The relationship between research and revenue isn’t always as apparent as we’d like it to be. While it’s pretty much a given that the more insight you have into your target audience, the more likely you’ll be able to appeal to them, it’s tough to nail down exact ROI for your research strategies.
Fortunately, there are a few proven principles that allow you to amplify your research strategies and put them to work generating ROI for your organization.
1. Put market intelligence to work
Easily one of the most standout ways to increase your ROI through your research strategy is to utilize market research intelligence.
Market research intelligence, which leverages AI to gather data and analytics, provides more than just an overview of your target market. Modern market intelligence provides deeply insightful glimpses into the mind of your target consumer. Adopting market intelligence is almost like investing in a complete GPS that will point you toward a larger market share.
2. Go down a research rabbit hole
A research rabbit hole is a sure-fire way to start defining your ideal consumer. All it means is simply unearthing information about your target audience.
Successfully falling into a research rabbit hole means you’ve picked up every bread crumb your target audience leaves behind until you know exactly who they are, their interests, their values, their preferences in regards to purchasing, and ultimately, what influences their purchasing decisions. Usually, a research rabbit hole starts by discovering the demographics of your target audience, then their psychographics, then their values, then they’re likes/dislikes until ultimately, you begin to pinpoint how well they’ll respond to certain product or service attributes. Market intelligence is a great tool to help you uncover this information.
3. Create buyer personas
This might be an obvious one – especially to a marketer. But the truth is, routinely mapping out ideal buyer personas using what you’ve uncovered in your research rabbit holes will allow you to create a summation of your ideal buyers and stay ahead of emerging markets. You can then create training, campaigns, or sales objectives around this ideal consumer in order to effectively drive revenue.
4. Go where the puck is going
Hall-of-Fame hockey player Wayne Gretzky wisely said: “I don’t go where the puck is, I go where the puck is going to be.”
This summarizes an important principle that’s easy to overlook in market research. Driving sales, increasing your revenue, and increasing ROI means not just looking at the current consumer landscape, but forecasting and predicting where it’s going to be in the near and distant future. This allows you to be ahead of the game – because while your competitors are going where the puck is, you’ll already be there.
