How to Do Market Research: A Guide and Template

free, editable and downloadable market research template

Today’s consumers have a lot of power. They can research your product or service and make purchase decisions entirely on their own.

Moreover, rather than talking to one of your sales reps, they’re more likely to ask for referrals from members of their networks or read online reviews.

With this in mind, have you adapted your marketing strategy to complement the way today’s consumers research, shop, and buy?

To do just that, you must have a deep understanding of who your buyers are, your specific market, and what influences the purchase decisions and behavior of your target audience members.

Enter: Market Research.

Whether you’re new to market research, this guide will provide you with a blueprint for conducting a thorough study of your market, target audience, competition, and more.

What is market research?

Market research is the process of gathering information about your business’s buyers personas, target audience, and customers to determine how viable and successful your product or service would be, and/or is, among these people.

Why do market research?

Market research allows you to meet your buyer where they are. As our world (both digital and analog) becomes louder and demands more and more of our attention, this proves invaluable. By understanding your buyer’s problems, pain points, and desired solutions, you can aptly craft your product or service to naturally appeal to them.

Market research also provides insight into a wide variety of things that impact your bottom line including:

Where your target audience and current customers conduct their product or service research
Which of your competitors your target audience looks to for information, options, or purchases
What’s trending in your industry and in the eyes of your buyer
Who makes up your market and what their challenges are
What influences purchases and conversions among your target audience

As you begin honing in on your market research, you’ll likely hear about primary and secondary market research. The easiest way to think about primary and secondary research is to envision to umbrellas sitting beneath market research: one for primary market research and one for secondary market research.

Beneath these two umbrellas sits a number of different types of market research, which we’ll highlight below. Defining which of the two umbrellas your market research fits beneath isn’t necessarily crucial, although some marketers prefer to make the distinction.

So, in case you encounter a marketer who wants to define your types of market research as primary or secondary — or if you’re one of them — let’s cover the definitions of the two categories next. Then, we’ll look at the different types of market research in the following section.

Primary vs. Secondary Research

There are two main types of market research that your business can conduct to collect actionable information on your products including primary research and secondary research.