Understanding your customer base is one of the first key steps to success in business. Without knowing who your customers are, what they want and how they want to get it from you, your business could struggle to come up with an effective marketing strategy. This is where a market analysis comes in. A market analysis can be a time-intensive process, but it is straightforward and easy to do on your own in seven steps.
How to conduct a market analysis
While conducting a marketing analysis is not a complicated process, it does take a lot of dedicated research, so be prepared to devote significant time to the process.
These are the seven steps of conducting a market analysis:
1. Determine your purpose.
There are many reasons you may be conducting a market analysis, such as to gauge your competition or understand a new market. Whatever your reason, it’s important to determine it right away to keep you on track throughout the process. Start by deciding whether your purpose is internal – like improving your cash flow or business operations – or external, like seeking a business loan. Your purpose will dictate the type and amount of research you will do.
2. Research the state of the industry.
It’s vital to include a detailed outline of the current state of your industry. Include where the industry seems to be heading, using metrics such as size, trends and projected growth, with plenty of data to support your findings. You can also conduct a comparative market analysis to help you find your competitive advantage within your specific market.
3. Identify your target customer.
Not everyone in the world will be your customer, and it would be a waste of your time trying to get everyone interested in your product. Instead, decide who is most likely to want your product using a target market analysis and focus your efforts there.
4. Understand your competition.
To be successful, you need a good understanding of your competitors, including their market saturation, what they do differently from you, and their strengths, weaknesses and advantages in the market. Start by listing all your main competitors, then go through that list and conduct a SWOT analysis of each competitor. What does that business have that you don’t? What would lead a customer to choose that business over yours? Put yourself in the customer’s shoes.
Then, rank your list of competitors from most to least threatening, and decide on a timeline to conduct regular SWOT analyses on your most threatening competitors.
5. Gather additional data.
With marketing analyses, information is your friend – you can never have too much data. It is important that the data you use is credible and factual, so be cautious of where you get your numbers.
6. Analyze your data.
After you collect all the information you can and verify that it is accurate, you need to analyze the data to make it useful to you. Organize your research into sections that make sense to you, but try to include ones for your purpose, target market and competition.
7. Put your analysis to work.
Once you’ve done the work to create a market analysis, it’s time to actually make it work for you. Internally, look for where you can use your research and findings to improve your business. Have you seen other businesses doing things that you’d like to implement in your own organization? Are there ways to make your marketing strategies more effective?
If you conducted your analysis for external purposes, organize your research and data into an easily readable and digestible document to make it easier to share with lenders.
Be sure to retain all of your information and research for your next analysis, and consider making a calendar reminder each year so that you stay on top of your market.