Best Ways to Do Market Research For Your Business

In their book Write Your Business Plan, the staff of Entrepreneur Media, Inc. offer an in-depth understanding of what’s essential to any business plan, what’s appropriate for your venture, and what it takes to ensure success. In this edited excerpt, the authors discuss the whys and hows of conducting market research.

Market research aims to understand the reasons consumers will buy your product. It studies such things as consumer behavior, including how cultural, societal and personal factors influence that behavior.

Market research is further split into two varieties: primary and secondary. Primary research studies customers directly, whereas secondary research studies information that others have gathered about customers. Primary research might be telephone interviews or online polls with randomly selected members of the target group. You can also study your own sales records to gather primary research. Secondary research might come from reports found on the websites of various other organizations or blogs written about the industry. For your plan, you can use either type of research or a combination of both.

The basic questions you’ll try to answer with your market research include:

Who are your customers? Describe them in terms of age, occupation, income, lifestyle, educational attainment, etc.

What do they buy now? Describe their buying habits relating to your product or service, including how much they buy, their favored suppliers, the most popular features and the predominant price points.

A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you’ve already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen.

Why do they buy? This is the tricky one, attempting as it does to delve into consumers’ heads. Answers will depend on the product and its uses. Cookware buyers may buy the products that offer the most effective nonstick surfaces, or those that give the most pans in a package for a given amount of money, or those that come in the most decorative colors.

What will make them buy from you? Although some of these questions may seem difficult, you’d be surprised at the detailed information that’s available about markets, sales figures and consumer buying motivations. Tapping information sources to provide the answers to as many questions as you can will make your plan more convincing and your odds of success higher. Also, the business plan software programs have detailed research included and online research available. Utilize this functionality if you’re using such software, and add additional data you find elsewhere. The reason to add some of your own unique material is that everyone using the software program is tapping into the same database and you want your business plan to differ from that of the last entrepreneur in your field.

You can also find companies that will sell you everything from industry studies to credit reports on individual companies. Market research isn’t cheap. It requires significant amounts of expertise, manpower and technology to develop solid research. Large companies routinely spend tens of thousands of dollars researching things they ultimately decide they’re not interested in. Smaller firms can’t afford to do that too often.

For companies of all sizes, the best market research is the research you do on your own. In-house market research might take the form of original telephone interviews with consumers, customized crunching of numbers from published sources or perhaps competitive intelligence you’ve gathered on your rivals through the social media. You can gather detailed research on customers, including their likes, dislikes and preferences, through Facebook, and use Google Analytics to sort out the numbers as they pertain to your web visitors. People are researching and making their opinions felt through their actions on the web, so you can gain a lot of marketing insight by looking closely at what is going on electronically.

You’ll also want to do your due diligence within your industry. When looking at comparable businesses (and their data), find a close match. For comparative purposes, consider:

Plugo, e-commerce platform for D2C brands

Singapore-headquartered startup Plugo has secured $9 million in a Series A funding round. The company offers a complete spectrum of e-commerce support services for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, from making a website, setting up a payment system, and managing marketing to handling shipping, warehousing, and logistics. In other words, Plugo enables D2C merchants to focus on their products and supports other processes.

The Series A round was led by Altos Ventures, with participation from BonAngels Ventures Partners, Access Ventures, Mahanusa Capital, Prodigy Investment, and Pearl Abyss Capital. The company did not disclose its valuation when asked.

The startup plans to use the proceeds to beef up its R&D team and hire more engineers, Plugo co-founder and chief executive officer KyungMin Bang said, adding that it currently employs about 30 people.

Bang founded Plugo two months ago with five founding members. Approximately 200 D2C brands have already started using Plugo’s beta service in Indonesia. The Singapore-based startup with offices in Indonesia and South Korea intends to launch its service officially in Indonesia in the first quarter of next year.

The company wants to focus on the Indonesian market, one of the largest markets in Southeast Asia, for the next 12 months, then expand to other Southeast Asian countries, such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, Bang told TechCrunch. It has partnered with an array of logistics companies, including Indonesia-based JNE Express, SiCepat and J&T, and a payment outlet such as Nicepay Indonesia, Bang noted.

Bang, a serial entrepreneur, was inspired to offer an end-to-end management system for D2C brands and merchants in Indonesia to set up online stores after realizing Indonesia’s D2C market, which accounts for less than 1% of the total e-commerce in the country, is nascent but growing fast.

Indonesia’s D2C market is expected to have a vast potential to grow, with the fourth-largest population size, including the rising young population in coming years and rapid penetration of smartphone users in the country, Bang pointed out.

“Local businesses [in Indonesia] have accelerated their adoption of digital technology due to innovation in the e-commerce ecosystem and dynamic changes in consumer behavior,” Bang said. In Indonesia, D2C platforms have become a new trend in the e-commerce industry from business-to-consumer (B2C) platform that has predominated the e-commerce market over the last decade, Bang explained.

The startup looks to challenge e-commerce players like Shopify in Southeast Asia. “I believe we have enormous potential because there is still much room for growth and huge gaps [in the D2C business] that big e-commerce behemoths like Shopify couldn’t address yet [in Southeast Asia]. For example, we can offer customized services, particularly for small merchants like MSMEs in the region, and empower them to sell online,” Bang said.

“We believe the timing is perfect for the birth of Plugo as the e-commerce landscape is experiencing turbulence that will nurture positive disruption, benefiting both aspirational sellers and consumers,” said Charles Rim, founding and general partner at Access Ventures, said in a statement.

Bang previously exited two startups: Indonesian e-commerce enabler TokoTalk operator CodeBrick which Singapore’s e-commerce Sea bought in 2021 per Pitchbook, and Korean PC online game J2MSoft (J2M), which Electronic Arts acquired in 2008. (According to a report by Tech in Aisa, Sea has shut down the TokoTalk service since October in an effort to reduce costs amid broader economic uncertainty.)

“Plugo’s mission aligns with our own mission of creating significant economic value while contributing positively to society,” Moon-Suk Oh, partner at Altos Ventures, said in a statement. “Plugo offers an unmatched suite of digital capabilities that will transform the future of e-commerce in Indonesia.”

Google Analytics 4 Rolling Out Built

Google Analytics 4 Rolling Out Built-In Landing Page Report

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is rolling out built-in functionality that allows users to generate landing reports.

Used to determine the effectiveness of landing pages, these reports collect data about visits to a site, allowing webmasters to test and optimize their landing pages.

Officially released in mid-October 2020, GA4 is the replacement for Universal Analytics (UA), which is being sunsetted in July 2023.

Before this update, which is being rolled out to users gradually, landing page reports had to be manually constructed. This was an unintuitive process, which required multiple clicks.

Landing Page Reports Available in Dashboard

You can find the landing page report in the Engagement section of the left navigation in your GA4 dashboard.

The default, automated report includes metrics for Views, New Users, Average Engagement Time per Session, Conversions, and Total Revenue. However, these fields can be changed and customized to each webmaster’s individual needs.

Creating custom reports is a straightforward process:

1. Click the “Custom Report” icon in the upper right corner.
2. Click “Metrics” and add or remove the ones you want in your report.
3. Hit “Apply” and generate your report.

4. GA4 Provides More Functionality Than Past Platform

   One of the major upgrades from UA4 to GA4 was the ability to combine both web and app data into the same property. Google’s previous analytics program tracked screen views separately for mobile-specific properties.

   GA4 added a new “Event” segment while also adding new metrics, including “Engaged Session,” “Average Engagement Time per Session,” and “Engagement Rate.”

   Whereas UA offered a wide range of standard reports, UA4 has far fewer. Analyzing data in GA4 has generally required additional work, either via the creation of a custom “Exploration” report or by exporting the data. Overall, the functionality of GA4 seems to be geared towards collecting and monitoring events on a website rather than tracking pageviews and sessions.

   GA4 Focused On User Data And Data Sources

   Another significant change from UA to GA4 was in data collection and privacy. Unlike its predecessor, GA4 does not collect or store IP addresses.

   It also simplified the process of deleting data while providing users with options regarding how long their data is stored and if their location is recorded.