SBR 54: How to do marketing research on a tight budget

While the cost of building work may have soared, using research to create a strong foundation for your strategy doesn’t need to be expensive nor arduous. 

When we started in this game an industry reports cost over £5k and a simple survey with 500 consumers £30k! Insight and market research was a luxury only open to the biggest brands which is why they were the ones to have the highest success rates with their products and comms.  Smaller brands simply had to throw up their products and comms based on assumptions and a prayer and hope it stood through the storm. Which of course is the most expensive way to find out if your foundations and architecture are right! 

But that is no longer the case! There are lots of free and low-cost ways to research now, so there is no excuse to build on sand.

Here are some ideas:

British Library Business & IP Centre :You can access Mintel and a range of industry reports and data for free at BIPEC. You can do this at central and regional sites and some can be accessed on line. For most product categories there are existing reports looking at consumer needs and trends.

How to access BIPEC market research

Survey Monkey: You can create a 10 question survey to send out to friends, family or your own database for free. The platform has free analysis tools. Ask what triggered consumers to buy in your category or switch brands. What they like/dislike about your product or competitors. Or what they think or your messages and comms ideas before you launch.  This can help you refine and get right before you launch – ultimately giving you a better return and saving money on ineffective comms. Link to Survey Monkey

Self-serve survey and video platforms: If you have a little bit of money there are a number of self-serve panel platforms to create surveys and access independent panels of consumers to avoid bias and get the hard honesty you might not from friends or existing fans.   These can be great to validate ideas for investors or retailers. You Gov is great for UK surveys as you don’t need a subscription, you can set up an adhoc survey and it’s a credible panel. It starts from around 30p per question, per consumer without targeting. If you want to talk to particular audiences (particular ages/incomes/attitudes) the cost goes up depending on how ‘easy to find’ that audience is. The platform is fairly easy to use with tools to help you write your questions, you can set up a survey and then get a quote to run and analyse in the platform. Link to You Gov

There are other platforms that can be more cost effective in terms of cost per question/survey, especially if for a targeted group (SightX, Attest, Vypr, Bulbshare are some we have used) however with these you often need a subscription with a minimum annual commitment spend so unless you are doing a lot of research over the year they may not be worth it. You can access these sorts of platforms via a consultant or agency that has a subscription (you know where we are!)

Pizza night or coffee with your fans:

Often the best way to get rich insights – especially from product and comms development – is just to speak to people!  It doesn’t give you ‘at scale’ data like the above but can really help you get under the bonnet of your brand.   You can usually get a group of fans to meet you 1-1 or come to the office as a group and chat to you about your brand or latest campaigns for the cost of a coffee, few pizzas and some free products!

Go under cover

Go watch what your consumers are doing when buying or using your product. If you are sold in a supermarket for example you can see how quick they make a decision and what they are drawn to and ask questions about this.  If you want to watch and speak to consumers in-store you will need the retailer’s permission – usually via the category buyer or store manager-  but they will often give this if you are happy to share what you find with them. You can also simply watch how consumers are using your product in the ‘wild’. Ask consumers on your database if you can come on a shop with them, observe how they use your product at home or even complete a user diary for you.

With all the above do make sure you comply with data protection! Make sure you get written permission to record or video consumer responses and store data or personal details you collect!

Big Black Door use a mix of these platforms and techniques to help our clients get to great insight even on very tight budgets. If you want help putting together or running market research just give us a shout – we’re happy to have a no obligation call to offer some guidance and discuss how we might help.