Read to discover:

  • How market research can be leveraged to drive continuous innovation
  • The importance of offering mobile-optimized digital experiences
  • How mobile-optimized market research tools drive high fidelity insights


Market research (MR) is an umbrella term representing all of the activities that a business does to gather information about its customers’ needs, wants, and preferences. The two main types of MR include qualitative and quantitative research. Qualitative market research calls explicitly for the collection of real human insights via in-depth interviews, focus groups, observations, and video. Conversely, quantitative market research refers to the process of collecting large amounts of data through surveys, questionnaires, and other polling methods. 

MR is typically conducted prior to bringing a new product or service to market or when products or services need improvement. Additionally, MR can tell business leaders about the inner workings of its customers’ minds, what makes them tick, what delights them, and what drives them to purchase. Ultimately, MR helps brands make smart, data-powered business decisions. 

Digital marketing is an umbrella term representing all of the activities that a business does to promote itself virtually including social media, digital advertising, text messaging, mobile applications, and more. Digital marketing allows businesses to tell current and future customers who they are, what they offer, and why it matters. Digital marketing campaigns exist to support new product/service launches, reach new markets, expand current markets, and boost conversions. 

At the end of the day, digital marketing and MR must exist in harmony for a healthy brand strategy. To put things in perspective, digital marketing is like a car driving a brand forward while MR gives directions on where the car should go next. This article will explain how digital marketing and MR have evolved over time, why mobile-optimized digital marketing is the wave of the future, how different types of research can help businesses catch that wave, and the importance of mobile-optimized market research.

Market Research Innovation & Digital Experience

As the world, technology, and consumers have evolved over time, MR has adapted to fit the needs of modern businesses. Mobile phones have made digital marketing strategy and digital experience imperative for brands of all sizes, from mom and pop shops to Fortune 500 companies. Consumers have more power, choice, and access to competitors than ever before in history so providing a positive brand experience via websites, social platforms, e-mail, and mobile is critical to business success. 

MR helps businesses gather information about their audience to initiate and create positive digital experiences. By understanding customer personas, the emotional connection they have to products, the stories they want to hear, and the keywords they are searching for, brands can reach the right people and get them to perform the desired action; i.e. click “add to cart.”

In today’s ever-changing world, MR and digital marketing work hand-in-hand to create real-time data-driven experiences that are more flexible and reactive than ever before. 

The Importance Of Mobile-Optimized Digital Marketing

With over 3.5 billion smartphone users in the world, it’s no secret that mobile marketing is a can’t miss strategy for businesses. But, with endless possibilities in a mobile-dominated world, it can be difficult to even know where to start. Here are three types of research that can help businesses optimize digital experiences on mobile. 

Keyword Research 

Beyond a responsive website, one of the best ways to optimize digital marketing strategy for mobile is with search engine optimization, or SEO. 55% of people use a mobile device to search for businesses, so knowing what keywords they are searching for and optimizing mobile presence for those keywords is s great way to reach customers. 

Businesses can conduct keyword research to create content like blogs, whitepapers, and landing pages to reach customers on mobile. Keyword research involves finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines, like Google, with the goal of using that data for SEO. Keyword research can tell marketers which searches to target, the popularity of searches, their ranking difficulty, and much more. To drive mobile traffic, businesses should produce helpful content like blogs on their mobile-friendly websites with keywords that are relevant and highly searched by their desired audience. 

Digital Advertising Research 

Digital advertising research measures the effectiveness of digital ads on websites, social media, e-mail, or search engines. Message testing is a large component of digital advertising research because it helps brands measure the effectiveness of marketing messages. To get started with message testing, it is best to use a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods. 

For e-mail messages and digital ads, analytics and other quantitative metrics can tell marketers which subject lines, taglines, calls-to-action, or landing pages get the most conversion. Conversely, qualitative testing methods gather deeper customer insights so that marketers can understand how their messages are perceived on an emotional level and if they are resonating. Qualitative research often involves customer surveys that ask poignant, open-ended questions that dive deep into a customer’s motivations, preferences, and lifestyle.

User Experience Research 

User experience research (UX) is the study of target users and their preferences to drive design processes. No matter what type of product or service companies offer, UX research bridges the gap between what consumers need/want and what they receive from their digital interactions with a brand. To create better digital user experiences, researchers should collect insights with methods like usability testing. Usability testing allows researchers to determine if a company’s mobile app is easy to use, if their website is simple to navigate, and more. 

Mobile-Optimized Market Research 

Mobile technology not only helps brands create better experiences for their customers but it also helps market researchers conduct more, better, and faster research. Conducting market research used to be too time-consuming and expensive. Thanks to modern MR technology and mobile capabilities, market research has evolved from pen-and-paper surveys to efficient interactions that can be completed from anywhere, in minutes.

Beyond convenience, mobile MR methods also improve representation in research. Less than 12% of the U.S. population can easily visit a research facility based on geography alone. With 1-in-5 Americans being smartphone-dependent, digital mobile qualitative research is one of the most viable solutions for improving representation in research. View the webinar, Optimizing Qualitative Research for Mobile Technology to learn more about the impact of mobile market research.