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There's one part of marketing that is guaranteed to make a major impact on your business - and that is market research.

If you're not doing any of this, you are seriously missing a major trick.  And possibly missing out on customers or clients that would make a massive difference to you.

Some people love it, some people hate it (I personally love it!).  Whichever category you fall in to, it's a business necessity.

Research is a tool in your marketing tool box.  Market research will tell you exactly who your customers are - and where they are.  It will even tell you the best ways to market your product to your customers - ie how they like to buy.  If your target customer only ever buys from the internet - you're going to have to be very creative if you want to persuade them to come to your bijou little shop - however beautiful it is!

I did a research exercise recently which uncovered a whole untapped market for the particular product group that I was researching.  And no-one had mentioned this market to me within the company - which is a shame because this particular group of customers are the highest spending people in the world on the particular product group. So, you never know what you can find when you carry out some market research.

There are two types of research you can do - quantitative and qualitative.  

Quantitative tells you the numbers, qualitative gives you the opinions.  

Quantitative research will tell you who your customers and prospects are, where they are, what they read, where they go and so on.  Qualitative research will tell you why they buy, the benefits that they're most interested in, how and what they think and feel.

To make your marketing the best that it can be, you need to have carried out both types of research: quantitative and qualitative.  In fact, I would go as far as to say that you shouldn't be doing any marketing at all until you've done some research into who your target market is, where they are and why they buy at the very least.  

The greater the picture you can build up of your target market - the better and more effective your marketing will be.  And the best way to do this is through carrying out some market research.

There's a whole industry around market research, and it's not that cheap to commission or buy the reports.  However the good news is that we can access a lot of it for free - if you know where to look.  

When you are researching your market for free you have to think laterally and be prepared to hunt around a bit.  If you have the odd couple of thousand pounds hanging around, then you can download reports immediately.  If you don't (and who does?) then you need to be prepared to put in the leg work and hunt.  You can do most of your research online these days - which is a lot different to my early days as a junior in the ad agency world!  

However, if you are prepared to put in the effort, then the rewards may just surprise you!

Don't leave this particular marketing tool unused.  You absolutely need to do it if you want successful marketing campaigns.  In the professional marketing world, NO marketing is ever carried out unless it's backed by research. There's a reason for it.  

So even if it doesn't fill your heart with joy and jubilation at the thought of doing it, find a way around it.  If you want results in your business then you need to know who is going to buy your product or service.

Market research will tell you just that.  And that's got to be worth it, surely?

"Research is to see what everyone else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought."

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi