Making decisions on what product and services a business should promote requires quality information.  Market research is one of the key ways to help you get a true sense of what the consumer needs and a great way to get answers to questions that can affect your business. Done properly, market research is an important tool for achieving business success and can generate significant ROI.

The two most common methods of collecting customer data are market surveys and focus groups.

Market Surveys

Market surveys are one-on-one, usually phone-based and anonymous. Each survey participant is a datapoint. With a population sample that best represents your customer base, you have greater confidence in the information as an accurate representation of client opinion.

Follow up is easier and candid responses to questions are more common. The answers gathered are better for analysis. Also, surveys allow you to track market opinion changes over time, leading to more insight into your business strategy.

Focus Groups

Focus groups tend to be a smaller sample size and act as a collective sharing of opinion with a different dynamic – information is shared in a group setting and is not anonymous.  Focus groups can be a good way to get discussion and brainstorming going and can help uncover ideas or issues that could have been missed otherwise. Other than that, it’s usually more difficult to convince people to voice an opinion when they are part of a group.

Which is Better?

If you want to get a feel for what people think of different business strategies or you want to solicit new ideas, focus groups can be useful.  When it comes to stronger information, market surveys are the better option. Your sample size is greater, participants tend to be more open with their opinions, and the data you collect is easier to analyze.

To learn more on how customer surveys can help your business, call me – Louie Pateropoulos at 416 219 0905 or email me.

Direct marketing is a form of advertising that allows organizations to communicate straight to the customer. Advertising techniques used can include mobile messaging, email, interactive consumer websites, online display ads, fliers, catalog distribution, promotional letters, and outdoor advertising.

Direct marketing emphasizes a focus on the customer, data, and measurement and is characterized by:

• Message are addressed directly to members of a target market. Addressability can be email addresses, mobile phone numbers, fax numbers and postal addresses.
• A specific “call to action.” – The message may ask the prospect to call a free phone number or click on a link to a website.
• An emphasis on trackable, measurable responses from prospects.

Direct marketing is practiced by businesses of all sizes — from the smallest start-up to the Fortune 500. A well-executed direct advertising campaign can prove a positive return on investment by showing how many potential customers responded to a clear call-to-action.

Direct mail marketing is attractive to many marketers because its positive results can be measured directly. If 1,000-piece mail campaign results in 100 responses to the promotion, one could say with confidence that campaign led directly to 10% response rate.

For marketing initiatives with a web-based call-to-action, the Internet has made it easier for marketing managers to measure the results of a campaign. This is often achieved by using a specific website landing page directly relating to the promotional material. The call to action will ask the prospect to visit the landing page. The effectiveness of the campaign can be measured by taking the number of promotional messages distributed (e.g., 1,000) and dividing it by the number of responses (people visiting the unique website page).

While many recognize the financial benefits of targeted campaigns, some direct marketing efforts using particular media can often generate poor quality leads, either due to poor messaging strategy or because of poorly compiled contact databases. This problem impacts marketers and consumers alike, as advertisers don’t like wasting money on communicating with prospects not interested in their products or services.

This means that, prior to embarking on any direct marketing campaign, knowing your target customer, and what message will be effective, is key. And the best way to uncover those is through a marketing survey.

To learn more on how customer surveys can help your business, call me – Louie Pateropoulos at 416 219 0905 or email me.

It’s ironic that the best candidates for market research are often the companies or individuals that think they have all the answers.  They are easy to pick out.  It’s even easier to point out why the authoritative research delivered by On Target could help these companies and individuals:

“Why do research?  We already have the best product on the market.”

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Let me begin with a story.

In the winter of 1991, like many here in America, I sat glued to CNN’s coverage of the historic toppling of the statue of infamous founder of the KGB in Dershinky circle near the Kremlin. Little did I know or suspect that 6 months later I would be delivering a seminar to 200 Russian businessmen in Moscow on the use of market research and surveys in developing positioning and branding strategies for advertising, marketing and public relations campaigns.

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Congressman Gerard Fox walked into his office looking like Ichabod Crane in pin stripes. His secretary, Elizabeth Miller, who had been wearing the same beehive style hairdo for four decades, followed him into his office, placed a stack of pink messages neatly on his desk and then waddled down the hall and out the North door of the Rayburn House office building to sneak a smoke.

Positioning is a technique that is most commonly associated with marketing, advertising and public relations. But as you can see, it also works in literature.

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