Did you know nearly 80% of businesses utilize market research to learn more about their performance, customers, competition, and trends?
Those businesses can then use this valuable insight to help guide their overall business strategy and drive positive changes.
But did you know research can also be applied to better position your advertising plan? Read on as we unpack how market research can uncover opportunities to enhance your next rock-solid advertising strategy.
How Market Research Can Improve Advertising
Market research plays a significant role in helping companies improve the effectiveness and strength of their marketing and advertising strategy.
It uses many methods to gather, interpret, and analyze data into concrete insights that inform the strategy of a given market and its unique goals and challenges.
This can include a detailed understanding of:
- Current strengths and weaknesses
- Competitor landscapes
- Current and prospective customers
Whether it be to craft a unique message catered to a specific audience, deliver ads on platforms where targets are engaging, or test a series of product selling points, market research can help advance your strategy and even reduce risk in business decision-making.
Types of Market Research for Better Ads
From our experience as an advertising market research company, market segmentation, ad concept testing and focus groups are all market research strategies that can create better ad campaigns. Each method has a different approach, yet still delivers important data around what will resonate with the public.
Keep reading to learn more about these methods.
Market Segmentation
Market segmentation takes large quantities of target and non-target customers and groups them into subsets based on unique characteristics like common interests, needs, priorities, and life stages.
Strategies are then built based on those attributes as segmentation assumes that individuals in a shared segment will also share similar preferences and purchase behaviors. Utilizing market segmentation this way recognizes that not all customers are alike and can revolutionize how we understand and engage with customers.
A common mistake businesses make when crafting an advertising strategy is creating just one single strategy. While this is a serious time saver, it will likely miss the mark and could cost you more time and budget in the long run.
Drawback of Single Strategy Advertising
Imagine being a loyal customer of a brand you’ve been purchasing for years.
You’ve followed them on social media and have completed a number of positive reviews for a few of their products. Now, consider the latest social media advertisement you received for that brand that spoke to you as a new customer: "SUBSCRIBE NOW FOR 20% OFF YOUR FIRST PURCHASE!”
A message like that is likely a false promise (you’re a regular returning customer, after all!).
You may go as far to submit your email to determine what incentive awaits, and would probably be left with a little confusion. Most importantly it might impact your likelihood to purchase again, or at the very least whether you’d recommend it to a friend.
Therefore, taking the time to group your customers into segments and personalize your messaging to the exact target, and where they are in their buying journey will help your marketing efforts and retain those loyal customers.
Ad Concept Testing
Ad concept testing puts to work the perceptions and reactions of a targeted sample to potential ideas and elements of marketing and advertising strategies.
Elements often tested during ad concept testing surveys can include messaging, tones, themes, and other visuals.
Testing a number of choices to identify what resonates best will help businesses optimize their team’s creativity and make data-driven decisions. Through this process, candid feedback Is collected, and insights are crafted to best understand how concepts resonate with that audience.
It’s key to implement this early on, during the development stage of a campaign to allow advertising and marketing teams to incorporate that valuable feedback into their decision-making before investing precious resources like time and budget into the effort.
Conducting this process early on also reduces potential risk of launching an ineffective campaign that may or may not resonate with the intended customer.
Here are more benefits of ad concept testing.
Focus Groups
A pillar market research tactic, focus groups are successful in guiding businesses to a better strategy.
They provide businesses the unique opportunity to observe a group discuss their product. This can be especially useful in understanding perceptions, thoughts, and reactions from a target audience that can be used to inform an advertising strategy.
There are several ways focus groups can be leveraged in strengthening advertising strategy:
Understanding motivations: Observing a focus group discussion allows researchers to dive deeper into target customers’ beliefs and perceptions about a product or offering. Understanding their unique motivators to purchase, or barriers, can help uncover insight into their buyer behavior and how best to improve it.
Candid feedback in real-time: Focus groups stand apart from quantitative research methods like online surveys in that they allow researchers to observe customer reactions in real-time. This valuable position can sometimes result in the collection of unexpected insights as well as valuable, transparent group dialog.
Emerging trends, preferences, and dislikes: Studying a group discussion around potential advertising strategies allows the opportunity to learn about their likes, dislikes, validations, and concerns in a group setting. Having this information ahead of developing a strategy ensures that measures are in place to fit in a prospective customer’s consideration set and stay up to date with the popular trends.
Applying Market Research to Advertising
After collecting valuable customer and non-customer insights comes time to apply those learnings to an advertising strategy. Luckily, there are a number of ways to do this and to ensure ongoing learning.
Ad Content Creation
Today, customers are more tech-savvy than ever and can identify a paid advertisement as soon as they see them.
As a result, the content we choose to share with our target audience has heightened importance.
Creating targeted content can be tricky, but doing so after conducting market research can help ensure it's seamlessly integrated into your brand’s voice.
Not only can content be done internally (a considerable cost saver), but its return is a serious win. In fact, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads!
By applying market research findings to your content strategy you can ensure that your content is not only reaching your target audience, but that you’re also sharing the information you now know they want to hear.
Content Variety
It’s important to regularly develop different types of content to speak to different stages your target customer may be in during their purchase journey because not all customers will be in the same stage.
Educational material may resonate best during the early awareness stage, while comparison charts and graphics may make sense to a customer who’s already interested and is evaluating their options.
Importance of Tone
The information you share is very important, but so is how you say it. Choosing the right tone and style is a great opportunity to marry up to your existing brand voice and to speak to a customer the way they would expect to.
While sharing educational material you want to remain helpful, but not stuffy. Acting as a resource to your target customer may resonate better and ensure that you are a subject matter expert they reference in the future.
Research can also help uncover insights around cultural trends and norms that can be used to refine tone and avoid potential misinterpretation.
Content is an opportunity to answer questions a target audience often asks, stand out among the competition you know is also being considered, and show your value.
Media Planning
Market research can provide the foundational framework from which a media plan can be built.
Understanding your target (and nontarget) audience is key when developing a media channel strategy.
By putting insight to work, informed decisions can be made regarding targeting, channel use and budget allocation. However, building a strategic media plan can work to enhance that investment further.
When information like demographics, behavior, and preference data are available, precious budgets can be carefully allocated to channels where we know our target audience is.
Beyond that, factors that are also covered in market research exercises like seasonality and timing, competition and trends, and newly identified market opportunities can all be incorporated in crafting a budget allocation that will work towards internal objectives and KPIs.
Ad Testing and Optimization
Once the research has been completed, the advertising strategy has been built, media plans crafted, and budgets approved, the opportunity to learn hasn’t ended, it's just advanced.
When an advertising campaign is live (and done so through market research), the potential risk factors have already been vetted, allowing resources to closely monitor its progress. In monitoring, optimizations can be made throughout a campaign flight, and adjustments can be made based on the feedback received from the target audience, environment, and competition.
While live, there's also a valuable opportunity to conduct testing against various factors to determine which resonates best.
Perhaps the team narrowed the copy down to two options. This is a great opportunity to test those factors. Or, maybe personalization was a factor favored during a focus group.
Once a campaign is live, the doors open to a number of valuable opportunities to learn, adjust and pivot an advertising strategy.
Case Study: Coca-Cola's Use of Market Research
Coca-Cola faced declining sales in the early 2010s and needed a fresh advertising approach to resonate with younger consumers.
Through extensive market research, including surveys, focus groups, social media listening, and behavioral data analysis, they discovered that personalization and social media engagement were key preferences among millennials and Gen Z.
This insight led to the launch of the "Share a Coke" campaign, where Coca-Cola replaced its logo on bottles with popular names, encouraging consumers to share photos of their personalized bottles on social media.
The campaign was a resounding success, resulting in significant sales increases and massive social media engagement, with millions of photos shared online.
Coca-Cola's innovative use of market research to understand and connect with its audience highlights the power of personalization and online engagement in modern advertising, ultimately strengthening its brand image as fun, youthful, and social.
Contact Our Advertising Market Research Firm
Boasting years of combined market research experience, our team is ready to partner with yours to deliver the insights around advertising you need. We’ll work with your specific business needs to ensure the data you receive is relevant to your specific target audience.
To learn more about our market research services, get in touch with us today.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Grace Sciera
With a background in marketing research and marketing in industries spanning from CPG, healthcare, finance, higher education, and a lot in between, Grace understands how data can be best utilized to help reach unique goals and meet the challenges our clients may be facing.
Learn more about Grace, here.
