There are many questions surrounding the role of marketing research in digital marketing.

Is it valuable? Can you conduct online surveys for marketing research? What is the best approach? Should you even be conducting market research at all?

While the answers to these questions may differ from one organization to another, there are some general guidelines that you can follow to determine if and when to conduct your own market research project, as well as how to approach it.

Marketing Research is Valuable

Marketing research is valuable because it can provide a wealth of data that helps answer important questions about your target audience.

For example, maybe you want to know what kind of content your audience is responding to most. By examining the results of a survey, you can find out exactly what consumers need and want. This will help you create engaging content that appeals to your audience.

Additionally, you can use the information collected to benchmark your performance and identify areas for improvement. Knowing the strength of your brand in comparison to your competitors can also help you identify the right marketing strategies for your business.

Online Surveys Are a Valuable Tool

Online surveys are a valuable tool as long as you use the right ones. Make sure that you are using tools that provide you with statistically significant results, and that you’re incorporating a minimum number of respondents to ensure that your results can be trusted.

Even better, make sure that the tool you are using is free. Paid tools that offer similar features often pose a security threat to consumers, as well as give you a questionable taste in your research.

The Right Approach to Market Research is Multidisciplinary

The best approach to market research is a cross-disciplinary one, incorporating all the knowledge and expertise of different fields like marketing, social science, and data analysis.

For example, you might want to create an ad campaign that incorporates email marketing, social media, and offline marketing to get the best results.

Conducting market research independently (as opposed to in combination with other disciplines) can also give you a better understanding of what is working and what is not, as well as allow you to identify insights that you may not have seen before. For example, a marketing researcher may discover that users are more engaged with content that relates to their interests and hobbies, while an economist may identify a link between interest in an economic subject and the likelihood of purchasing a product related to that subject matter.

If you’re serious about conducting effective market research, I highly recommend that you consider incorporating these different areas of expertise to get the best possible results.

How Do You Approach Market Research?

Once you’ve determined the value that marketing research provides, you can approach it from a variety of different angles.

The first step is to determine what kind of information you’ll need to accurately conduct the research. This may include things like the demographics (such as age, gender, and income), as well as the behaviors (such as what devices they use, what search terms they enter, or what kind of content they prefer).

Additionally, you’ll want to decide how you’ll collect the information. Will you use online surveys, in person interviews, or a mixture of the two?

It may also be beneficial to examine the questions you’ll ask, in order to determine how best to approach the research. For example, if you’re conducting an in-person interview, you may want to ask open-ended questions about their experiences, as opposed to specific questions about your product or service.

Where Do You Conduct Market Research?

The next step is to determine where you’ll conduct the research. This could be anywhere from a simple Google search to an in-house laboratory.

Ultimately, it depends on your resources and the size of your company. If you’re looking for quick wins, you might want to conduct the research online, using tools like SurveyMonkey, or Bigdatachange.

Alternatively, if you have the financial and technical resources, you might want to conduct the research in-house, using tools like Marketing Charts, Salesforce, or HubSpot.

When evaluating where to conduct market research, consider the following:

• Reputation
• Cost of Doing Business
• Quality of Life
• Security
• Data Privacy
• Legal
• Technical Infrastructure
• Physical Infrastructure
• Human Resources
• Communication
• Scheduling
• Analysis
• Reporting
• Findability
• Accessibility

While there are many different questions surrounding the role of marketing research in digital marketing, the above should provide you with a good foundation for your exploration. As you consider the various benefits of a marketing research project, you may wonder why you haven’t conducted one before. If that’s the case, I hope this article will help convince you that it’s time to change that habit.