For a business to sell a product of any kind, they need to know who to sell it to in the first place. No matter how wonderful or groundbreaking a product happens to be, without the right marketing strategy, it may never see the heights of success that it truly deserves.

Market research is essential in this regard, yet it is not usually too easy to conduct. Thankfully, there are ways for even the smallest of businesses to gain a deeper understanding of their audience utilizing some cost-effective tactics.

If you need some guidance in your own research efforts, here are some tips to check out.

Transcribe Interviews

Interviewing your potential customers is a wonderful way to obtain some qualitative, high-value information regarding the nature of your product. Interviews can be immensely useful in aiding the development of buyer personas; plus, it can allow you to support the product development process along the way.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult to maximize the value of the information received without a reliable record of the interaction.

There is a great way to get around this, however, and it arrives in the form of some reliable interview transcription software. This can allow you to keep an accurate and trustworthy record of your interviews while simultaneously giving you a reference point to revisit should you need to improve your questions.

Observe Website Traffic

Observation can be a truly powerful ally in your market research toolkit, particularly when using it to understand your customers’ online behavior. By keeping a close eye on your website data, you can gauge a distinct understanding of the effectiveness of your product pages.

For example, by figuring out how much time your visitor spends interacting with each page, how long they spend on the site, and what kind of content they interact with.

Data like this can add real substance to your marketing campaigns, as taking an analytical approach to your efforts may enable you to make predictions with greater accuracy, thus allowing you to make better use of your budget.

Leverage Free Online Information

There are some great online sources of information worth taking a look at, and in most cases, there are available at no extra cost, music to the ears of small business owners everywhere!

Some of the best sources include Statista, U.S. data and Statistics on USAGov, Google Analytics, and the aptly named MarketResearch.com.

While this might be a more generic approach to conducting market research initially, particularly when compared to a targeted and personalized solution, it can certainly give you an idea of what to expect when moving forward.

For those of you with a spark of an idea for a new product or service, free online tools can be the ideal jumping-off point when it comes to researching new markets.

Do Some Investigation

Investigating the competition is essential in the brand-building process, as it can offer you great insight into the state of the current market, a market that you might one day break into.