The Niche Marketing Blog

by: Maneet Puri

Internet market research is the process of searching the internet to find information about your target markets so that you can further analyze it to better your business processes. By accumulating valuable information about your niche market segments, you can seek to explore new opportunities in the market, identify potential problems and monitor the performance of your company in the market.

The results and findings of internet market research helps facilitate effective decision making. Here are some potential benefits of internet market research activities.

   * You can explore new opportunities in the market and evaluate them.
   * You can analyze the various segments of your target marketplace.
   * You can select the best and most appropriate target market.
   * It helps in better positioning of the product in the market.
   * You can use the information for enhancement of the product development process.
   * It helps to plan and implement strong marketing strategies that further seeks to achieve business   objectives.

The benefits of internet market research are many. However, you also need to figure out what kind of research methodology would be the best for you and will help you deliver more value. Here are three types of market research

   * Exploratory research
   * Descriptive research
   * Causal research

Exploratory Research
This kind of research is used to search the market for new ideas and explore potential market opportunities. It is a highly unstructured form of research that can be used to explore the possibilities of a situation or search for a problem. In fact, the findings are based majorly on secondary data such as data available in different departments of the company, case studies, pilot projects etc. exploratory research gets you general information about the markets and various segments of the same.

Descriptive Research
This is more detailed than the former version of research. Descriptive research accumulates detailed information about the markets. It includes answers to all the who-what-why-where-when-how types of questions. Because it is more structured, it offers a detailed analysis of the markets that can be understood well and applied further. In fact, descriptive research provides specific answers to multiple points questions. For example, what age group of users buy what type of the products and from which location. . It requires huge volumes of data collection and high analytics.

Casual Research
This is again a generic form of research that helps you understand the causes and effects of the relationship between the business and its target audiences. You can not only identify potential problems but also locate specific causes of the problems. This in turn can guide your to formulate effective solutions and eliminate the root cause of the problem altogether.

All the modes of research have different courses and different methodologies. However, one thing that they have in common is Internet. All the three type of research uses internet as their prime medium to locate information apart from other offline sources. The internet provides unbiased information from across the world with absolutely no constraint of geographical limitations. This means you can have access to global information and cater to a worldwide audience.

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About The Author

Maneet Puri heads LeXolution IT Services, a professional KPO outsourcing company that deals with a variety of KPO services. The company provides seamless and cost effective business support functions like internet market research, mailing list development and virtual assistant services to its worldwide clients.

http://www.lexolutionkpo.com

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Here are some related articles that you might find of interest:

• Why We Have to Keep Doing Market Research – Following up on my previous post about the problems with most market research, here’s a plea why we should keep trying to get it right. At the recent London SMX show, I presented on the Ad Testing and Research panel. …

• How To Do Market Research – The marketplace is your line of business, and doing market research means knowing your business inside out so that you can function effectively in it. For this reason, failure to do adequate market research can often lead to poor business decisions and results. So in this article, we are going to look at how you can research your marketplace with the aim of improving your overall knowledge and understanding of the areas that are critical to your business success.

• What’s Wrong with Market Research – When we first started doing research at Enquiro into how people used search, we found very quickly that what people say and what people do are very different things. It just happened that we were doing a survey and a focus group at …

• Keyword Research – What Are You Basing It On? | John Cow dot Com – We have a question for you and we want you to really think about this. What are the most important metrics that you use when doing keyword research? 1.

• SEO & Keyword Research For Beginners With Aaron Wall | Hobo – Amazing keyword research tips for seo from Aaron Wall of Seo Book – One of the most experienced professional seo in the world.

by: Charen Smith

Know thy enemies.

Keep your friends close; your enemies closer.

Get to know your competition.

Ever heard of these principles? One writer/philosopher once said that in order for you to be competitive and even rise above the pack, you need to know your competition and what they’re doing to be different. When you do, you’ll surely be able to create tactics that will make you stand out and hence, make a difference in your market share.

I suppose you think that the business community is very hard to be a part of because you’re always competing and trying to outdo each other.

Believe it or not, business is not about that. On the contrary, it’s not a blood bath all the time. In fact, business owners and marketers do it in a more classy and comfortable arena where they often work together to make their community work.

But no doubt about it, competition is present. And the best way to differentiate yourself from the rest is an analysis of what your competition is doing to become successful. Here’s what you should know when spying for your marketing research:

Step 1: Be a detective.

Competitive analysis is all about gathering the tools and materials your competitors have to market their products and services. Examine their features, the design, and even the commercial color printing method used to come up with an effective marketing campaign. One marketer even suggested shopping and purchasing from your competitors to learn and experience what it feels like to buy from them.

Step 2: Identify and analyze even those you feel are competitors.

Chances are you’re right. Even in the most unlikely places, you might just be surprised that a competition is present. So be on the lookout for marketing tools and materials of any businesses that you perceive to be providing the same services as you do.

Step 3: Analyze the message.

After you’ve collected the materials, focus on the message of your competitors. What are their promises? Do they have anything different to offer? Do we have anything in common? What formats did they use? Is the design effective? What seems to be the best marketing tool in all that you’ve collected?

Step 4: How can you be unique?

Finally, after gathering all the information from your competitor’s marketing materials and tools, it’s now time for you to create your own marketing campaign that would reflect something unique and compelling in your offer. When you do find your answers, be sure to include every factor that can contribute to your success – your products and services, your operating method, your unique company qualities and customer service attitude, your values, etc. Whatever you learned from your competitive analysis can definitely help you create a remarkable tool that would be able to sell to your target clients.

For more information, you can visit this page on http://www.justprint.com

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About The Author

Charen Smith writes articles about Internet Marketing. She has an extensive knowledge and experience when it comes to business strategies, techniques and business solutions.