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How do you monetize your Market Research??
If your company conducts market research (but it is not your primary focus or product) how do you make your money off of it? Market research has so many different applications, sometimes it's difficult to balance which is the most lucrative vs. what yields the greatest [strategic] value?
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5 Answers
Totally agree, Lexi. I had a market research consultancy for 15 years, and as an analyst now, it's still hard to monetize market research. It's especially frustrating when you have a lot of experience and are dealing with clients who don't really understand or appreciate the value of primary, original market research.
We all know how much people are drowning in free information off the Web, and it's hard to get anyone to pay for research. I see two basic ways to monetize market research. One way is to show clients how you can add value to all that free research by filtering it down to insights they can really use, esp if you can supplement it with your own research data. A second way is to produce original reports for sale, but price it low enough to ensure a base of sales upon which you can build a clientele for new reports and custom work. We could talk a long time about these strategies, but I'm going to stop here!
I believe that given the abundance of free research on the web, unless you are a research house you are unlikely to find a lot of willing buyers for the research you produce for your own purposes.
The best way to think about it is not the dollars you'll make by actually selling the document and surrounding knowledge, but the good-will and stronger customer relationships you can create by freely sharing the non-confidential elements of the research with your social network. I believe that in the long run, sharing valuable knowledge freely will yield a much stronger financial benefit to you than the 15 reports you'll sell for $499 each.
Hey Jon,
Thanks for the insightful response! Those are 2 solid suggestions. I certainly agree, it can be very difficult to justify the value to people who are new to market research, particularly when that value is more *strategic in the long term* than it is *revenue generating in the short term*...
Another question I have is: how standardized do you typically package your research? In terms of producing reports to sell, in your experience, are these more a repackaging of the same basic template, or do you do a lot of customization per deliverable? What's more strategic in terms of monetization? Another way to ask this: is your data standard (as in you have a standard question set), but delivered based on segmentation? OR does the question set (and thus its respective deliverable) vary case by case?
I agree with what Nick is saying. We conduct a lot of market studies for our clients and also publish a few on our own every year revolving around topics of interest for our target segment. The amount of credibility it helps build is significant.
So, typically our reports are customized to a customer's specific requirements. Since most of the research is aimed at helping a client arrive at a business decision and is hence focused on their context, this works better.
Apply the market research to your online marketing media.
Target what your potential market is looking for and present it using Search Optimization techniques. (SEO).
Get your products or services squarely in front of those searching for them.
Try for the top 3 in SERPS.
Best,
Reg
www.NBS-SEO.com
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