The Importance of Market Research

When it comes to planning your business, you probably thought it out to the last detail. Tallied your inventory, ran background checks on your employees, staked out the perfect location for your manufacturing and/or retailing needs and posted flyers all over town. But did you remember to do your market research?

Believe it or not, when it comes to promoting your business market research is the most important step you're ever going to take. Why? Because without your market research you're going to be throwing out your advertising dollars like they were candy and you were riding on a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade hoping you get lucky and hit someone who's interested.

The days of mass marketing and universal markets are long gone. Today's consumers have too many choices and too many media outlets to choose from, so without targeting your efforts effectively you're going to be flushing your money down the drain. You need to know:

1) Who you're marketing to.
2) What problem your product is going to solve for them.
3) How much money they have to spend on your product.
4) What age group and/or ethnic group you're marketing to, and what their core values are.
5) Who your competition is.
6) What separates you from your competition.

This is only a small sample of the market information you need to have before you can successfully send your business public, but without it you're not going to be able to reach your target market and your profits are going to suffer. Your market research is vitally important, and whether you choose to do it yourself or hire a marketing team to do it for you it's up to you to make sure that research is done well, and it's done right.

For more information on marketing research, visit us on the web at http://www.1uptoyou.com.