Market Research: The Cornerstone for Your Startup 

Disruptive startups, and groundbreaking ideas all come+ to reality with the right understanding of the industry scenario. If you want to reciprocate the success of your business in the real world, market research will be your cornerstone for success. 

It’s a herculean task to build a startup from scratch. Company founders may get bombarded with a diverse range of tasks from establishing the company presence, website designing, operational capacity development, and product development to running the show for the company. In this fast-paced startup ecosystem, these may sound like the right set of activities to launch a company in the business world. 

But competent market research will be the torch bearer for your startup. In addition, an in-depth understanding of the target market allows entrepreneurs to build up a compelling business idea that will attract potential investors to invest in the firm. 

In the long run, compelling market research can give a competitive advantage to the brands not only to bring unique market fit products but also to develop a sustainable business strategy that will drive the company to a higher profit margin. It boils down to the fact that only business intuition can’t generate a market viable business idea rather well-analyzed market information is needed to identify the target population’s pain points along with the business idea. It might sound daunting to perform market research as an early-stage startup, we will take you through a structured way to smoothen the journey of the research. Here go the itsy-bitsy tips on the market research process for your company. 

Market research guidebook for startups 

In brief, market research refers to a technique of business for the development of a company idea while gaining insights into the attitudes, and personalities of the target demographic. Its the cornerstone for any startup which wishes to go after any local or international market as proper utilization of the research process can make a big difference. Early-stage young startups can leverage market research to their advantage while staying above the strong competition in the market. 

In fact, the promising value of market research makes it one of the growing business sectors with a market valuation of nearly $74.4 billion in 2020. 

Many may argue for doing market research for a single time at the beginning of the startup journey but it’s ideal to continue it on regular basis to stay on top of the competitor services throughout the company stages. It highlights the positive impact of market research on the launch of a startup.

Why market research is vital for startup 

Small, and medium business market research can act as a pivotal point for startups to understand the operating industry and allow the entrepreneurs to understand the market entry point to place the product. Furthermore, the market understanding allows cultivating of new product development, product or service benchmark and dictate the next set of moves. 

Developing knowledge of the market research execution process can add great value for the founders as it will assist the company to project realistic sales and profitability. Some of you may have heard of the popular startup shows Shark Tank and Dragon’s Den where investors closely watch the understanding of the founders regarding their operating market. 

Still, market research can shape the way to pivot to new business ideas or projects. Its implication offers a great degree of information source for the entrepreneurs which may aid their business. Here, we will show some of the key outcomes of performing business research. 

• Share a clear glimpse regarding the company situation and market condition: You can get a clear understanding of your company’s situation against your competitors in the market. It will not only clear your confusion but also push you to innovate and adapt to the changing business environment. 

• Guide the company to define the target customers: Market research can become the cornerstone to finding the right consumer groups for your business. It allows the company to customize services dedicated to the target customers. 

• Evaluate the perceived value of the company product and service: You may have a clear understanding of your product or service, but it may not be the same for other clients. It will uncover the underneath comments and views on the company among the clients. 

• Showcase the possible acceptance of a new product or service: You may get a clear idea of the future market prospect of the new product or service. It will assist you to understand the future demand and untapped market potential. 

• Product packaging and distribution of your product: Insights of the marketing research can play a key role in finalizing the product packaging. The pilot survey, expert survey, neuromarketing, etc. can guide the market research process.  

In this ever-shifting startup ecosystem, it’s getting more essential to stay competitive and leverage the market potential. It may also highlight the right time when the business may need to pivot to tap into the greater market potential. 

How to conduct market research in a startup environment

Market research combines a wide spectrum of activities for startups. Everything within the research activities may sound promising, but companies will have to utilize their finite funding and cash burn arena to maximize the outcome for preparing an effective competitor analysis. 

It may look like cash intensive process in the beginning, but there are many ways to perform research that may able save time and cash for the company. You may think over what might be the ideal way, we have got you covered. Here’s a list of quick steps to conduct research for your startup;

• Define your business goal: It may sound the least essential part of a business but it forms the core of business activities in the short and long term. Your business goal will guide your business activities that will shape the future of your company. Think about the research findings that will be generated through the process but you will have to figure out the purpose and objective of the research activity. Here, your definition of business goals will help you to materialize the information to support the goals. 

• Select an effective research approach: The research approaches are popularly divided into Primary and Secondary Research. 

1. Primary Research: The research technique focus on collecting new data to answer relevant questions of the founders to solve a business issue. It’s essential to remind you of the cost and time necessary to conduct your primary research. Based on the requirement, you can perform many qualitative research methods that will provide the refection of the bigger prospects. 

Some of the common primary research methods are;

• Pilot Survey
• Expert Survey
• Focus Groups 
• Observations
• In-depth Interview

• Secondary Research: It forms the base of any market research as its the most cost-effective data collection procedure. Many companies, research firms, agency create a large pool of information for a different purposes. These data can be really valuable for small-scale startups to gain market information without any major cost. It serves a great benefit to get information regarding the market issues. 

3. Collect data on your target population group: Defining your business goal and data collection approach set the motion for collecting information regarding the customers. It includes a broad range of activities to understand consumer interaction, motivation, and engagement which can be used later to target the population. 
4. Formulation of the research questions and right tool selection: Finding the right set of questions can greatly assist the research process to identify the key outcomes. But asking the wrong questions can ruin the whole attempt as well. 

Moreover, data collection in the follow-up of the questionnaire is crucial. Here are some popular primary and secondary data collection tools;

Primary Research

• Survey Monkey: It’s the right tool for small-scale startups to easily develop surveys and collect primary research data. 

Secondary Research

• Startup Base: The startup base consolidates a large volume of information on the market situation. It can be your alternative solution to Crunchbase as well. 

5. Evaluation of Data: It’s the main critical part of the data collection as you will have to perform data analysis to bring relevant information for the marketing research. Here, identifying underline trends, and themes are common which can benefit the overall process. 
6. Executing the received data: After all the evaluation work, it’s time to present data in a clean and presentable way. Proper organizing of data and summary will help to take proper brief away from the analysis. 

Marketing Research companies in Bangladesh 

Early-stage startups in Bangladesh can take support from multidimensional marketing research agencies as they provide a great deal of support for the brand. Some of them are reputed for their rigorous services;

• SRG Bangladesh Ltd
• MRB Bangladesh
• Marketing and Social Research Consultants Bangladesh Ltd (MRCB Ltd.)

You can bring groundbreaking ideas with the easy procedure but they lack the sophisticated analytical exposure, and advanced data analytical support to progress further. Integrating a smaller but effective base of respondents can help smaller companies to perform marketing research. This will take away any major concern for small companies and flourish their startup growths.