Overcoming the largest marketing research challenges

Editor's note: Emily Smith is the marketing content specialist at Brandwatch.

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Market research can be time-consuming, expensive and hard to implement correctly. Brandwatch has researched the toughest obstacles for insights teams and in this article we’ll offer effective solutions to help your business get ahead of the competition.

The biggest obstacles for market researchers

For our latest report on market research, we asked businesses what was impacting their ability to get to know their customers. We surveyed 63 respondents from Brandwatch’s network. Here’s what they said – and how you can overcome the challenges that arose.

Not having enough time

Over half of respondents said that time was a key obstacle getting in the way of market research efforts at their organization. With most teams in the field pressed for time, important research questions that could help drive business results are being left unexplored.

An effective way to save time is to work with specialist agencies who can conduct research for you. They can offer a second opinion on areas to target while giving you regular feedback on outcomes. Alternatively, a social listening tool can do all this and more. A great tool will transform the way you conduct market research internally by providing both real-time signals for changes in your market and historic analysis to help you dive deep into trends with just a few clicks.

Lack of budget

Budgeting issues can be the biggest roadblock for market researchers. Being short on the funds needed to conduct effective research might mean your findings are inaccurate, out of date or irrelevant.

Using a consumer intelligence tool can help save money for your business as they don’t rely on recruiting or incentivizing research participants. Instead, you can simply access unprompted feedback from millions of online sources about your brand, products or market. As you improve understanding of your market and audience, you’re able to use these insights to inform better business decisions.

Not having the right data

Working with data can be complicated and time-consuming – especially if you’re not sure what to look for. Our survey participants agreed that data can help inform strategic decisions and empower businesses to become smarter and more effective in all areas. Being truly consumer-centric means continuously gathering, processing and analyzing various data sources to stay on top of shifting consumer behaviors.

Working with the right data tools takes away the complications of data management, allowing you to work with a wide breadth of data sources in one platform and make important business decisions with confidence.

Not having the right technology

Having the right solutions in place is fundamental to gathering and analyzing the data that can help your organization thrive. According to our survey, 82.54% of respondents thought that having the right social data analysis tool in place will best support consumer insights generation and sharing in 2022.

The right analysis tool can help you search millions of online mentions, segment this data in a way that’s relevant to you, analyze insights and act on them to improve your business results.

Not having the skillset

The final challenge we’ll highlight from our research is not having the right data skills, which can significantly impact the success of an organization. Adapting to a rapidly changing market is much easier when the right skills are explored within an organization and encouraged across teams.

Investing where there are gaps in skills or knowledge in the workforce can help you stay abreast of all the changes that will impact your organization.

Key takeaways

Understanding how to conduct time-effective, budget-friendly research is important for every business, whether you’re an up-and-coming SMB or a well-established enterprise.

The right consumer intelligence tool can transform your approach to market research in rapidly changing times, enabling your organization to act with agility and confidence.

You can read about these insights in more detail in our report on The Researcher of 2022.

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