Undertaking market research for your business helps you to better understand your audience, launch new products or services effectively and “take the temperature” of existing customers.
However, not all research is created equal, and asking the right questions is vital if you want to get authentic results that can drive true insight.
We explore how you can ask the right questions to improve your market research.
Set your objectives
Before starting any research, objectives need to be put in place to understand the audience you are looking for responses from, the types and categories of information that you are looking to collect, and specific measurement objectives.
First and foremost, think about “what question do I need to answer”? This could be anything from “how do our existing customers perceive our brand” to “is it a good idea to launch this new service”?
Be clear – what do you need to know and who do you want to ask?
By knowing what you want to find out, you can craft your questions in a way that will meet the goals that you have set.
Asking the right audience
Choosing to ask the right people the right questions is an essential part of making sure that your market research works. If you are looking to undertake research from the general public, you need to be specific on who your ideal audience is – as it’s unlikely that any business is for everyone.
If you want to survey your existing customers, make sure that you segment them. This means splitting them up by characteristics. This could be based simply on the product or service which they have used. The more data you collect on the audience, the easier it is to identify patterns. For example, if you’re an estate agency – you may find that people are happier with your sales service than your lettings service. But you will only know this if you have properly separated landlords from vendors.
Make it easy to answer
The depth of your questions will of course depend on how you are carrying out your research. A focus group, for example, may have far more “open” questions than if you are conducting a quantitative survey with scoring.
However, it is still worth thinking about how easy the format of your question is. Avoid long questions that can confuse the person answering.
It’s also vital that you don’t confuse negative and positive questions when using a scoring system – keep it consistent.
Don’t ask leading questions
Whether written down, or asked in an interview, leading questions will not lead to accurate results.
A leading question is defined as a question asked in a way that is intended to produce a desired answer. We all have our biases and, when it comes to our businesses, even more so.
Leading questions in market research often promote a positive answer – and this can create a false sense of security that you are doing the right thing.
For example, “How will this service make your life better”. This question is already assuming a positive answer.
Whatever your purpose for research, choosing the right questions is key to obtaining fair, unbiased results that will help you to make those critical business decisions.
