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«Ignorance of the law does not absolve from responsibility» — this phrase perfectly describes the situation when a startup tries to enter the market and an existing business tries to develop without conducting market research.
It’s a blind game where you won’t know objectively:
- whether your product will be in demand in a particular market;
- whether it is unique or has analogues;
- how competitive it is;
- whether your target audience is solvent;
- and much more.
As you have already understood, without a marketing analysis, it is impossible to determine the potential of your startup, as well as the growth points of your existing business and the marketing strategy that will help you use them. How to prevent project failure or stagnation with the help of marketing analysis?
We’ll talk about this in turn in our article:
- what a marketing analysis is;
- why and when to conduct a marketing analysis of a business;
- stages of marketing analysis;
- the difference between the specifics of marketing research for startups and existing businesses.
What is a marketing analysis?
Marketing analysis is the process of collecting, interpreting, and analyzing data about the market, target audience, competitors, and internal marketing of a company.
It is a tool that allows you to:
Why and when do you need to conduct a business marketing analysis?
Marketing analysis plays a key role in the development of marketing strategy. It helps companies make informed decisions based on specific facts and data.
To summarize, marketing analysis provides structured information and conclusions to further achieve business goals. But now we will emphasize the cases when there is a special need for its implementation:
Launching a new product
To determine whether to launch a product and how to do it successfully, it is important to conduct a marketing analysis. It will help you understand whether there is a demand for this offer, whether it meets the needs of the target audience, how to distinguish it from existing alternatives, etc.
Evaluating the effectiveness of marketing campaigns
This need arises for startups and companies that promote their products on their own. Most often, they have one problem in common: marketing does not bring results, and investments are not paid off.
To solve it, you need to analyze what marketing tools are used and what mistakes are made. And based on this, develop a promotion strategy that will contain recommendations for optimizing the tools already in use and testing new ones.
Developing a marketing strategy
As we have partially mentioned above, marketing analysis is an important tool for creating a marketing strategy. After all, it allows you to study the market and competitors, identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business, and determine the best promotion and pricing channels.
Forecasting and adapting to market changes
The market is a dynamic structure that is constantly changing under the influence of economic, political, cultural factors and other trends. Accordingly, consumer behavior and needs are changing. Therefore, in order to grow successfully, a business must adapt to these changes, anticipate future market requirements, and create a successful promotion strategy based on this.
Stages of marketing analysis
Marketing analysis consists of four stages: planning, information search, data analysis, and report generation.
What is the difference between the specifics of market research for startups and existing businesses?
As we have already partially mentioned above, the specifics of conducting a marketing analysis will depend on the stage of the business:
Business idea
Here, our task is to understand whether it will be expedient to start and develop a certain project. Therefore, first of all, we need to focus on how much this product will be in demand in the chosen market, what competitive brands are already present, and what trends in its consumption are on the market.
Startup
At this stage of development, the project already has a ready-made product and pricing. Accordingly, they need to find markets where their product will be in demand and how to successfully enter them. Therefore, to conduct a marketing analysis for such a project, it is important to focus on finding the optimal markets, analyzing demand, factors that affect it, competitors, and price levels.
A business that works
At this stage of development, businesses already have an idea of who their target audience is and are actively working in a particular market. But most often, such companies face low marketing efficiency, lack of return on investment, or stop at a certain level of development.
Therefore, their main needs are to evaluate the effectiveness of marketing tools, analyze competitors, test hypotheses, research current and future market trends, and develop a promotion strategy. This is a kind of indicator of growth points.
Congratulations, now you know what marketing analysis is and why businesses need it!
We have described in more detail how we conduct marketing analysis for projects with different needs in our case studies. You can read them here, here, and here.
Conclusion
The market is unstable and unpredictable, so before launching a new product or trying to develop an existing business, it is recommended to conduct a marketing analysis. This way you will get specific facts and data about a particular market, target audience, and competitors. You will also learn an assessment of the effectiveness of the marketing tools you use, get conclusions and recommendations.
