Does brand research work? What methods should you use?

June 7, 2021 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Building a brand, whether you just start a business or revamp an existing one, is a complex demeanour. Your brand impacts all your business' parts, and it can even affect the way it operates. Branding and rebranding can cost a lot of resources and money, so you need to get it right.

This means that you cannot build your brand based on the elements that feel right to you or a guess of what your audience may like. You need to know what the market demands from a brand like yours, so it's the moment to research. This article talks about how brand research impacts your business.

Why should you do brand research?

A different way to ask this question is, "what can you learn through brand research?" When you conduct research, what are your goals? What do you want to discover?

Brand specialists state that research can answer two questions.

• What does the audience believe about your brand at present? What would they appreciate receiving in the future?
• What does your internal community believe about your brand at present? What would they want to see in the future?

Understandably, you want to know what your clients, prospects, employees, stakeholders, and partners think about your brand and its future. This is the point of branding, to identify the path your company must follow to gain more popularity on the market. It's vital for your company's success to determine where it stands. Why?

- You need to identify the aspects you need to change. No matter how well you think you know your public, you don't want to start manufacturing a new product without first checking if your clients consider buying it. Whether your brand is well-established on the market or just launching it, you need to know if the public shares your opinions. Otherwise, you may end up delivering something no one is interested in.

- You're too close to your brand to be objective. Let's face it; you worked hard to bring your company where it's now, and it slowly became your most cherished creation. But there may be things you love that your clients may hate or details you haven't noticed that people can't get enough. Don't operate based only on your expertise because you can make mistakes that can cost your company. Research the market to find out their opinion.

What kind of brand research should you engage in?

If you graduated from college a couple of years ago, it's probably a while since you've done something you could call research. So, in this case, it's best to collaborate with a company specialised in brand research like Sapio Research because it delivers the information needed to help you identify the path you must follow to grow your business.

However, if you want to do it yourself, you may want to lock down the needed knowledge about the most popular brand research methods.

Survey

If you want to gather information quickly, a survey is the best tool to use because it's a surface-level method that allows your public to express their opinions about your brand or products. It's beneficial for start-ups in the kick-off process because it provides them with the necessary data to determine what steps they need to follow. The survey provides you with a first look at where your brand stands, and you can use the information to plan the operations. Remember when this article mentioned that you might perceive your products that don't align with your clients' thoughts? Running a survey can help you find that out.

However, you must ensure that the survey includes deep questions that offer the clients multiple-choice questions and cover as much ground as possible about the subject of interest.

Interviews

Interviews aren't very different from surveys, but you need to be strategic with the questions you prepare and avoid yes-or-no answers. Ensure that you talk to the right people to get a variety of perspectives. Interviews can get you little deeper than surveys because they can allow for more conversation than a written questionnaire. Talking is always easier than writing, and most people have more to say when you ask them open questions. Also, interviews are more natural and enjoyable.

Sometimes interviews go in an unexpected direction, but it's not always bad for your research because they can lead to answers that help you identify issues you had no idea about. You can always get more information from a conversation than from a survey.

Focus groups

This method is the best of both worlds because the conversation ranges freely, and you can steer it in one direction or another. It provides you with the perspectives of several people in a short period. But focus groups are unique because of the way the interviewees interact when brought together. It can be a positive thing for your research because when someone says something, it can spark an idea in someone else's mind and take the discussion in an interesting direction for your business. During focus groups, you always discover things you miss. However, you need to ensure that the interviewer knows how to handle a focus group and nobody dominates the conversation.

Digital analysis

During brand research, you also need to examine the existing digital marketing of your competitors. Check out what methods they use, which one of them works, what they're missing, and what you can improve to stand out. Digital analysis also implies conducting an audit for your brand because you need to identify your company's opportunities to set a reputation for itself.

It's a good idea to have experts who handle digital analysis because they can examine the market at a deeper level and find out exactly who you're competing against and what is wrong with some competitors. Brand research can pull some outstanding data about your company's performance, and it's helpful to work with an experienced professional who has done this before.

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