Companies in the telecommunications industry help keep the world going round. Especially after the pandemic, with more and more businesses and consumers relying on telecom services and products, companies in the industry have been more relied upon than ever before.
Since their exponential growth, telecom businesses have been looking for ways to grow their brands. Telecom market research can help companies understand the new landscape, as well as look for new ways to grow in the evolving industry.
Benefits of Telecom Market Research
After 2020 and the pandemic, strategists are once again looking to identify new areas of growth for the telecom market. Here are some of the ways that telecom market research can help businesses grow in the coming years:
- Discovering changes in customer behavior. A lot changed over the last few years, from the way companies do business, to how consumers shop, to how we access entertainment. Market research can act as the connector from businesses to the market. Businesses need to tap into the information from customers but it can be hard to get. That’s where market research helps, by uncovering the feedback that customers have.
- Identify new concepts (products/services). With an increased demand for the digital world, telecom companies can look at the market and target audiences to identify if there is a need for new products or services that can help customers where there is currently not a solution.
- Discover current branding image. Customers in the telecom industry can have high expectations and wants from companies. This can mean that they often expect a lot from the companies and brands that offer them. It’s important to know what the market and potential customers think about your brand. If it’s negative, that will affect a lot of potential new business and customers that wouldn’t come in. In which case, you would want to improve how customers feel about your brand.
- Improve products. Just like discovering new opportunities, there is also plenty of opportunity to discover how to improve current products and services. Current customers always have great feedback for companies willing to listen the right way and will give plenty of feedback that can be valuable for improving the product for even more sales down the line.
Common Telecom Market Research Projects
Online Surveys
It is no surprise why online surveys are one of the popular methods for market research in telecom. Most commonly it’s because of the possibilities that come with surveys. A lot of different projects rely on surveys for efficient and reliable data collection. It’s also extremely flexible in terms of results and goals.
Focus Groups
Focus groups are great for more in-depth research where more feedback is needed. In certain projects like concept testing where more feedback is needed than a survey can typically collect - we like to use focus groups.
Additionally, focus groups can have a lot more involvement when running one and for some companies it can be a real task. That’s why hiring a focus group company is oftentimes worth it for the investment.
In-Depth Interviews
Another great option, in-depth interviews dive even deeper into feedback and can collect some of the most in-depth answers from a target audience. While they aren’t used as often as focus groups or surveys, they are still a powerful method and one that we aren’t afraid to use in order to get high quality data.
Secondary Research Sources To Use For Telecom
While any market research firm may have their own reports to use for the telecom industry, there are certainly better sources of information than others.
Here’s a list of some that we trust or recommend for general info on the telecom market:
- Drive Research - At Drive we do a lot of syndicated research that we do sell for specific industries. Wondering if we have the latest for the telecom industry? Ask us today and we will see how we can help.
- Statistia - Statista is a great starting point and generally has good overall info on the market. Some reports are free and other more-in depth ones are typically available to purchase. Just make sure you know what you’re looking at and what you might need to accomplish your goals.
- TBRI - TBRI has some of the best general reports and submarket reports that telecom companies may find useful for their needs. For starting out in market research, they are one of the best resources to use and have more specific info than some of the other reports out there.
The Biggest Growing Industries In Telecom
Remote Work Communication
Especially after 2020, the shift to work-from-home increased a ton. Other environments like virtual learning and remote communications started happening more often.
Employees, students, businesses, and even teachers are now increasingly relying on usable internet for everyday work. For things like video conferencing, online collaboration, and cloud-based resources, sometimes more resources are needed to be able to use them effectively.
Bandwidth has become more important in remote environments to ensure smooth and uninterrupted interactions. If you’ve ever had a bad connection on a zoom call, you will know what we mean. That’s why telecom companies can use research to find what audiences need more resources or are willing to pay for more.
Streaming Services
Even normal household consumers expect good quality internet for things like streaming their favorite shows.
Ideally there should be enough bandwidth to be able to stream without issues at any time of the day. This has been mostly true in the history of the telecom industry, however managing peak usage times in order to maintain the best service is still something companies work on today.
Streaming services are accessible from all different types of devices and networks. This leads to an even further demand for great quality internet and other telecom products, since consumers can easily get frustrated (we’ve all been there).
Online Data & Applications
From a B2B perspective, security, operations, and data transmissions are all something businesses consider for their resources. It’s important that telecom companies can meet these demands since it is crucial for businesses to continue running.
Even in households, many applications like security systems, and smart devices require real-time data transmission. Telecom networks work all the time to ensure seamless functionality of these devices for a better experience.
How To Conduct A Market Research Project Like An Expert
Step 1. Figure Out Goals and objectives
In our experience, the first step of your project should be to clarify what you want to achieve with market research.
Whether it’s to understand customers better, find out more about competition, or learn about the market in general - a goal is needed for a successful project. Whatever it is, ideally it helps your business get closer to its revenue goals or something related.
It's not just about gathering data; it's about aligning data with specific, measurable goals. The data received from a project or study will help get closer to the data, especially with insights that add even more knowledge towards the goal.
Step 2. Decide on Your Audience
Part of market research is all about knowing your audience. Picking your audience comes first. It’s best most of the time to segment the audience into groups such as loyal customers, potential customers, or even competitors' customers.
Figuring out the audience you want to target should be related to your goals. A project geared towards current customers would look different than a project for potential customers most likely. That’s why the distinction is important and is the difference between good data and super high quality data.
The highest quality data possible creates the best insights for the project and can help companies achieve their goals.
Step 3. Choose Your Project Method/Distribution
Typically in telecommunications, we see 3 commonly used methods for market research. Those are surveys, focus groups, and in-depth interviews. All of them work great but have different use cases or projects.
Online surveys are usually the most flexible and can be used for more things than not. We’re also biased since we are survey experts and have seen some of the best results with online surveys. Whichever methodology you choose, it should match the goals you want to achieve with the project.
Step 4. Collect and Clean Data
Data collection is one of the most important steps for market research.
In our experience, focusing on collecting the best data possible often gives the best results at the end of the project. It’s important to focus on the respondents or participants, and it will give higher completion rates and in the end - higher quality data.
Once collected, the data should be organized and filtered to remove any errors or irrelevant information. We typically start cleaning data during collection and continue it through all the way to the end to ensure the highest quality is being used and analyzed.
If un-cleaned or low quality data is used, it can affect the end results and even business decisions that the data is used for.
Step 5. Analyze and Assign In-Depth Insights
Analyzing data is the last step of the project. Looking at the raw numbers, or raw qualitative data is important and ideally be able to organize them in a way that is visually appealing. However the most important is to apply market research insights to the results.
Insights from experts can help give brands more ideas to use the data for since the raw data can sometimes be confusing. In our experience, using the insights are the easiest way to boost revenue or make other data-driven decisions that affect the business.
Step 6. Make a Plan & Take Action
Finally, it's about turning insights and data into tangible business decisions. We believe that data-driven decision making is a much better form of decision making and based on our client results.
Whether it's tailoring marketing campaigns or developing new products, the data directs to the best course of action. The insights and data should be specifically made for your business to be able to make the most informed decisions. That’s why figuring out your goal for market research is the most important.
Contact Our Telecom Market Research Company
Drive Research is a full-service market research company, partnering with various B2B and B2C companies to deliver custom, data-driven insights. We often work with organizations in the telecom industry to conduct surveys, focus groups, in-depth interviews, and more.
To get a quote for telecom market research, contact us today.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Austin Parker
Austin has an extensive background in SEO as he's been blogging since 16 years old back when the internet was in its infancy. As fitting, he holds a Bachelor's degree in English with a concentration in creative writing.
Learn more about Austin, here.
