What makes GREAT marketing research? It’s not necessarily the most sophisticated analysis. It’s not necessarily a brilliantly creative questionnaire. It’s answering marketing questions in a way that lets managers take ACTION to solve problems and increase profits.
And the best marketing research is done with a strong, common understanding between the marketing researchers (either in-house or external) and the clients (managers). But if you have ever cringed at the notion of getting those managers to sit down and go through the up-front thinking and discussion that leads to great research, it will help formalize and facilitate the process.
These are the essential questions that will help create your next marketing research project and get everyone involved in the project on the same page right from the start:
1. What is the budget for this project?
2. What business objective will we be addressing?
3. What is the objective of this marketing research project?
a. What problem are we trying to solve?
b. Has other research been done on this topic in the past? How well did it answer questions? Did achieve its goals?
4. What is the subject product/service?
a. What is the value proposition or brand position/differentiation of the product/service?
b. What are the key features of the product/service?
c. What are the key benefits of the product/service?
5. What action will we take with the information?
a. Who will take this action and are they involved in designing the research?
6. Who is the target audience for this research?
a. What is the size of the audience?
b. Do we have a list of these people? Do we have permission to use this list for marketing research?
c. What contact information do we have on this list?
d. What languages are needed for this marketing research? Will we do the translations in-house or externally?
e. How likely is it that the target population will respond to the survey? How busy are they? How motivated are they to provide their feedback? Do incentives need to be offered?
7. What is the best data collection methodology for the respondents?
a. Will we need to expose the respondents to graphics in the course of this interview?
8. Will the survey be conducted “blind” or will the survey sponsor be revealed?
9. How should we analyze the data?
a. How much do we want to slice the data?
b. Do we plan any multivariate analysis?
10. What is the appropriate sample size for the analysis?
11. Who is the audience for the research results?
12. How will the research results be reported?
13. Will in-person presentations be needed?
14. What taboos, if any, need to be avoided?
15. Is there anything else that needs to be conveyed about this project?
16. Do we have enough budget for this project to be done correctly?
Customize this list for your own situation, but this will provide a good starting point. And remember that Question 3 (what are our objectives and what is the problem we are solving) and Question 5 (what action will we take with the information) are the most important questions to answer. If you don’t get any further, answering those two questions will be a big step forward.
If you can’t answer these questions, or if there are too many divergent viewpoints on the answers to these questions, you probably are not ready to start the marketing research. Keep talking and challenging. Identify and fix the weaknesses, clarify the objectives and outcomes, and then start the process again with question #1.
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