Be informed with market research, insights & analysis
Who are your competitors? Who are your customers? How do people search for what you offer? Market research reveals the often surprising answers to these seemingly simple questions.
Growth built on a foundation of research
Setting long-term growth goals is easy. The hard bit isn’t knowing where you want to go, it’s working out how to get there.
Market research plays a critical role in our proprietary DigitalArchitect SystemⓇ, which forms the blueprint for your digital growth. Our research is designed to get to the truth of your situation:
- Who your ideal customers actually are: By understanding how your customers search you are able to identify new opportunities to engage with previously known and potentially unknown sources of revenue.
- The words customers actually use to find your products and services: The words they use to search for your offerings can differ greatly from the words you use to describe them, meaning you miss out on a lot of potential business via Google.
- The direct and indirect competitors eating into your market share: You may think you know your direct competitors but DigitalArchitect will reveal who is dominating the online space and whether there are indirect competitors at play.
Our market research brings clarity to all the above and more. We identify your most significant customer segments and conduct extensive keyword research on exactly how those customers search for your product. We reveal your major competitors and develop a roadmap to gain the competitive advantage.
Furthermore, we have the skills and experience to gain insights from critical market research data and to develop the strategies required to grow your business.
Len Day
Principal/Director, Austar Realty
I recently enlisted the services of Growth Partners. After a short brief, Steve and Keitha moved into planning and preparation mode and the product they composed was world class.
The delivery matched the product in every way. The sessions were run with sincerity, passion, and energy while keeping the complete attention of my staff throughout. As facilitators, you could not ask for better.
Steve and Keitha provided fantastic follow up which I have not experienced previously. In 30 years of owning the business, I have never had a more complete and effective service provided. I thoroughly recommend Growth Partners to anyone that has the desire to improve their business.
Why is market research important?
Market research is critical for any and every business, as it delivers the fundamental knowledge required to achieve significant and sustainable growth.
When done well, market research can:
- Provide you with a better understanding of your customers.
- Identify previously untapped customer segments.
- Reveal growth issues and opportunities.
- Help you set growth targets.
Without market research you are more or less flying blind. You lack critical knowledge on who your customers are, what your customers want, and your competitor strengths and weaknesses. Decisions are based on gut feel rather than hard data, and the business suffers because of it.
Chris Loukakis
Strategic Director, AnalogFolk
We used Growth Partners on a project with one of the biggest brands in the world who are in almost every retail and commerce category. Sam and the Growth Partners team were able to complement our brand first approach to provide a data-led strategy which allowed us and our client to prioritise categories, define topics and create a robust content strategy.
The problem with traditional market research
Most market research companies take a similar approach – using standard tools and processes to extract basic information on customers, competitors, keywords and more.
The issue isn’t necessarily with the information that is generated – although this is often no different to what the business could have found itself. The bigger problem is that the process is undertaken without a clear end goal in mind: businesses know market research is important, so commission market research companies to do it, but don’t consider its place in the bigger growth picture.
Take keyword research as an example. Most businesses extract information from a tool like Google Keyword Planner, but:
- There is no competitive advantage in using the same approach as your competitors.
- Google Keyword Planner is often incorrect which is why using other tools helps you identify competitors may have overlooked.
- Pulling data is not enough. You need to overlay competitive insights and industry knowledge to formulate winning growth strategies.
There’s a better way to conduct market research: by bringing the focus back to growth.
Market research with a growth focus
At Growth Partners we bring a different approach to revenue growth: the DigitalArchitect.
DigitalArchitect combines data, science and market knowledge to produce deep, actionable insights that offer a blueprint to digital growth. Market research plays a key role in DigitalArchitect, helping us to answer questions like:
- How are your top competitors engaging with your customers?
- How should you use these insights to talk with customers who don’t know you exist?
- How can you generate more leads for your sales team?
- Where are the best ways to begin to grow your market share?
- What types of content are effective and ineffective at capturing customer attention?
- How should your website be structured to maximise customer engagement and growth potential?
Built on a strong foundation of market research, DigitalArchitect also considers the customer journey in three distinct phases – Awareness, Consideration, Transaction – then looks at the purpose, desired buyer behaviour, and targeted business outcome within each.
What is market research?
Market research is the process of understanding your customer base, including:
- Who they are.
- Their needs, wants and preferences.
- How they search for your products and services.
- Who they currently buy from.
If you understand all of the above you put yourself in a perfect position to speak the right language to the right people and to offer a more compelling proposition than your competitors.
Market research is focused on your key revenue streams and markets of interest. It can include:
Customer research
Keyword research
Competitor research
Open the world with indepth market research
Looking for multi-million dollar growth? Market research forms a key part of our holistic DigitalArchitect, which has already generated $100+ million in revenue for businesses just like yours.
FAQs
Why commission paid market research when we can do it ourselves?
Many organisations are tempted to conduct their own market research, whether for cost-cutting reasons or in the belief that no one knows the business, its needs and its customers better than they do.
But there are a number of reasons why Growth Partners market research analysis will prove a far wiser investment:
- When done well, market research is a deep and complex undertaking that uses multiple tools and that demands a highly tuned set of skills and experience to use the data to gain insights and set strategy.
- Hiring an expert ensures you avoid organisational blindspots and gain an objective third-party view of your situation.
- Market research isn’t a cost, but an investment in your business – and one that offers incredible ROI.
There are a number of tools that anyone can use to conduct market research, including Google Trends, Social Mention and Attest. But just because you can use them, doesn’t mean you should use them:
- The insights from these tools tend to be shallow and limited, as effective market research demands a deeper dive into your business.
- Using the same tools as your competitors will generate the same results as your competitors.
- Even if a tool offers ‘premium’ functionality – which you’ll pay for – you may not have the in-house knowledge or expertise to capitalise on it.
As mentioned above, market research is only truly valuable when done by professionals who can grant you access to insights that your competitors don’t have.
Market research can be grouped into two main methods:
- Primary market research: Sometimes called field research, when brand new data is gathered first-hand.
- Secondary market research: Also known as desk research, the gathering of information that has previously been researched and compiled by someone else: think market research reports, studies, textbooks, records and stats.
Within these two methods there are two main collection methodologies:
- Quantitative market research: The collection and analysis of objective measurements and hard data, such as that found in Google Analytics and Google
Trends. - Qualitative market research: The collection and analysis of more subjective data and measurements, including customer reviews, surveys, interviews and focus
groups.
At Growth Partners we take a quantitative data-driven approach to market research. The DigitalArchitect uses primary and secondary research with quantitative data to analyse your business, customers, competition and market, to draw insights and offer up actionable recommendations.
Market research shouldn’t be seen as a box to be ticked and moved on from, because your business, competitors and market are always evolving. Market research should either be a continual process or one that is regularly revisited.
Some market research insights, such as pricing and marketing, are more prone to change and volatility, and therefore demand closer attention than broader and less changeable insights.
But as a general rule, deep market research should be conducted once a year with micro projects refreshed as and when required in response to external factors such as changes in the market or global circumstances like Covid.