What you need to know about the new direct marketing guidance note
Nadine Mather and Chloë Loubser
Why perform marketing research?
Active research is a vital part of any business. It is the platform that allows for a better understanding of client and customer needs in an ever-changing world; which enhances the trusting relationship between businesses and their consumers.
As a decision-maker in the world of marketing it's important to have your brand stand out in a congested market. How do you actually go about achieving the aforesaid? You need to find and activate the most applicable insights that will drive your business to success. Competition is rife across many different industries with large corporates scrambling to find the "next big thing". There is also the constant application of quick fixes to attract consumer attention to gain loyalty. Without a deeper understanding of what the problem is that is causing hindrance to progress, brands and the businesses they represent often do not enjoy sustained growth or loyalty from their customers.
Why are insights important?
As a business owner, the ultimate goal is to increase your return on marketing investment. However, this is becoming a lot more difficult to achieve inhighly competitve markets and has left a lot of management teams wondering how to better position themselves. Insights are imperative to business sustainability - they are building blocks to constructing sound strategies - leading to ultimately yield positive results.
The key to uncovering insight is to conduct extensive research and profiling your audience according to a set of personas. For any brand to stand out in a highly competitive market, it's crucial to connect with consumers in more meaningful ways. In order to gain a better view of a direction to charter for brands, and how and where to position them, one needs to understand what tensions they face daily, through conducting deep dives into the lifestyles, by uncovering their hopes and aspirations before mapping out the channels and media through which one would like to interact with them.
Market research is not linear in any manner and is often quite extensive to the reach it can be applied. As W5 Partners, our approach to research is to generateuser friendly information that tracks changes in consumer behaviour, with a strategic view of what is possible implications for the brand and business, using conventional tools such asfocus groups, positioning workshops or stakeholder interviews.This approach to market research then allows clients to make a more informed decsision as to what is the precise insight to activate, in order to enjoy sustained growth.
It is also beneficial to businesses to havecompetitor intelligence, so that they too can question some of the conventions or trends that inform how businesses currently interact with their audiences.
Why performing marketing research is important to your brand
Though our research, we have been able to provide simulations of test beds for various brandlaunches and extensions, and have provided the correct approach for whole scale brand rejuvenation and migration. We have been able to provide critical insights into how consumers react to and engage with brands, while being able to provide clients with constant feedback. Research also gives businesses an understanding of what the ideal times for efficient engagement with audiences will be.
Nowadays, it is important for a brand to gain as much information about their desired target market as possible, this ensures the success and growth of the brand. Ultimately providing businesses with the key knowledge needed to gain the upper-hand in the market.
If your business or brand needs to be positioned to find the appropriate target audiences, call W5 Partners, a leading research and insights activation management provider on 011-325 5855 (JHB) / 021-418 1854(CT).
