Online Market Research
Why do Market Research?
- It helps to understand current industry and market trends.
- Provides information about target customers.
- Identifies market and sales potential.
- Keeps researchers objectives.
- Becomes a framework for creating a marketing strategy.
- Helps business owners to examine customer satisfaction.
- Gives a close look at their competitors strengths and weaknesses.
- Helps marketing managers create benchmarks for future improvement.
There is perhaps no single best way to search the Web, but we recommend the following steps:
1. Pre-Searching Analysis: Think about the topic or subject you want to explore on the Web. Ask yourself some of the following questions, what unique keywords are associated with the topic or subject? Are there any organizations or associations that might have information on the subject through their web sites?
In order to identify trends for your topic or subject, you are going to have to put together a key word set to run in the search engines.
2. Run your key word set in any of the search engines.
For example, let’s supposed that you are searching for a Hispanic Business Directory where you can promote your business. “Hispanic Business Directory” is your key word set. You are going to open any of the search engines available in the market to find what you are researching for. Use the following variations to get better results:
“Hispanic Business Directory” – Specific search for what you are researching for.
“Hispanic Business Directory*” – Add the star symbol to research for every variation of the word.
“Hispanic Small Business Directory” – You can be as specific as you need to.
“Hispanic Business Directory*” and result* – Helps to find case studies if there are available in your topic or subject.
3. Learn as you go and be open to vary your approach with everything that you are learning from your earlier findings. Follow leads that can take to what exactly you are researching for. If you need official data, we recommend you to visit the official web site of the USA government.
Government Sources
Visit http://www.firstgov.gov. This USA official site provides a gateway to all government sites. You can also visit the official sites for your county or city. They provide very relevant information, especially when you are trying to find demographic data.
4. Usually, the most relevant information is within the first three to five pages of Google or any of the other Search Engines. If you can’t find anything interesting within the first 3-5 pages of results, you need to improve the quality of your key word set in order to get more relevant results.
The following are a list of Online tools that you can use during your online marketing research:
Email list sources
- Emailresults: Permission based email providers, http://www.emailresults.com.
- L-I-S-T: L.I.S.T. Inc. is a leading provider of B2B email lists, B2B mailing lists and B2B telemarketing lists, http://www.l-i-s-t.com.
If you need help from experts in the topic, we recommend you to visit:
edited from Jose Aburto