If we gave you 100 hours to conduct a marketing campaign, where should your hours be spent?

Marketing experts say that you should spend the first 80 hours conducting research and the last 20 hours writing the copy.

80% of your success will be determined by the quality of research to do.

Before we start writing any piece of copy, it’s important to see what kind of information is out there. It’s only through having those important pieces of data that you can determine what kind of copy you can produce.

All great generals before setting out to fight a war, starts off by surveying the area.

There are however slight differences conducting in person market research and online marketing research. The internet is built from websites, so the best place to start your market research comes from there – websites! Here are popular sites that you can conduct your research in:

• Amazon
• Google
• YouTube
• Quora
• Reddit

Research is basically gathering information. When you are conducting your research you are simply gathering information. What pieces of information you may ask?

We would recommend to be on the look out for these three things.

1. Trends
2. Conversations
3. Questions

Trends

These are about things that are happening right now. Is there a world event that is affecting the marketplace? That is a trend.

Is there a fashion fad that everyone is talking about? That’s a trend.

What is working 10 years ago may not work now, and what is working now may not work in the future. Trends are things that are popular right now.

Conversations

Conversations are what people are talking about. The key to researching conversations is to listen.

Listening more, and talking less.

See what things people are saying about the marketplace. What are the reviews, what are people’s dislikes and likes. What is the gossip of the day. Conversations are what people are talking about day to day.

Questions

Questions are things that people do not have an answer to which indicates a need in the marketplace. That may sound extremely obvious but questions are simply problems that require solving. When you can find out what are the specific problems of a marketplace, only then can your business give a specific answer.

Questions are important because they will determine how you will frame your messaging, campaigns and sale pitches.

Recording Your Findings

So what do you do after finishing conducting your research? There are multitude of ways you can capture your market research. Surveys are a common example of data collection that are used in-person and online. In traditional marketing, interviews are recorded and then transcribed into text so marketers can collect pieces of data to see what is working and what isn’t.

However, the most simplest way is to just take a piece of paper or open up a word document and categorize each segment of your findings. For example, segmenting your research into what trends are occurring, what conversations people are having and what questions people have.

It’s very simple, but you are collecting vital and important data. That is conducting market research 101. It shouldn’t be complicated and obviously there are many more advanced methods involving data collection. However remember this, market research is simply about collecting information and using that basing your marketing from data.

Apply this one simple lesson and see your results skyrocket.

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