MARKET IDENTIFICATION AND ANALYSIS

Target market identification broadly involves identifying why a customer

would want to buy from you, breaking down the overall market into
different market segments based on shared characteristics, and then choosing
the most feasible, profitable market segment or segments as the
target market for your marketing mix.

4 Types of Market Segmentation

The purpose of market segmentation is to identify different groups within

your target audience so that can deliver more targeted and valuable messaging
for them. This is how businesses can segment their market by gender, age,
lifestyle etc.

1. Demographic segmentation: The who

Demographic segmentation might be the first thing people think of

when they hear ‘market segmentation’. This is perhaps the most
straightforward way of defining customer groups, but it remains
powerful. Demographic segmentation looks at identifiable non-character
traits such as:

 Age
 Gender
 Ethnicity
 Income
 Level of education
 Religion
 Profession/role in a company

For example. demographic segmentation might target potential customers

based on their income, so your marketing budget isn’t wasted directing your
messaging at people who likely can’t afford your product.

Market Segmentation isn’t just about your business reaching customers

more effectively – it’s also about those customers seeing messaging that is more
relevant to them!

2. Psychographic segmentation: The why

Psychographic segmentation is focused on your customers’ personalities

and interests. Here we might look at customers and define them by their:
  Personality traits
 Hobbies
 Life goals
 Values
 Beliefs
 Lifestyles

Compared to demographic segmentation, this can be a harder set to

identify. Good research is vital and, when done well, psychographic
segmentation can allow for incredibly effective marketing that consumers will
feel speaks to them on a much more personal level.

3. Geographic segmentation: The where

By comparison,  geographic segmentation is often one of the easiest to

identify, grouping customers with regards to their physical location. This can
be defined in any number of ways:

 Country
 Region
 City
 Postal code

For example, it’s possible to group customers within a set radius of a certain
location – an excellent option for marketers of live events looking to reach local
audiences. Being aware of your customers’ location allows for all sorts of
considerations when advertising to consumers.

Some recent examples of proper geographic segmentation came from the

response by e-commerce businesses to the coronavirus pandemic. During
lockdown stages, many businesses shifted their focus to local communities to
highlight how their services could still be accessed online.

4. Behavioral segmentation: The how

Behavioral segmentation is possibly the most useful of all for e-commerce

businesses. As with psychographic segmentation, it requires a little data to be
truly effective – but much of this can be gathered via your website itself. Here
we group customers with regards to their:

 Spending habits
 Purchasing habits
 Browsing habits
  Interactions with the brand
 Loyalty to brand
 Previous product ratings

All of these are datasets that can be harvested from a customer’s usage of your
website. At Yieldify, we utilize behavioral segmentation to deliver highly
relevant and targeted campaigns based on a number of behavioral patterns:

 Number of sessions to your website

 Number of pages visited
 Time spent on site
 URLs visited
 Page types visited
 Shopping cart value
 Campaign history
 Referral source
 Exit intent
 Inactivity, and more.

For example, we can distinguish between a first-time visitor and someone

who’s already been on your site multiple times but haven’t purchased. Based
on this behavioral data, we can tailor our messaging accordingly:

First time visitor: Hey, learn about our latest collection!

Returning visitor: Join our loyalty program and start saving!

Other Types of Market Segmentation

1. Technographic segmentation

Technographic segmentation identifies and groups customers with

regards to the role technology plays in their lives. This might mean recognizing
groups of early adopters when marketing new technologies. It might also be as
simple as recognizing the device users access the site from and presenting
deals differently.
 2. Generational and life stage segmentation

Generational and life stage segmentation both expand on aspects of the

demographic approach. Identifying customers by generation allows for broad
but distinct approaches depending on age.

Life stage segmentation, however, works similarly whilst divorcing life

experience from age itself. Instead, it groups customers by factors including
marital status, home-ownership, and whether or not they have children (and

3. Transactional segmentation

Transactional segmentation is based on previous interactions your customer

has had with your brand. Whilst it can draw on behavioral elements, it also
has a much wider scope – considering the initial source of their registration
with your business, how long it has been since their last order, and how many
orders they’ve made overall. 

4.Firmographic Segmentation

Whilst the above marketing segmentation strategies mainly focus on B2C

organizations, Firmographic segmentation can be extremely useful to those in
the B2B world. Firmographic segmentation is the process of analyzing and
classifying B2B customers based on shared company or organization attributes
& characteristics.

This segmentation strategy allows B2B companies to better understand

and target their audience and marketing campaigns. This process is very
similar to the way B2C marketers would use demographic segmentation.

This type of market segmentation predominantly uses 7 factors to identify

customer segments.

 Industry
 Location
 Company Size
 Status
 Number of employees
 Performance
 Executive Title
 Sales Cycles Stage
 This market segmentation process can help form an effective B2B marketing
strategy by identifying target customers and tailoring marketing efforts to these
specific customer segments.

10 Benefits of Market Segmentation

1. More effective marketing

This is the biggest and most obvious benefit to well-implemented market

segmentation. By better recognizing the needs of your customers, you can
identify more effective tactics for reaching them and improving their
interactions and experience with your business. Making your marketing efforts
even more effective.

2. More efficient spending

After all, your targeted marketing is going to allow for better returns on
investment, and you’ll waste less money on marketing that reaches the wrong
audience.

3. Higher quality leads

You’ll also notice that the more targeted more marketing is, the better
your leads become. You’re reaching the right people, and they’re starting to
notice you!

4. Identifying niche markets

Similarly, your research into segmentation may help you recognize areas
of the market you’d not considered before. This might even lead to the
development of new products that are aimed specifically towards these
markets.

5. Improved customer retention

By identifying your customers by their needs, you can put out marketing
that offers irresistible reasons for a return visit. This is proven to
increase customer retention, customer loyalty and lifetime value.

6. Differentiating your brand

 The purpose of market segmentation is not only to help you reach your
audience but also to allow your customers to see the true value of your brand
via marketing that speaks to them – and in doing so puts you head and
shoulders above your competitors.

7. More focus

Ultimately, thoughtful customer segmentation will allow your business to

focus every element of its activity to better reach those that it serves. Your
marketing becomes focused on your customers’ needs, your research and
development may focus on meeting those needs, your spending will be focused
on achieving these, and not wasted on mistargeted marketing and planning.

Everything becomes better suited to giving your customers what they

need, and as a result, your business becomes exactly the sort of business they
want to be buying from. This can greatly help with the return on investment of
all your marketing activity.

5 Steps to Find a Need in the Market

1. Understand the Jobs to Be Done Theory.

2. Be Introspective
3. Conduct Interviews
4. Identify and Examine Competitors
5. Be Ever-Observant

16 Most Common Types of Customer Needs

Product Needs:
1. Functionality -Customers need your product or service to function the way
they need in order to solve their problem or desire.
2. Price-Customers have unique budgets with which they can purchase a
product or service.
3. Convenience-Your product or service needs to be a convenient solution to
the function your customers are trying to meet.
4. Experience-The experience using your product or service needs to be easy --
or at least clear -- so as not to create more work for your customers.
5. Design-Along the lines of experience, the product or service needs a slick
design to make it relatively easy and intuitive to use.
6. Reliability-The product or service needs to reliably function as advertised
every time the customer wants to use it.
7. Performance-The product or service needs to perform correctly so the
customer can achieve their goals.
8. Efficiency-The product or service needs to be efficient for the customer by
streamlining an otherwise time-consuming process.
9. Compatibility-The product or service needs to be compatible with other
products your customer is already using.
Service Needs
10. Empathy-When your customers get in touch with customer service, they
want empathy and understanding from the people assisting them.
11. Fairness-From pricing to terms of service to contract length, customers
expect fairness from a company.
12. Transparency-Customers expect transparency from a company they're
doing business with. Service outages, pricing changes, and things breaking
happen, and customers deserve openness from the businesses they give money
to.
13. Control-Customers need to feel like they're in control of the business
interaction from start to finish and beyond, and customer empowerment
shouldn't end with the sale. Make it easy for them to return products, change
subscriptions, adjust terms, etc.
14. Options-Customers need options when they're getting ready to make a
purchase from a company. Offer a variety of product, subscription, and
payment options to provide that freedom of choice.
15. Information-Customers need information, from the moment they start
interacting with your brand to days and months after making a purchase.
Business should invest in educational blog content, instructional knowledge
base content, and regular communication so customers have the information
they need to successfully use a product or service.
16. Accessibility -Customers need to be able to access your service and
support teams. This means providing multiple channels for customer service.
We'll talk a little more about these options later. 

To conduct a customer needs analysis successfully, you need to do the

following:

1. Customer Needs Analysis Survey

The customer needs analysis is typically conducted by running surveys that

help companies figure out their position in their respective competitive markets
how they stack up in terms of meeting their target customers' needs.
 The survey should primarily ask questions about your brand and competitors,
as well as customers' product awareness and brand attitudes in general.

Questions can include:

 Questions about positive and negative word associations with your brand

 Questions asking customers to group your brand in with similar and/or

competing brands

 Questions comparing and sorting brands according to their preferences for

usage

2. Means-End Analysis

Once you've conducted the customer needs analysis survey, you can use the
answers to get a fuller picture of the reasons why your customers purchase
from you, and what makes your product or service stand apart from your
competitors'.

A means-end analysis analyzes those answers to determine the primary

reasons why a customer would buy your product. Those buyer reasons can be
divided into three main groups:
1. Features: A customer buys a product or service because of the features
included in the purchase. If the customer were buying a computer, for
example, they might buy it because it's smaller and more lightweight than
other options.
2. Benefits: A customer buys a product or service because of a benefit, real or
perceived, they believe it will offer them. The customer might also buy the
computer because it syncs easily with their other devices wirelessly.
3. Values: A customer buys a product or service for unique, individual values,
real or perceived, they believe it will help them fulfill. The customer might think
the computer will help them to be more creative or artistic and unlock other
personal or professional artistic opportunities.

As you might imagine, these reasons for purchasing something can vary from
customer to customer, so it's important to conduct these customer surveys,
collect the answers, and group them into these three categories. From there,
you can identify which of those motivating factors you're solving for, and which
you can improve on to make your product or service even more competitive in
the market. 

3. Customer Feedback
 If you want to know what your customers think about the experience with
working with your company, ask them. Interviewing your customers and
members of your service team can contribute to a customer needs analysis and
improvements to your customer lifecycle.

As you gather data from your customer needs analysis, it's important to
identify the points of friction that your customers experience and the moments
in their journey that provide unexpected delight.

 What can your company change?

 What are the elements that you can build from?

 What parts of the experience needs to be worked on?

Asking these questions can lead you to valuable insights as you work to solve
for your customers.

How to Solve for Customer Needs

1. Offer consistent company-wide messaging.

Too often customers, get caught up in the "he said, she said" game of
being told a product can do one thing from sales and another from support and
product. Ultimately, customers become confused and are left with the
perception that the company is disorganized.

Consistent internal communications across all departments is one of the best

steps towards a customer-focused mindset. If the entire company understands
its goals, values, product, and service capabilities, then the messages will
easily translate to meet the customer need.

To get everyone on the same page, organize sales and customer

service meetings, send out new product emails, provide robust new employee
onboarding, require quarterly trainings and seminars, or staff host webinars to
share important projects.
2. Provide instructions for easy adoption.

Customers purchase a product because they believe it will meet their

needs and solve their problem. However, adoption setup stages are not always
clear. If best practices aren't specified at the start and they don't see value
right away, it's an uphill battle to gain back their trust and undo bad habits.
A well-thought-out post-purchase strategy will enable your products or services
to be usable and useful.

One way companies gain their customers' attention is providing in-product and
email walkthroughs and instructions as soon as the customer receives a
payment confirmation. This limits the confusion, technical questions, and
distractions from the immediate post-purchase euphoria.

A customer education guide or knowledge base is essential to deliver proper

customer adoption and avoid the ‘floundering effect' when customers are stuck.
Other companies provide new customer onboarding services, host live demos
and webinars and include event and promotions in their email signatures.
3. Build feedback loops into every stage of the process.

Lean into customer complaints and suggestions, and it will change the
way you operate your business. Criticism often times has negative
connotations. However, if you flip problems to opportunities you can easily
improve your business to fit the customer's needs.

Just as you solicited customer feedback in your needs analysis, you can keep a
pulse on how your customers feel at scale with customer satisfaction scores,
customer surveys, exploration customer interviews, social media polls, or
personal customer feedback emails.

If you're able to incorporate this into a repeatable process, you'll never be in

the dark about the state of the customer experience in your organization, and
you'll be enabled to continue improving it.

Take customer suggestions seriously and act on those recommendations to

improve design, product, and system glitches. Most customer support success
metrics is paramount to the customer experience and this mentality should
trickle down to every aspect of the organization.

4. Nurture customer relationships.

When a customer buys a product or service, they want to use it right

away and fulfill their immediate need. Whether they are delighted within the
first hour, week, or a month, it's important to constantly think about their
future needs.

Proactive relationship-building is essential to prevent customers from losing

their post-purchase excitement and ultimately churning. If customers stop
hearing from you and you don't hear from them this can be a bad sign that
their lifespan is in danger.
Companies solve for customer relationships with a combination of customer
service structure and communication strategies. Solve for the long-term
customer need and create a customer service team dedicated to check-ins
and customer retention, show appreciation with rewards and gifts to loyal
customers, host local events, highlight employees that go above and beyond
and communicate product updates and new features.
5. Solve for the right customer needs.
Excluding customers from your cohort of business can seem
counterintuitive to solve for your customers' needs. However, understanding
whose needs you can fulfill and whose you cannot is a major step toward
solving the right problems. All customers' needs can't be treated equally and a
company must recognize which problems they can solve and ones that aren't
aligned with their vision.
To find the right customer priorities, create buyer personas and uncover
consumer trends, look at customer's long-term retention patterns, establish a
clear company vision, provide premier customer service to valuable customers
and communicate with your ideal customer in their preferred social media
space to capture questions, comments and suggestions.

Successful startups, brick and mortar shops, and Fortune 500 companies alike
all solve and prioritize customer needs to stay ahead and establish industry
trends.

6. Provide great customer service. 

If a problem arises, your customers want to get it resolved and feel heard
in the process. This starts with being able to meet their needs with empathy,
but along the way, the process for obtaining support should be easy and on a
channel that's convenient for them.

Some customer needs are time-sensitive and require immediate interaction via
phone or chat. Others are less critical and can be resolved at a more casual
pace. Let's break down the types of customer service and how each optimizes
your team's ability to fulfill customer needs.

TYPES OF CUSTOMER NEEDS

1. Email

Email is one of the most fundamental forms of customer service. It allows

customers to fully describe their problems, and it automatically records the
conversation into a resourceful thread. Customers only have to explain their
issue once, while reps can reference important case details without having to
request additional information.

Email is best used with customer needs that don't need to be resolved
right away. Customers can ask their question, go back to work, and return to
the case once the service rep has found a solution. Unlike phones or chat, they
don't have to wait idly while a rep finds them an answer.

One limitation of email is the potential lack of clarity. Some customers

have trouble describing their problem, and some service reps struggle to
explain solutions. This creates time-consuming roadblocks when the issue is
overly complex. To be safe, use email for simple problems that require a brief
explanation or solution.

2. Phone

When customers have problems that need to be answered immediately,

phones are the best medium to use. Phones connect customers directly to reps
and create a human interaction between the customer and the business. Both
parties hear each other's tone and can gauge the severity of the situation. This
human element is a major factor in creating delightful customer experiences.

Phones come in handy most when there's a frustrated or angry

customer. These customers are most likely to churn and require your team to
provide a personalized solution. Your team can use soft communication
skills to appease the customer and prevent costly escalations. These responses
appear more genuine the phone because reps have less time to formulate an
answer.
The most common flaw with phone support is the wait time. Customers hate
being put on hold, and it's a determining factor for customer churn. 
3. Chat

Chat is one of the most flexible customer service channels. It can solve a
high volume of simple problems or provide detailed support for complex ones.
Businesses continue to adopt chat because of its versatility as well as the
improvement in efficiency it provides for customer service reps.

When it comes to solving customer needs, chat can be used to solve

almost any problem. Simple and common questions can be answered
with chatbots that automate the customer service process. For more advanced
roadblocks, reps can integrate customer service tools into their chat software
to help them diagnose and resolve issues.
 The limitations of chat are similar to those of email. However, since the
interaction is live, any lack of clarity between the two parties can drastically
impact troubleshooting. As a former chat rep, there were plenty of times where
I struggled to get on the same page as my customer. Even though we resolved
the issue, that miscommunication negatively impacted the customer's
experience.

4. Social Media

Social media is a relatively new customer service channel. While it's been
around for over a decade, businesses are now beginning to adopt it as a viable
service option. That's because social media lets customers immediately report
an issue. And since that report is public, customer service teams are more
motivated to resolve the customer's problem.

Social media is an excellent channel for mass communication, which is

particularly useful during a business crisis. When a crisis occurs, your
customers' product and service needs become the primary concern of your
organization. Social media is an effective tool for communicating with your
customers in bulk. With a social media crisis management plan, your team can
continue to fulfill customer needs during critical situations.
Social media is different than other types of customer service because it
empowers the customer the most. Customers tend to have more urgent needs
and expect instant responses from your accounts. While this type of service
presents an enormous opportunity, it also places tremendous pressure on your
reps to fulfill customer demand. Be sure your team is equipped with
proper social media management tools before you offer routine support.
5. In Person

As the oldest form of customer service, you're probably familiar with working in
person with customers. Brands who have brick-and-mortar stores must offer
this service for customers living near their locations. This fulfills a convenience
need as customers can purchase and return a product without having to ship
it back to the company through an online service.

In-person customer service is great for businesses with strong service

personnel. Without dedicated employees, your customer service team won't be
able to fulfill your customers' product or service needs. Successful teams have
reps who are determined to provide above-and-beyond customer service.
5. Call Back Service

Sometimes it's not about how quickly your business can provide a
solution, but rather how efficient you can make the service experience. For
example, say a customer has a simple question about pricing that should only
take a few minutes to answer, but their expected wait time for phone service is
over 15 minutes. Rather than making this customer spend more time on hold
than actually speaking with a representative, you can offer a call back service
where your team reaches out to the customer as soon as the next rep is
available.

Another situation where this type of service comes in handy is with text-
based mediums like email and live chat. In some cases, these channels aren't
ideal for troubleshooting and can lead to friction if the case isn't transferred to
another platform. Having a call back service available allows customers to
schedule time to speak directly with reps, particularly when they feel like they
aren't gaining progress on their case. Instead of having to create a completely
new support ticket, call backs seamlessly transition the conversation to a more
effective channel. 
6. Customer Self-Service
Self-service teaches your customers how to solve problems independently
from your support team. Rather than calling or emailing your business
whenever they need an assist, customers can navigate to your knowledge
base and access resources that help them troubleshoot issues on their own.
Not only does this get customers faster solutions, but it also saves them from
having to open a ticket with your team. This makes the experience feel much
less like a formal support case and more like a quick roadblock that your
customers can handle on their own. 

Self-service is advantageous for your team's productivity as well. If more

customers use your knowledge base, less will call or email your team for help.
This will free your reps up more to focus on complex service cases that require
a longer time commitment. 

7. Interactive Virtual Assistant

Chatbots are no longer novelties that customer service teams use to

show off their technological prowess. Now, they're integral pieces of support
strategies as they act more like interactive virtual assistants than simple,
question-and-answer bots. Today's chatbots are powered by innovative AI
technology that interprets customer needs and can walk people through step-
by-step solutions. 

8. Integrated Customer Service

Integrated service can be described as all of the little things your brand
does to remove pain points from the customer experience. Some of this is
proactive, like sending customers an automated newsletter that informs them
about major updates or announcements, and some of it is reactive, like pinging
a customer success manager whenever someone submits negative feedback to
your team.
Even though these pain points may seem small, they add up over time if
left unchecked. The best way to remove most of these points of friction is to
adopt automation as you grow your customer base. Automated customer
service tools like ticketing systems, help desks, and workflows help your team
keep pace with increasing customer demand. This technology lets you maintain
that same level of personalized customer service even as more people reach out
to your business for support. 
There's no "best" type of customer service. When used together, each medium
compliments the other and optimizes your overall performance. This creates
an omni-channel experience for your customers which will keep them coming
back for more.

However, it's important to note that customer service is reactive. One of the
best things you can do is continue learning based on the types of issues that
come up so that you can proactively address customer needs and continue
improving on the experience.
 MARKET ANALYSIS

A market analysis is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of

a market. It looks into the size of the market both in volume and in value, the
various customer segments and buying patterns, the competition, and the
economic environment in terms of barriers to entry and regulation.
In contrast to market research, market analysis focuses on a specific market
on a given date. The aim of market analysis is to identify the most important
characteristics of a market and to determine the market structure at a certain
point in time. The market structure describes the structure of a certain market

A market analysis can help you identify how to better position your
business to be competitive and serve your customers.

Understanding your customer base is one of the first key steps to

success in business. Without knowing who your customers are, what they
want and how they want to get it from you, your business could struggle to
come up with an effective marketing strategy. This is where a market analysis
comes in. A market analysis can be a time-intensive process, but it is
straightforward and easy to do on your own in seven steps.

A market analysis is a thorough assessment of a market within a specific

industry. With this analysis, you will study the dynamics of your market, such
as volume and value, potential customer segments, buying patterns,
competition, and other important factors. A thorough marketing analysis
should answer the following questions:

 Who are my potential customers?

 What are my customers' buying habits?
 How large is my target market?
 How much are customers willing to pay for my product?
 Who are my main competitors?
 What are my competitors' strengths and weaknesses?

Benefits of Conducting a Market Analysis:

1. Risk reduction: Knowing your market can reduce risks in your

business, since you'll have an understanding of major market trends, the
main players in your industry, and what it takes to be successful, all of
 which will inform your business decisions. To help you further protect
your business, you can also conduct a SWOT analysis, which identifies
the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for a business.

2. Targeted products or services: You are in a much better position to

serve your customers when you have a firm grasp on what they are
looking for from you. When you know who your customers are, you can
use that information to tailor your business's offerings to your
customers' needs.

3. Emerging trends: Staying ahead in business is often about being the

first to spot a new opportunity or trend, and using a marketing analysis
to stay on top of industry trends is a great way to position yourself to
take advantage of this information.

4. Revenue projections: A market forecast is a key component of most

marketing analyses, as it projects the future numbers, characteristics
and trends in your target market. This gives you an idea of the profits
you can expect, allowing you to adjust your business plan and budget
accordingly.

5. Evaluation benchmarks: It can be difficult to gauge your business's

success outside of pure numbers. A market analysis provides
benchmarks against which you can judge your company and how well
you are doing compared to others in your industry.

6. Context for past mistakes: Marketing analytics can explain your

business's past mistakes or industry anomalies. For example, in-depth
analytics can explain what impacted the sale of a specific product, or
why a certain metric performed the way it did. This can help you avoid
making those mistakes again or experiencing similar anomalies, because
you'll be able to analyze and describe what went wrong and why.

7. Marketing optimization: This is where an annual marketing analysis

comes in handy – regular analysis can inform your ongoing marketing
efforts and show you which aspects of your marketing need work, and
which are performing well in comparison to the other companies in your
industry.

Seven Steps of Conducting a Market Analysis

1. Determine your purpose.

 There are many reasons you may be conducting a market analysis, such
as to gauge your competition or understand a new market. Whatever your
reason, it's important to determine it right away to keep you on track
throughout the process. Start by deciding whether your purpose is internal –
like improving your cash flow or business operations – or external, like seeking
a business loan. Your purpose will dictate the type and amount of research you
will do.

2. Research the state of the industry.

It's vital to include a detailed outline of the current state of your

industry. Include where the industry seems to be heading, using metrics such
as size, trends and projected growth, with plenty of data to support your
findings. You can also conduct a comparative market analysis to help you find
your competitive advantage within your specific market.

3. Identify your target customer.

Not everyone in the world will be your customer, and it would be a waste of
your time trying to get everyone interested in your product. Instead, decide who
is most likely to want your product using a target market analysis and focus
your efforts there. You want to understand your market size, who your
customers are, where they come from, and what might influence their buying
decisions, looking at factors like these:

 Age
 Gender
 Location
 Occupation
 Education
 Needs
 Interests

During your research, you might consider creating a customer profile or

persona that reflects your ideal customer to serve as a model for your
marketing efforts.

4. Understand your competition.

To be successful, you need a good understanding of your competitors,

including their market saturation, what they do differently from you, and their
strengths, weaknesses and advantages in the market. Start by listing all your
main competitors, then go through that list and conduct a SWOT analysis of
each competitor. What does that business have that you don't? What would
lead a customer to choose that business over yours? Put yourself in the
customer's shoes.

Then, rank your list of competitors from most to least threatening, and decide
on a timeline to conduct regular SWOT analyses on your most threatening
competitors.

5. Gather additional data

With marketing analyses, information is your friend – you can never have
too much data. It is important that the data you use is credible and factual, so
be cautious of where you get your numbers. These are some reputable
business data resources:

 Labor Statistics
 Census Bureau
 State and local commerce sites
 Trade journals
 Your own SWOT analyses
 Market surveys or questionnaires

6. Analyze your data.

After you collect all the information you can and verify that it is accurate,
you need to analyze the data to make it useful to you. Organize your research
into sections that make sense to you, but try to include ones for your purpose,
target market and competition.

These are the main elements your research should include:

 An overview of your industry's size and growth rate

 Your business's projected market share percentage
 An industry outlook
 Customer buying trends
 Your forecasted growth
 How much customers are willing to pay for your product or service

7. Put your analysis to work

Once you've done the work to create a market analysis, it's time to
actually make it work for you. Internally, look for where you can use your
research and findings to improve your business. Have you seen other
businesses doing things that you'd like to implement in your own organization?
Are there ways to make your marketing strategies more effective?

If you conducted your analysis for external purposes, organize your

research and data into an easily readable and digestible document to make it
easier to share with lenders. Be sure to retain all of your information and
research for your next analysis, and consider making a calendar reminder each
year so that you stay on top of your market.