Whether you are introducing a new product or optimizing your sales efficiency, there is no better way than conducting a market research project to see all the market trends there are for you to explore.

We all know there is a lot to think about regarding market research; you need to consider many different factors, like your competitors, market research methods, and other elements that will help your business strategy. Of course, it is not the optimal way to do it simply by yourself, but if you have some great market research examples, you may just get it done.

In this article, we will go over some of the most important elements that you should consider including in your market research report, how to analyze qualitative data, and all the other elements to get the highest customer reach possible. Of course, every industry trends are different, so you need to adjust to it in your market research survey.

So, with that in mind, let’s go over some of the most important elements to consider, with some great free templates for you to use.

But first – let us consider what kind of software would be best to create the single best market research template for everyday use. As it is in most cases, you need something that is powerful, with lots of additional features that can implement charts, graphs, and many different elements into a document without creating a mess. Also, you need something that can be transferred quickly, which pretty much anyone can open on their computer.

In that case, we can only recommend Microsoft Office as one of the best products on the market. Millions of users around the world just cannot be wrong. If you want to create a well-crafted market research plan with lots of pictures, a SWOT analysis template, or any other element you may find helpful – Microsoft Office is there for you.

And, thanks to a competitive landscape, Microsoft Office is available for an affordable price. So, suppose you need to create a market survey or just perform some kind of marketing analysis. In that case, you will surely benefit from using a program that is well-known and proven to be of great use in many different environments all across the world. With that in mind, let’s review some of the free market research templates we’ve prepared for you to enjoy.

Market Research Template #1

The first analysis on our list may feel pretty basic, but it can get you far when creating an excellent overall business strategy. With many market segments to consider, with this template, you can do your brand research in no time.

You can do everything there is to do with simple market research, but with so many actionable insights, you just can’t go wrong with this one. Of course, if you need something more advanced, you will probably need to look into other templates on our list, but this will be just enough for most uses. You can download this template for free at TemplateArchive.com.

Market Research Template #2

And now we are getting into something more advanced. In this template, as you can see, there are a lot of potential elements that are not only well described but also pretty widely exposed in the template itself. Of course, if you need to do something simple like – will people like carrots, or any market surveys like that, then it is probably too much.

But, if you are planning something more advanced, like introducing a new app to the market, then the richness of this template will surely come in handy. You can download this template for free at WordTemplatesOnline.net.

Market Research Template #3

Finally, the very specific sales and marketing plan is the last template on our list, but not the least important. It’s a very precise tool in order to optimize your sales and benefit from getting a bigger market share and making the business growth of your company a formality.

With this one, you will be able not only to compile all the existing data and create a business model that will help you out in all your future endeavors but also – to get a direct line between sales and product that may seem obvious but is a problem in some companies. If you want to monetize your product the best way possible, you should check this one out. You can download this template for free at OfficeTemplatesOnline.com.

We know now what kind of software is right for this particular problem. We’ve checked out some great templates to utilize to create the perfect market research. So now it seems it’s the best time to answer the following question – what exactly is market research? What does it mean to conduct it? And where exactly should we do it?

Well, we will go over these questions further in the article, but let’s first set some ground rules about the kind of research we will be discussing.

First of all – market research is basically a study conducted on a representative sample. You need to do it in order to optimize your potential growth as a company and see if the change you are planning to implement will have a positive effect on the company as a whole.

That is why targeting customers is so important and with excellent market research, you will be able to do it with splendid results. You will also gain valuable information on who your target market is, what your audience is, and how to reach them in the most effective way.

Market research can also answer a lot of questions about the competitors you may have if your existing product can be improved upon, and if there is any way that you can incentivize your customers to invest in your product.

The market is not getting smaller, so if you want to be competitive, you need to be ahead of the competition, not expecting them to come down to your level, just because you feel like you know the market. In this day and age, you need some solid proof, and the success of many big companies on the market who are doing their research proves, that it works, and it works well.

So, the biggest question is – why should you even invest your time and money into market research? There are so many things that you may consider more important. Like – creating a new ad in the newspaper or creating another line of products.

Well, as it turns out – you would be missing out on a big opportunity. Of course, there are a lot of things to consider with market research, but one thing remains the same – it brings a lot of customers in and will surely help you out in getting your product out there more effectively. Why? Well, you will go where the customers need you, not where you think it would be good.

Sometimes it may just be that you can find an opportunity in the most unusual places. If you understand your customers and know why they are buying your product or service, you will be able to meet their needs easily and without having to implement some groundbreaking changes, but maybe some much-needed additions that may be small, but are not useless.

Many studies have shown that creating good market research can not only help you out in introducing new products but with optimizing the sales of an existing one as well. You don’t need to conquer the entire market in order to become a successful business person. You just need to have a good research team who knows where to strike with their digital marketing efforts, sales strategy, and most importantly, a good understanding of a market based on detailed research.

So, now that we know what we are talking about, let’s see what are some of the most common types of market research. Of course, there are a lot of different types, and we surely are not able to list them all, but you will find some of the most important ones with a detailed explanation of each one of them. Without further ado, let’s dive into the different types of market research.

Interview

First up, we have ourselves the pretty obvious interview with a potential customer. Talking to people is a great way of conducting market research, as people can get you a lot of insight into how they feel about your product and what they use it for.

Of course, there are some downsides to this, as you will probably not be able to interview the whole population. People tend to have their biases, some of them can have their preferences that may or may not be of use to you and overall – there’s a lot to consider when conducting an interview. But – if you do it right, you will have some insight into the mind of a customer and will probably gain a lot of information on what you can introduce in your product and marketing strategy.

Focus Group

Next one on our list is the focus group. It is an advanced version of an interview and you will find a lot of benefits from implementing this element into your overall strategy. It will give you some behavioral information and show you how people talk about the product among themselves.

Additionally, you will see if your product is making an overall impact in the smaller or bigger group, or if it’s something that people tend to enjoy mostly privately. Of course, there are many things to consider when creating focus groups, but overall – it’s a pretty good way of conducting market research for sure.

Observation Research

It is one of the simplest elements on our list as it tends to be available just by looking at the company stats and elements of UX design when speaking of digital marketing. There is a lot of information you can gather by simply looking at the market, your competitors, and the overall product/service as a whole.

This will not give you the insight necessary to be able to create a full campaign but can give you some understanding of what is going on in the market and your company.

Competitive Analysis

Next one is the competitive analysis, where you look at your competitors in order to find meaning in your own product. There is a lot of information to be gained by simply understanding what the other players on the market are doing and why they are doing it.

It does not mean that you should copy them, but you can always benefit from seeing some great technology being utilized and trying something similar for your own company. You will not reinvent the wheel, but if you paint it blue – some people may think its something completely different.

Product Research

Next type of market research involves product/service use. If you want to utilize this tool, you will need to analyze why people use a certain product, how they use it, and what are some of the factors make them choose one product over another. That way, you will be able to single out the factors that make the product or service unique among the others.

Pricing Research

You can also get a lot of information by doing simple pricing research. Who knows, maybe the reason why your products are not selling is not that you have a bad product, it’s just that you are overpricing it. Maybe you are using materials that can be found cheaper, and that is what your competitors are doing.

And, on the other hand, maybe you are selling your product too cheap and people are buying it a lot, but you are not getting as much money as the competition who are pricing it the right way. There are many things to consider in that regard.

Brand Awareness

Next thing to consider is the brand awareness. You need to perform a study in order to see if people know your brand better or worse than the competition. People don’t really know what they’re buying, so creating good brand awareness can make it so that they will choose your cornflakes over someone else’s even if both taste the same.

Campaign Research

You can always look back and see how useful were your previous campaigns and if there is something to be learned from the mistakes you’ve made then. Maybe something clicked and you should repeat that in the current one. There is a lot to be gained from analyzing your past successes and failures and campaign research is something that can surely help you out.

Buyer’s Persona

Additionally, it’s always good to create a buyer’s persona that you have in mind when you advertise your product. Of course, it does not mean that you need to only adhere to this one particular person, but it wouldn’t hurt if you have someone in mind. The way that you advertise to different people, based on their interests, gender, and race is significant.

Customer Satisfaction

Another way of understanding the market is to gauge the customer satisfaction index. Check out if the loyalty programs you’ve implemented did any kind of work, and see if the people are coming back to your store and why they are doing that. Customer satisfaction and loyalty research is an essential element of any good market research, as it involves your own company mostly.

Market Segment

And finally – the market segment you are in. Analyze what your target audience and divide them into groups, see their “pain points” understand their expectations and find out their habits. It can get you a long way if you would do it right, as you will be able to advertise your product more efficiently and effectively.

Now that we are experts in different types of market research, let’s go over the key elements of every good strategy – primary and secondary research. Whether you are conducting outside or inside research, you will quickly notice that the results differ depending on the way you perform your tasks. It will also depend on how extensive market research are you planning to conduct.

Whether it’s first-hand information from the people or something you can understand from your qualitative research, it definitely makes a difference in affecting your business. Let’s get into some details on primary vs secondary research.

Primary Research

Primary research is something that you can get firsthand from your customers on the market and their preferences. If you are trying to establish a connection with the customers and see if they will respond to the new product you want to implement, then surely it’s one of the best ways to go about it.

Primary research can get you information on just how many elements of your product development process can go wrong, rather than what are some trends. Getting feedback will most likely result in getting bad feedback, so be prepared for some harsh words. People tend to be highly critical if they feel like they have some kind of authority so take their suggestions with a grain of salt.

Secondary Research

Next we have our secondary research which consists mostly of numbers. All the data, public records, trends, statistics – all of that is necessary when conducting the secondary research. Of course, it is not the only thing that matters, but it can get you a glimpse into an objective reality of the market and where it is going.

You can utilize public sources, as many government agencies can provide you with some good statistical information, you can go to the commercial ones, where you will have to pay in order to get this knowledge.

You can even go inside your company and see if you have indicators that will show you just how big your company is in the market and what you can do to overcome the fierce competition. There are many ways to gauge that, like average revenue per sale, customer retention rates, and many other elements that will help you out in assessing the company’s well-being.

So, now that we have all this information available, let’s find out the key elements that can help us out if we want to do a market research for our own purposes, just like many big companies on the market do. Leading brands do their market campaigns strictly based on the findings from market research, so there is something to find out about this process.

Understand the Buyer

The first thing you need to do is to understand your buyer. Define who are you selling to and why are they buying it. It is one of the most critical indicators before you start drafting a whole research process as then you will be able to contact and get to know the people you are advertising to.

The most common elements to keep in mind when creating a buyer’s profile are their age, gender, where they live, where they work, what is their income, and how many people they have in their family.

If you can identify your customer, you will be able to guide your research accordingly and see better results than if you’d be doing it all in a vacuum. Of course, it is not the end-all, be-all kind of thing, but it can guide your research and show you what is the path to success.

Identify the Group

Next thing you need to do is to identify a group that you want research. You should find people from different walks of life in order to optimally sharpen your ideological blade.

The best way is to start with 10 participants for a buyer persona that you are trying to access. For example, you can have a single mother with kids, a father who is a stay-at-home dad, maybe business people who do not have time for grocery shopping, etc. There are a lot of groups that you can potentially be interested in and it is essential that you engage all of them in order to find the best way of approaching the topic.

Remember that you should not create too many buyer personas, as it may backfire, making you end up with a lot of people that do not really represent the group you’d like to advertise to. As a result, you will spend a lot of money on conducting different studies that may not be necessary.

Find Participants for Your Study

Next thing you want to do is to find a mix of different people to participate in your study. The key element is to find those who used your, or your competitor’s product, and can have an opinion on it.

Sometimes some kind of incentive is necessary so be sure to pay a small fee to the participants. If you don’t have a lot of money to spend on this research, give away your product sample.

Then, when you will gather all the participants, be sure to create a friendly and open atmosphere.

Create a Questionnaire

Next, prepare a questionnaire where you will put all the questions for the participants. How to do it? Well, there are a couple of tricks you can use in order to optimize the results. For starters, do not create a questionnaire created only with closed questions. That will probably make the people fill out similar brackets and your whole market research would not be that useful.

The best way to go about it is to create a series of open-ended questions, where people can give you some thought-through insides on why your product is good/bad and what it means for them and their families.

What next? Well, as we’ve stated before, remember to create a good atmosphere where people will be able to speak their minds freely and without hesitation. Of course, they do not have any obligation to answer your questions, so don’t push them for answers, but if they would volunteer it, then you can utilize this data to your advantage.

Also, remember to present the company in a neutral light as well, tell the participants why are you conducting this study, what is your goal, and why they were chosen. That will make them feel more comfortable as if they were in scientific research rather than speaking their mind on what are some good breakfast cereals.

Whether you are using a market research template, or creating something for your own, remember to give the people you are questioning some wiggle room. They should not have the choice between A and B, but rather – what makes A interesting? In what circumstances would you choose B? What are some characteristics of each element? That way you will not lead your participants, and you will be able to ask them some good research questions.

Find Your Competition

Next thing you’d want to do is to find out your competition and what you can do to overcome any potential problems you may encounter when competing with each other. There are many different types of competition of course, but we’ve highlighted some of the most important in our analysis, so that you may be aware of just what is about to come potentially.

Primary Competitors

First up you have your primary competitor. It’s like Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola. Mercedes-Benz vs. BMW. Of course, it’s not always as simple as that, there are many different aspects to each pair, but if you are in this business long enough, you will probably know who are your biggest competitors and how can you get them.

The best way to do your market research on them is to find out as much information about their work as you can. You will probably be able to find quite a lot as if you are in the same business, you will probably encounter similar issues in your work. Who knows, maybe you even have the same suppliers, the same programs to optimize your work, etc. There are a lot of things that you share so use that to your advantage!

Industry Competitors

Next up you have your industry competitors. Those are the firms in the field that are not your direct opponents but are creating a similar product or service. Maybe it’s a similar media company but focused on the conservative audience. The retail shop, where you can buy clothes, maybe a restaurant against your catering business. There are a lot of these firms that can be pretty similar to what you’re trying to do, so beware of their existence.

The easiest way to get to know their structure and how they work is to pay a company to do that research for you. There are a lot of those that will be more than happy to help you out in your endeavors.

You can also just – go to their social media accounts and see what they’re doing. Maybe they have some cool promos you didn’t think of. Maybe their loyalty program is something that brings people in. Maybe it’s the fact that they have lower pieces that are driving you into the ground. There are a lot of maybes, so be sure to turn them into statements of facts.

Content Competitors

Finally you have your content competitors. Not quite the competition, but people who just happen to be in the same market as you. Coming back to our media example, it still stands. If you are running a political discussion-based network and someone is doing entertainment for the same audience, you are essentially fighting for the audience's attention.

If so, maybe try to implement some infotainment elements into your market research. Maybe get some additional screen time for some “funny” segments that can benefit you in the long run.

Also – do secondary market research. There is a lot of available research that you can do on your own if you don’t want to pay for the market report. Of course, it will not be the easiest of jobs to find out the best way of addressing all your competitors in the same data collection, but it is no issue to just Google them and go through their stuff that way. Knowledge is power, and most of it is free.

Sum up Your Research Findings

And finally – summarize your findings. Create a comprehensive review of everything you were able to get to know about a topic. Using some of the templates we’ve provided you at the beginning of this article can surely help you out in getting the right amount of clarity for starters. Then – you can modify it accordingly to your needs.

The most important element is to create a document that is easy to read and not overwhelming when it comes to some of its key elements of it. You can divide it into multiple sections, starting with questions, for example:

• Why did you create this research?

• Who did you talk to?

• What did you learn?

• What are you planning to do with the information you have gathered?

• Do you need any additional data to end your study or is it enough?

And here we are, at the end of our market research template article where we tried to create a perfect guide for all your needs. We hope that we succeeded. Of course, there is a lot of additional information for you to check out on your own, but this sample should be enough for most of your research needs.

As you have probably noticed, a researcher template is a key element if you want to optimize your product sales/service. Creating it the right way can get you far, especially if you also create a data set that you can utilize in the future as well. There are a lot of things to consider when drafting your very own market research so be sure to take all the potential issues we’ve spoken about into consideration. People have their own biases and tend to choose the easy way out, there is no easy way to get to them, but we hope that with the help of this guide, you will do it in no time.