Marketing and Market Research

Marketing is the thinking and creation of strategies to bring a product or service to market. Smart marketing professionals understand the importance of conducting marketing research and market research before developing any type of creative, mission statements, taglines, messaging and platform positions or choosing communication tactics.

Marketing research is all about analyzing data to identify specific target audiences and to learn how to effectively and cost efficiently engage these personas. It’s also used to develop new products and for making product and service improvements based upon these customer’s needs and wants. This is referred to as needs-based segmentation or benefit segmentation.

Marketing Research satisfies all four of the “marketing mix” P’s … Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Market research is an analysis of the market and considered a sub-set of marketing research. It’s conducted to fulfill the one “P” representing Place.

Agencies typically refer to this initial process as the Discovery Process. Quantitative and qualitative research along with internal and external focus group studies, competitive analysis and communications audits are all conducted to identify audiences and understanding their needs, determine the USP, Unique Selling Proposition and to create engaging platform and message positions.