Let’s Talk Marketing Research
vs Marketing Strategy
Marketing research vs marketing strategy are not only important when building your brand; but they also serve different goals and intentions. It’s important to note that they are certainly the main ingredients required for business success!
After all, what’s a successful marketing campaign without thorough marketing research and a well-crafted marketing strategy?
Let’s discuss the meaning of marketing research as well as marketing strategy and explore how they are connected.
Marketing
Research vs Marketing Strategy
Marketing Research
Marketing research is the process of collecting information about your target customers/audience, analysing your competitors and gathering information about the market you’re seeking to tap into.
It’s the process of collecting, sorting, analysing and interpreting data to pinpoint marketing trends and patterns that will definitely help with developing valuable insights.
Primary marketing research is basically research that you conduct on your own and secondary research is research that was compiled, gathered and analysed by other entities or organisations.
Marketing
research includes both quantitative and qualitative methods such as surveys,
interviews, focus groups, customer observations, collecting feedback on social
media plus websites and data analysis.
In addition to that, it helps with developing a good understanding of your target market/audience which is so important when designing your marketing strategies. It provides information about your target customers’ wants, needs, preferences, challenges and problems and even help with identifying any gaps in the market.
Understanding marketing research vs marketing strategy helps to place you on the clear path of building a brand that connects with its customers and deliver value.
The information collected from marketing research represent the key ingredients because it helps with developing marketing strategies that are aligned with your customers’ wants, needs and preferences. The art of crafting the best marketing strategies stem from conducting thorough marketing research.
Now, let’s talk marketing strategy.
Marketing Strategy
A marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan that outlines how a business is going to market its products/services. It comprises of SMART marketing goals, a clearly defined target market, the list of marketing strategies and its supporting marketing activities that are aligned with the marketing goals.
Developing a successful marketing strategy involves knowing and understanding your target market, along with the overall market and the competitive landscape.
When you think about marketing research vs marketing strategy, the marketing strategy is like a product of marketing research. Your marketing strategy details how your brand is going to create, deliver plus communicate value and provide the best customer experience to its target market.
Additionally, it details your product, pricing, promotion and distribution strategies as well as describes how your brand will be positioned as unique to ensure that it stands out competitively.
The Relationship
Between Marketing Research vs Marketing Strategy
Marketing research and marketing strategy are both ongoing processes that are interconnected. As such, they are highly important because they provide guidance with regards to making the best marketing decisions for your business.
Let’s dive more into detail on how they are closely related.
How Marketing Research and Marketing Strategy are Related
1. Defining Your Target Market/Audience
I mentioned earlier that marketing research can provide information regarding your target market wants, needs, preferences, challenges and problems. This type of information form the key ingredients required to clearly define your target market when developing your marketing strategy.
Marketing research also helps to distinguish your target market based on consumers’ age, gender, attitudes, behaviour, beliefs, values and interests. This information certainly paves the way for developing marketing strategies that specifically caters to your clearly defined target market.
Therefore, understanding the connection behind marketing research vs marketing strategy, helps to build a thorough understanding of who your product/service is specifically designed for.
2. New Product/Service Development
Marketing research provides information that enables the opportunity to refine existing products/services and/or create new ones. It helps to identify any gaps in the market that relates to unfulfilled needs or unresolved problems faced by your target customers from the existing brands in the market.
This information is perfect for designing marketing strategies that place emphasis on how the features of your products/services are unique and how they can benefit plus deliver value to your target market.
3. Positioning your Brand
Marketing research provides a deep understanding of how consumers perceive your brand. Grasping the connection behind marketing research vs marketing strategy helps with strategically positioning your brand.
The information from marketing research can help develop a marketing strategy that positions your brand as memorable following a connection with your target market/audience.
4. Pricing Strategy
Marketing research guides your business on the perceived value of your products/services. You can use this information to create a pricing strategy that is perfectly aligned with the needs of your target customers/audience.
5. Promotional Strategy
The relationship between marketing research vs marketing strategy helps with the development of your promotional strategy. Marketing research provides information on which channels to use to effectively reach and win the hearts of your target market.
It also provides information on how to communicate messages to your target audience in a way that’s engaging and inspiring.
6. Evaluation of Marketing Strategies
Marketing research helps to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategies to determine which ones are the most effective and which ones require improvement. It helps to ensure that your marketing strategies are designed to excel in the competitive landscape.
Marketing research vs marketing strategy helps to position your brand to dominate the market. Understanding how connected they are helps with knowing exactly who your target market/audience is, creating and delivering value and gaining insights that guides the consistent development and tweaking of your marketing strategies.
Applying the connection between marketing research and marketing strategy can certainly set your business up to stand out and win!
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