This episode of Business Lab is produced in partnership with NICE.

Full Transcript

Laurel Ruma: From MIT Technology Review, I'm Laurel Ruma and this is Business Lab, the show that helps business leaders make sense of new technologies coming out of the lab and into the marketplace. Our topic is building better customer and employee experiences with artificial intelligence. Integrating data and AI solutions into everyday business can help provide insights, create efficiencies, and free up time for employees to work on more complicated issues. And all of this builds a better experience for customers. Two words for you: augmented intelligence. My guest is Andy Traba, vice president of product marketing at NICE. This podcast is produced in partnership with NICE. Welcome Andy.

Andy Traba: Hi Laurel. Thanks for having me.

Laurel : Well, thanks for being here. So to set some context, could you describe the current state of AI within customer experience? Common use cases that come to mind are chatbots, but what are some other applications for AI in this space?

Andy : Thank you. I think it's a great question to get started, and I think first and foremost, the use of AI is growing everywhere. Certainly, we had this big boom last year where everybody started talking about AI thanks to ChatGPT and a lot of the advancements with generative AI, and we're certainly seeing a lot more doing now, moving beyond just talking. So just growing a use case of trying to apply AI everywhere to improve experiences. One of the more popular ones, and this technology has been around for some time, is sentiment analysis. So instead of just proactively surveying customers to ask how are they doing, what was their experience like, using AI models to analyze the conversations they're having with brands and automatically determine that. And it's also a good use case, I think, to emphasize the importance of data that goes into the training of AI models.

As you think about sentiment analysis, you want to train those models based on the actual customer experience conversations, maybe past records or even surveys. What you want to avoid is training a sentiment model maybe based on movie reviews or Amazon reviews, something that's not really well connected. So certainly sentiment analysis is a very popular use case that goes beyond just chatbots.

Two other ones I'll bring up are co-pilots. We've seen, certainly, a lot of recent news with the launch of Microsoft Copilot and other forms for copilots within the contact center and certainly helping customer service agents. It's a very popular use case that we see. The reason driving that demand is the types of conversations that are getting to agents today are much more complex. AI has done a good job of taking away the easy stuff. We no longer have to call into a contact center to reset our passwords, so what's left over for the agents is much more difficult types of interactions.So being able to assist them in real time with prompts and guidance and recommending knowledge articles to make their job easier and more effective is really popular.

And then the third and final one just on this question is the really kind of rise of AI-driven journeys. Many, many years ago, you and I would call into a contact center, and the only channel we could use was voice. Today, those channels have exploded. There's social media, there's messaging, there's voice, there's AI assistance that we can chat with. So being able to orchestrate or navigate a customer effectively through that journey and recommend the next best action or the next best channel for them to reduce that complexity is really in demand as well. And how can I even get to a point where I can proactively engage with them on the channel of their choice at the time of day that we're likely to get a response is certainly an area that we see AI playing an important role today, but even more so in the future those three really sentiment analysis, the rise of co-pilots and then using AI across the entire customer journey.

Laurel: So as AI becomes more popular across enterprises and across industries, why is integrating AI and customer experience then so crucial for today's business landscape?

Andy: I think it's so crucial today because it's finding this sweet spot in terms of business decision-making. When we think of business decision-making, we are often challenged with, am I going to focus on revenue or cost cutting? Am I going to focus on building new products or perfecting my existing products? And rarely has there been a technology that has allowed a business to achieve all of those at once. But we're seeing that today with AI finding a sweet spot where I can improve revenue and keep customers happy and renewing or even gain new ones without having to spend additional money. I could even do that in a more efficient way with AI. Within AI, I can take a very innovative approach and produce new products that my customers demand and save time and money through efficiencies in making my current products better. I think AI is becoming a really integral part of every business today because it is finding that sweet spot in allowing businesses to grow while finding key efficiencies to manage that bottom line and really do that at scale.

Laurel: And speaking of those efficiencies, employee experience lays that foundation for the customer. But based on your time at NICE and within business operations, how does employee experience affect the overall experience then for customers?

Andy: I think what we've seen at NICE is really that customer experience and employee experience are hand in glove. They're one and the same. They have tremendous correlation between each other. Some examples, just to give some anecdotes, and this is customer experience really happening everywhere. If you go into a car dealership for a Tesla or a BMW, a high-end product, but you are interacting with a salesperson who's a little pushy or maybe just having a bad day, it's going to deteriorate the overall customer experience, so that bad employee experience causes a negative effect. Same thing if you go to your favorite local restaurant, but you maybe have a new server who's not really well-trained or is still figuring out the menu and the logistics that's going to have a negative spillover effect. And then even on the flip side of that, you can see employee experience having a positive effect on their overall customer experience.

If employees are engaged and they have the right information and the right tools, they can turn a negative into a positive. Think of airlines, a very commoditized industry right now, but if you have a problem with your flight and it got canceled and you have a critical moment of need, that employee from that airline could really turn that experience around by finding a new flight, booking you, making sure that you are on your trip and meeting your destination on time or without very little delay. So I think when we think about experiences at large and the employee and the customer outcomes are very much tied together, we've done research here at NICE on this exact topic, and what we found was once a consumer makes a buying decision for a particular product or service, after that point, 80% of that consumer's decision to continue doing business with that brand is based on the quality of their interactions.

So how those conversations play out, plays a very, very important part of whether or not they will continue doing business with that brand. Today, interactions matter more than ever. To conclude on this question, one of my favorite quotes, customer experience today isn't just part of the business, it is the business. And I think employees play a really important front role in achieving that.

Laurel: That certainly makes sense. 80% is a huge number, and I think of that in my own experiences, but could you explain the difference between artificial intelligence and augmented intelligence and also how they overlap?

Andy: Yeah, it's a great question. I think today artificial intelligence is certainly capturing all of the buzz, but what I think is just as buzzworthy is augmented intelligence. So let's start by defining the two. So artificial intelligence refers to machines mimicking human cognition. And when we think about customer experience, there's really no better example of that than chatbots or virtual assistants. Technology that allows you to interact with the brand 365 24/7 at any time that you need, and it's mimicking the conversations that you would normally have with a live human customer service representative. Augmented intelligence on the other hand, is really about AI enhancing human capabilities, increasing the cognitive load of an individual, allowing them to do more with less, saving them time. I think in the domain of customer experience, co-pilots are becoming a very popular example here. How can co-pilots make recommendations, generate responses, automate a lot of the mundane tasks that humans just don't like to do and frankly aren't good at?

So I think there's a clear distinction then between artificial intelligence, really those machines taking on the human capabilities 100% versus augmented, not replacing humans, but lifting them up, allowing them to do more. And where there's overlap, and I think we're going to see this trend really start accelerating in the years to come in customer experiences is the blend between those two as we're interacting with a brand. And what I mean by that is maybe starting out by having a conversation with an intelligent virtual agent, a chatbot, and then seamlessly blending into a human live customer representative to play a specialized role. So maybe as I'm researching a new product to buy such as a cell phone online, I can be able to ask the chatbot some questions and it's referring to its knowledge base and its past interactions to answer those. But when it's time to ask a very specific question, I might be elevated to a customer service representative for that brand, just might choose to say, "Hey, when it's time to buy, I want to ensure you're speaking to a live individual." So I think there's going to be a blend or a continuum, if you will, of these types of interactions you have. And I think we're going to get to a point where very soon we might not even know is it a human on the other end of that digital interaction or just a machine chatting back and forth? But I think those two concepts, artificial intelligence and augmented intelligence are certainly here to stay and driving improvements in customer experience at scale with brands.

Laurel: Well, there's the customer journey, but then there's also the AI journey, and most of those journeys start with data. So internally, what is the process of bolstering AI capabilities in terms of data, and how does data play a role in enhancing both employee and customer experiences?

Andy: I think in today's age, it's common understanding really that AI is only as good as the data it's trained on. Quick anecdote, if I'm an AI engineer and I'm trying to predict what movies people will watch, so I can drive engagement into my movie app, I'm going to want data. What movies have people watched in the past and what did they like? Similarly in customer experience, if I'm trying to predict the best outcome of that interaction, I want CX data. I want to know what's gone well in the past on these interactions, what's gone poorly or wrong? I don't want data that's just available on the public internet. I need specialized CX data for my AI models. When we think about bolstering AI capabilities, it's really about getting the right data to train my models on so that they have those best outcomes.

And going back to the example I brought in around sentiment, I think that reinforces the need to ensure that when we're training AI models for customer experience, it's done off of rich CX datasets and not just publicly available information like some of the more popular large language models are using.

And I think about how data plays a role in enhancing employee and customer experiences. There's a strategy that's important to derive new information or derive new data from those unstructured data sets that often these contact centers and experience centers have. So when we think about a conversation, it's very open-ended, right? It could go many ways. It is not often predictable and it's very hard to understand it at the surface where AI and advanced machine learning techniques can help though is deriving new information from those conversations such as what was the consumer's sentiment level at the beginning of the conversation versus the end. What actions did the agent take that either drove positive trends in that sentiment or negative trends? How did all of these elements play out? And very quickly you can go from taking large unstructured data sets that might not have a lot of information or signals in them to very large data sets that are rich and contain a lot of signals and deriving that new information or understanding, how I like to think of it, the chemistry of that conversation is playing a very critical role I think in AI powering customer experiences today to ensure that those experiences are trusted, they're done right, and they're built on consumer data that can be trusted, not public information that doesn't really help drive a positive customer experience.

Laurel: Getting back to your idea of customer experience is the business. One of the major questions that most organizations face with technology deployment is how to deliver quality customer experiences without compromising the bottom line. So how can AI move the needle in this way in that positive territory?

Andy: Yeah, I think if there's one word to think about when it comes to AI moving the bottom line, it's scale. I think how we think of things is really all about scale, allowing humans or employees to do more, whether that's by increasing their cognitive load, saving them time, allowing things to be more efficient. Again, that's referring back to that augmented intelligence. And then when we go through artificial intelligence thinking all about automation. So how can we offer customer experience 365 24/7? How can allowing consumers to reach out to a brand at any time that's convenient boost that customer experience? So doing both of those tactics in a way that moves the bottom line and drives results is important. I think there's a third one though that isn't receiving enough attention, and that's consistency. So we can allow employees to do more. We can automate their tasks to provide more capacity, but we also have to provide consistent, positive experiences.

And where AI and machine learning really help here is finding areas of variability, finding not only the areas of variability but then also the root cause or the driver of those variabilities to close those gaps. And a brand I'll give a shout out to who I think does this incredibly well is Starbucks. I can go to a Starbucks in any location around the world and order an iced caramel macchiato, and I'm going to get that same drink experience regardless of the thousands of Starbucks locations. And I think that consistency plays a really powerful role in the overall customer experience of Starbucks' brand. And when you think about the logistics of doing that at scale, it's incredibly complex and challenging. If you have the data and you have the right tools and the AI, finding those gaps and offering more consistent experiences is incredibly powerful.

Laurel: So could you share some practical strategies and best practices for organizations to leverage AI to empower employees, foster positive and productive work environments, and then also all of this would ultimately improve customer interactions?

Andy: Yeah, I think the overall positive, going back to earlier in our conversation is there are many use cases. AI has a tremendous opportunity in this space. The recommendation I would provide is to focus first on a crystal clear, high-probability use case for your business. Auto summary or the automated note-taking of agents after call work is becoming an increasingly popular one that we're seeing in the space. And I think the reasons for it are really clear. It's a win-win-win for the employee, the customer, and the business. It's a win for the employee because AI is going to automate something that is mundane for them or very procedural. If you think of a customer service representative, they're taking 40, 50 maybe in upwards of 60 conversations a day during their job, taking notes of what was talked about. What are action items? Very complicated, mundane, tiresome even. They don't like doing it.

So AI can offload that activity from them, which is a win for the employee. It's a win for the customer as a lot of times the agents are great at note-taking, especially when they're doing that so often, which can lead to that unfortunate experience where you have to call back as a consumer and repeat yourself because the agent you're now talking to can't understand or doesn't have good information about what you called or interacted with previously. So from a consumer experience, it helps them because they have to repeat themselves less often. The agent that they're currently speaking with can offer a more personalized service because they have better notes or history of past interactions.

And then finally, the third win, it's really good for the business because you're saving time and money that the agents no longer have to manually do something. We see that 30 to 60 seconds of note-taking at a business with 1,000 employees adds up to be millions of dollars every year. So there's a clear-cut business case for the business to achieve results, improve customer experience, and improve employee experience at the same time. I think as you're hopefully venturing into leveraging AI more to improve your business, the key recommendation I would provide is just to focus on those crystal clear high-probability use cases and get those early wins and then reinvest back into the business.

Laurel: Yeah, I think those are the positive aspects of that, but concerns about job loss due to automation tend to crop up with AI deployment. So what are the opportunities that AI integration can provide for organizations and their employees so it's a win-win for everybody?

Andy: And certainly empathetic to this topic. As with all new technologies, whenever there's excitement around them, there's also this uncertainty of what will those long-term outcomes be? But I think when we historically look back, all transformative technologies have boosted GDP and they've created more jobs. And so I see no reason to believe this time around will be different. Now those jobs might be different and new roles will emerge. When it comes to customer experience and the employee experience one interesting theory I'm following is, if you think about Apple, they had a really revolutionary model where they branded their employees geniuses. So you'd go into an Apple store and you would speak to a genius, and that model carried through all of their physical flagship stores. A very positive model. Back in the day, people would actually pay money to go speak to a genius or get a priority customer service slot but a model that's really hard to scale and a model that hasn't been successful in a virtual environment.

I think when we see AI and a lot of these new technology advancements though, that's a prime example of maybe a new job that does emerge where if AI is offloading a lot of the interactions to chatbots, what do customer service agents do? Maybe they become geniuses where they're playing a more proactive, high-value add back to consumers and overall improving the service and the experience there. So I do think that AI will have job shifts, but overall there'll be a net positive just like there has been with all past transformative technologies.

Laurel: Continuing that look ahead, how do you see the era of AI evolving in terms of customer and employee experience? What excites you about the future in this space?

Andy: This is actually what I'm most excited about is when we think about customer experience today, it's highly reactive. As a consumer, if I have a problem, I search your website, I interact with your chatbot, I end up talking to a live customer service representative. The consumer is the driving force of everything and the business or the brand is having to be reactive to them. Where I see the future evolving in terms of customer experiences, is being much more proactive with the convergence of data, these advancements of technology, and certainly generative AI. I do see AI becoming smarter and being more predictive and proactive to alert that there is going to be a problem before the consumer actually is experiencing it and to take action on that proactively before that problem manifests itself.

And just a quick example of maybe there's a media or a cable company where a device is reaching its end-of-life state, so rather than it have it go on the fritz the day of the Super Bowl, reach out, be proactive, contact that individual, give them specific instructions to follow. And I think that's really where we see the advancements of not only big data, AI, but just the abundance of the ability to reach out in preferred channels, whether that's a simple SMS or a high-touch service representative reaching out really where the future of customer experience moves to a much more proactive state from its reactive state today.

Laurel: Well, thank you so much, Andy. I appreciate your time, and thank you for joining us on the Business Lab today.

Andy: Thanks. This was an excellent conversation, Laurel, and thanks again for having me.

Laurel: That was Andy Traba, who is the vice president of product marketing at NICE, who I spoke with from Cambridge Massachusetts, the home of MIT and MIT Technology Review. That's it for this episode of Business Lab. I'm your host, Laurel Ruma. I'm the global director of Insights, the custom publishing division of MIT Technology Review. We were founded in 1899 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and you can find us in print on the web and at events each year around the world. For more information about us and the show, please check out our website at technologyreview.com. This show is available wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, we hope you'll take a moment to rate and review us. Business Lab is a production of MIT Technology Review. This episode was produced by Giro Studios. Thanks for listening.

This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.

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Defining the unique buyer journey, leveraging technology, and staying abreast of emerging trends are critical tactics to create successful marketing campaigns, but even more so in the competitive business landscape. B2B generally demands an intricate sales cycle that relies on deeper relationship-building rather than impulse purchases. In fact, 90% of B2B buyers worldwide say their trust with their supplier is a factor that influences buyer satisfaction, according to a June 2023 TreviPay survey conducted by Murphy Research.  

In the guide, we delve deeper into the nuances of B2B marketing, highlighting crucial metrics and examining emerging trends shaping the industry in 2024.

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What is B2B marketing?

B2B marketing involves the promotion of goods, services, or information between businesses. A B2B marketing team creates tailored strategies aimed at meeting the distinctive needs of other businesses, often encompassing longer sales pipelines and multiple decision-makers.

What is the difference between B2B and B2C marketing? 

B2C marketing—designed to reach, engage with, and sell to individual consumers—is largely associated with retail products that include everyday goods and services. Although the lines between B2B and B2C are increasingly blurring, with many strategies and channels overlapping, there are key differences in the business objectives, target audiences, and processes. 

While B2B companies generally market solely within their industries, to managers responsible for business investments, B2C companies often rely on broad consumer reach. Because B2B purchases are usually higher in value, requiring consensus from a range of stakeholders, they focus more on the quality of deals rather than the quantity. B2B marketing messaging focuses on data-supported ROI and business impact, whether it’s to cut costs or boost efficiencies. B2C marketing, on the other hand, can lean more into the creative, emotionally driven messaging that appeals to a mass market. 

Stages of the B2B buyer’s journey

• Awareness: Initiating the journey involves businesses identifying needs or challenges. Marketers leverage industry insights, thought leadership, and targeted content to captivate potential clients.
• Consideration: This phase sees businesses researching solutions extensively. It becomes pivotal to offer clients in-depth case studies, product/service information, and expert consultations.
• Decision: Transparency in pricing, robust customer support, and tailored solutions hold the key to sealing deals.
• Retention: Post-purchase, maintaining client satisfaction and engagement is crucial. Follow-ups, personalized support, and value-added services contribute to sustained partnerships.
• Advocacy/Loyalty: Delighted clients transform into brand advocates, contributing referrals and positive word-of-mouth, bolstering brand reputation.

B2B marketing channels and tactics 

B2B marketing leverages a range of marketing channels and strategies, each with unique strengths and challenges. By a significant lead, email (73%) remains the biggest channel that B2B marketers use to effectively connect with prospective buyers, followed by phone (39%) and events (31%), according to April 2023 data from Ascend2 and Zoominfo. We delve into these three tools, as well as their best practices.

Email marketing 

As a way to nurture relationships and establish brand credibility, email marketing in the B2B space is an opportunity to connect at different points in the buying journey. Beyond communication, email fosters value, differentiation, and trust. 

Because of its accessibility to customers and B2B marketers, however, it’s often used without strategy, measurement tactics, or clean data. B2B customers are more digitally savvy and discerning than ever, demanding personalized and informative email interactions. To take full advantage of the channel: 

• Refocus metrics on engagement: Rethink traditional metrics and concentrate on ones that truly reflect recipient engagement and interaction levels. Prioritize metrics like conversion rates, interactivity, and unsubscribe rates to gauge success.
• Invest in data management: Integrate data across buyer stages, channels, and systems for a comprehensive view of email’s impact on the overall marketing strategy. To accomplish this, capitalize on first-party data, customer data platforms (CDPs), and data expertise.
• Explore AI and automation: Embrace AI tools for precise audience segmentation, reengagement strategies, and email list health improvements. Lean on generative AI to craft emails that provide value and relevance, ensuring they meet recipients’ specific needs and interests.

Phone calls

Phone calls also remain a direct and personal tool to engage with prospects and clients. Unlike other communication channels, phone calls offer real-time, interactive conversations that foster immediate connections and enable nuanced discussions.

However, the phone often faces challenges due to evolving customer preferences. To harness the full potential of this channel:

• Prioritize quality conversations: Instead of focusing solely on call volume, prioritize the quality of interactions, taking the time to understand customers’ needs. Ensure that each conversation adds value, whether it’s through providing information, addressing concerns, or building rapport.
• Integrate call data: Combine data from phone interactions with other touchpoints across the buyer’s journey. Integrating this data provides a comprehensive understanding of each customer, facilitating tailored and effective communication strategies.
• Leverage technology: Use advanced tools and systems to streamline phone interactions. Technologies like customer relationship management (CRM) software and call analytics not only improve efficiency, but also provide valuable insights for refining phone-based marketing strategies.

In-person experiences offer a balance to the often-overwhelming digital noise that B2B customers are bombarded with. Physical events, along with webinars and livestreams, are key to solidifying connections and maintaining authority in thought leadership. 

A quarter (25%) of US B2B marketers report in-person tradeshows and events as a leading area of marketing spend, per an August 2023 Sagefrog Marketing Group survey. Of the same group, 38% plan to exhibit or sponsor in-person conferences and 36% plan to organize or host their own webinars. To maximize the impact of these events:

• Build immersive experiences: Go beyond traditional presentations and integrate interactive sessions, workshops, and live demos to encourage active participation.
• Foster networking opportunities: Enable professionals to share insights and ideas while forging meaningful connections.
• Embrace hybrid events: Combine physical events with virtual elements to extend reach while retaining the benefits of face-to-face interaction, catering to a broader audience.

Content marketing

Content plays a crucial role in shaping brand narratives, educating prospects, and influencing purchasing decisions. Beyond delivering information, content marketing is a catalyst for establishing thought leadership, giving brands authority in their industry. Successful content marketing prioritizes engagement metrics; integrates actionable insights; and tells authentic, trust-building stories. To boost your content marketing strategy, consider the following types of content: 

• Case studies: As proof of a company’s capabilities, case studies help prospective clients envision their use of the product through real-world challenges and solutions. 
• Educational content: White papers, webinars, and blog posts provide valuable information and showcase your company’s breadth of knowledge.
• SEO content: Make sure your content is discoverable, ranking highly on search results, by implementing a strategy behind keywords, meta tags, and mobile accessibility.

​​The B2C evolution of B2B marketing

Today’s B2B buyers are made up of digitally fluent millennials and Gen Zers who expect the same level of attentiveness, personalization, and ease as their B2C experiences. This diversification of the B2B audience—as well as their shifting purchasing behavior—means traditional marketing tactics aren’t enough to capture their attention. Here’s a look at this evolving B2B marketing trend and how it affects B2B buyers’ purchasing decisions. 

Larger, diversified buying collectives 

B2B buying committees are not only getting more diverse, they’re getting larger, spanning a greater range of generations, perspectives, and buyer personas. In 2023, 59% of B2B buyers were estimated to be between ages 26 to 40, while 30% were 41 to 55 and 6% were 18 to 25, according to 2022 data from the American Marketing Association, Demand Gen Report, and Forrester. 

As a result, marketers now face the challenge of engaging stakeholders of various preferences and habits, with an even greater need to keep up with modern consumer-centric demands in the buying process, such as self-managed buying journeys.

The rise of online purchasing 

Consumers accustomed to the frictionless online checkout process of B2C retailers such as Amazon and Target assume the same of their B2B experiences. B2B ecommerce, consequently, has much room to grow, with merchants seeing plenty of opportunity to improve online experiences. 

Three-quarters (75%) of US B2B purchases use online platforms to buy products, according to BigCommerce. Meanwhile, a third (33%) of Western Europe- and US-based small and medium-sized businesses with $10 million or more in revenues say digital self-serve is a defining need in the purchase process, per an August 2023 Boston Consulting Group survey. 

Social media as an essential channel 

The increasing share of younger B2B buyers is fueling social media marketing, notably LinkedIn, as a hotspot for engagement. These young professionals turn to social media platforms not only to be informed and connect with others, but also to influence their purchasing decisions. Half (50%) of US B2B marketers report social media as a tactic that contributes most to achieving their top-of-funnel goals, per April 2023 Wpromote and Ascend2 data.  

The LinkedIn user base is also reflecting younger audiences. In 2024, 63.7% of US LinkedIn users will be a millennial or Gen Zer, accounting for 50 million users, per a May 2023 EMARKETER forecast. Recognizing B2C’s influence on B2B buying, LinkedIn launched Accelerate in 2023. This generative AI-powered tool—which can refine targeting and automate ad campaigns—addresses the need for more efficient self-service in the B2B space, especially at a time when the industry faces economic pressure and tighter budgets. Half (50%) of B2B technology buyers worldwide say that due to the economic climate, they would prioritize purchases that increase automation or save time, according to March 2023 TrustRadius data.  

Technology’s role in B2B marketing trends

Technology is the driving force behind B2B marketing disruption . From lead generation to personalized interactions and data-driven decision-making, marketing technology (martech) is transforming every facet of the sales cycle.

In 2024, US B2B marketers will spend $8.71 billion on martech, according to August 2023 EMARKETER estimates, marking a 13.4% increase YoY. In addition, B2B martech spending will account for nearly a third (32.2%) of overall martech spending in 2024.

Harnessing innovative tools, analytics, AI-driven insights, and robust CRM systems can amplify marketing effectiveness. 

Generative AI’s impact on content creation 

Not only is generative AI making simple, tedious content creation tasks more efficient, but it’s also acting as a starting point for creativity and personalization. For marketers, that means generating targeted, relevant content at scale, assisting with everything from email and social media copy to white papers.

OpenAI’s GPT-4 Vision exemplifies the versatility of generative AI, capable of analyzing images and generating corresponding product descriptions. B2B marketers can use this technology to scale content creation across various platforms and tailor messages to resonate with specific audiences.

Generative AI’s impact on brand equity 

Generative AI-powered campaigns can help B2B brands reinforce their values and identity, stand out from the competition, and secure long-term customer equity. For instance, generative AI content can quickly assist in outlining unique selling points for a large number of product descriptions, allowing brands to expand their online presence and hone in on the language that attracts potential buyers.

B2B marketers, however, still need to be proactive and involved with AI-generated content, as it can bring risks such as inaccuracies or inconsistencies that may compromise a brand’s integrity. AI-generated content must still be checked to ensure that it’s not misleading, biased, inaccurate, or inappropriate, and that it aligns with the brand’s values.

Companies such as Jasper and Junia AI have integrated systems that can learn a brand’s style and tone, then generate similar copy for a cohesive voice. The goal is content that still maintains authenticity and personality.

Generative AI’s impact on data management 

With the increasing reliance on generative AI and heightened privacy concerns, robust data management is becoming crucial. Effective data management forms the backbone for informed decision-making, personalized interactions, and accurate measurement of ROI across marketing channels.

Seamless integration of diverse data sources and platforms is imperative for delivering personalized customer experiences. Establishing centralized data management systems, defining standards, and conducting regular audits can ensure data consistency, enhancing brand integrity.

EMARKETER predicts CDPs will proliferate as the need for ethical standards and precaution around the protection of sensitive information rises. In 2022, brands, publishers, and agencies spent between $377,000 and $437,000 on CDPs, data management platforms, and consent management platforms, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s State of Data 2023 report. 

Success in B2B marketing 

Measuring B2B marketing success involves assessing a range of metrics that may change based on your business objectives. By delving into the following KPIs, companies can gauge the impact of their B2B marketing efforts and identify areas for refinement:

• Marketing qualified leads (MQLs): Indicates the number of leads identified by marketing as potential prospects. Analyzing the quality and quantity of MQLs offers insights into the success of lead-generation strategies and the alignment between marketing and sales teams.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): Quantifies the total cost invested in acquiring new customers. Understanding the CPA helps in optimizing marketing spend and evaluating the efficiency of acquisition channels, ensuring cost-effective customer acquisition.
• Customer retention rate: Reflects the percentage of returning customers. A high retention rate signifies the success of marketing strategies in fostering customer loyalty and satisfaction.
• Website traffic and engagement: Tracks the volume of visitors to a website and their interactions. Analyzing metrics like page views, time spent on-site, and bounce rates helps in assessing the appeal and relevance of content, SEO efforts, and user experience. 
• Customer feedback and surveys: Collecting feedback through surveys or direct customer interactions provides qualitative insights into customer satisfaction, preferences, and areas for improvement in B2B marketing strategies.

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Introducing Forrester’s Digital Customer Interaction Solutions Landscape

Christina McAllister , Senior Analyst

Guess what? I’m kicking off research on a new technology market! The Digital Customer Interaction Solutions Landscape, Q1 2024 , report is now live, and a Forrester Wave™ evaluation will be publishing in June. The newly published landscape report lists the 26 most notable vendors in the digital customer interaction solutions market and the nine use cases on which they are focusing.

What are digital customer interaction solutions (DCISes)? Forrester defines them as:

Software solutions designed to orchestrate and enhance customer interactions across various digital interaction channels, such as chat, messaging, SMS, and social media. Some solutions may also support traditional channels like voice and email. These platforms excel at dynamically balancing automated and human-assisted experiences based on customer needs to improve interaction outcomes. Their native AI foundation facilitates agility and responsiveness to evolving customer needs and AI capabilities.

Why DCIS? Why Now?

The “shift to digital” in the contact center has been a work in progress. As it turns out, enterprise transformation takes time. Understatement of the century? I’ll grant you that.

I’ve been covering “digital interactions” in the contact center (read: chat, messaging, etc.) since I joined Forrester, but I’ve been close to this topic my whole career. Now, why am I telling you that? Well, to lend a bit of gravitas to what I’m about to say: This space has changed dramatically in the past couple years — and I don’t think it’s done changing.

In my research and day-to-day guidance sessions with Forrester clients, I’ve noticed some shifts:

• Silos are breaking down — or at least, they’re starting to. Leaders are acknowledging the need to reshape their digital customer interaction strategy to offer a unified brand experience. One leader I spoke with noted the challenge of managing five-plus outbound messaging solutions, each overseen by different teams and each operating with their own triggers for sending a message.
• Companies are ready to take digital channels seriously. At this point, most enterprises have dabbled in chat and messaging. Some have even pulled investments back after not seeing meaningful reduction in voice volume, labeling the initiative a failure. The next era of digital interaction strategies do more than simply replicating voice operations in a digital wrapper.
• Advanced digital strategies demand advanced digital solutions. Although all-in contact center platforms may fulfill an omnichannel RFP checklist, most are built on a synchronous voice architecture. While they do a great job of pulling all channels into a single agent desktop, the customer-facing experience is not nearly so seamless. Recognizing the limitations of traditional contact center or case management solutions, forward-thinking buyers are choosing best-in-class providers to embrace new interaction paradigms.

Enterprises looking to implement cutting-edge digital interaction strategies benefit from technology partners equipped with advanced channel orchestration and AI strategies. Leaders with ambitious digital strategies can’t afford to wait for the “all-in” platform solutions to catch up with the far-nimbler DCIS vendors. Until capabilities equalize, a best-in-class DCIS is the only choice for enterprises looking to deliver differentiated digital interaction experiences.

If you couldn’t tell, I’m super excited about this research and am looking forward to digging in and sharing more on this space in the coming months.

Forrester clients looking to learn more about the DCIS market can read the full landscape report here . And if you need guidance on where you should take your digital interaction programs, let’s chat — book a guidance session with me . We’ll get you on the right track!

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