What is Market Analysis?
Market analysis is a quantitative and qualitative assessment of a market. It examines the size of the market both as volume and value, various customer segments, purchasing models. Moreover, it helps you understand the competition and the economic environment.
Analyzing markets helps you reduce risks as it allows you to anticipate your customers and market conditions better.
Your analysis also highlights how an action you are required to take in the competitive environment. In this way, you can determine the path you are required to follow or learn what kinds of works you are required to do to differentiate your business from your competitors.
Market research can help you move your businesses to the next level without the size of your enterprise becoming a factor.
How to Conduct Market Analysis?
Although making a marketing analysis is not a complicated process, it requires a lot of special researches, therefore, be prepared to take significant time to the process.
These are the seven steps to conduct a market analysis:
1. Determine Your Purpose
There can be many reasons to make a market analysis such as measuring sector competition or exploring new markets. Whatever your reason is, it is important to determine your purpose right away to keep you competitive throughout the process. It is very important to begin by deciding whether your purpose is internal such as improving your cash flow or commercial operations or external such as seeking commercial credit. Your purpose will determine the type and size of the research you will do.
2. Research the Sector in Detail
It is very important to prepare a detailed outline of the current state of your sector. You can add the trend off industry by using metrics like size, trends, and foreseen growth with plenty of data that will support your findings. Moreover, you can also do a comparative market analysis to help you find your competitive advantage in your own market.
3. Determine Your Target Customers
Trying to provide everyone in the world interested in your product is just a waste of time. Instead of this, you should continue your efforts in this way by focusing on the people who will demand your product the most by using a target market analysis.
You can understand the market size, who are your customers, where they come from and what can influence their purchasing decisions by examining the factors we have listed below.
• Gender • Location • Occupation • Education • Needs • Interest fields
During your research, you can think creating a customer profile that reflects your ideal customer in order to serve as a model for your marketing efforts.
4. Make Competitive Analysis
To be successful, you are required to understand your competitors including market saturation, what your competitors are doing differently than you and their strengths, weaknesses and advantages in the market. You can begin this stage by listing all the main competitors. Then, you should make a SWOT analysis of each competitor by reviewing this list. By putting yourself in your customers' themselves, you can identify your shortcomings and understand the reasons why they prefer competitors.
5. Collect Additional Data
It is important that the data used in marketing analysis is reliable and factual. Therefore, pay attention where you get your data from.
Some reliable data sources:
• Local trade websites • Trade magazines • SWOT analysis examples • Market surveys
6. Analyze Your Data
After you gathered all the information you can acquire and are sure they are accurate, you are required to analyze the data to make them beneficial to you. You should also try to include your purpose, target market and competition by dividing your research into meaningful sections.
These are the key elements that your research is required to include:
• An overview of your sector size and growth rate • Your enterprise’s foreseen percentage market share • Customer purchasing trends • Your foreseen growth • How much customer is ready to pay for your product or service
7. Use Your Analyses
After you completed the analysis creation process by answering the question “What is Market Analysis?”, you can use your analysis correctly. Internally, you should decide where you will be able to use your researches and findings to develop your business. You can determine the ways to make your marketing strategies more effective through data.
You should make sure that you saved all your information and research for the next analysis.
Advantages of Conducting Market Analysis
Marketing analysis can reduce potential risks in business processes. It can determine emerging trends and help increase project revenue. It is very useful to make a marketing analysis every year to be informed about important changes in the market.
A detailed market analysis will usually be a part of your business plan. Because market analysis helps you understand your target audience better. As a result, it helps you create a niche marketing strategy.
Important benefits of conducting market analysis:
Reduced Risk
Learning the market in detail can reduce potential risks for your enterprise. Because it will change market trends, competitors in the sector and the steps required to be successful and even your business decisions. To minimize potential risks in your enterprise, you can also make a SWOT analysis that determines the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an enterprise.
Targeted Products or Services
Once you realize the expectations of your target audience, the service you give to your customers will be moved to a better position. When you know your customers, you can adapt your campaign and offers according to customers’ needs.
Developing Trends
Being pioneer in the sector is usually related to be the first to take notice a new opportunity or trend. Using marketing analysis to stay ahead of industry trends is a great way to position your enterprise in the sector.
Income Planning
Market forecasting is an important component of most marketing analysis as it reflects the trends in your target market. This allows you to adjust your business plan and budget by giving you an idea about the profits you will be able to acquire.
Evaluation Criteria
Market analysis provides comparison benchmarks that you will be able to evaluate your company and what position you are in ith comparison to your competitors found in your sector.
Seeing Past Mistakes
Marketing analytics can explain past mistakes of your enterprise or abnormal situations experienced in the sector. For example, an in-depth analytics approach made can explain what affect sales of a particular product or why a particular metric performed the way it did. By this means, it can help you avoid making the same mistakes or experiencing similar situations again.
Marketing Optimization
Marketing optimization is the point where the benefits of annual marketing analysis is started to be seen. Regular analysis made can give detailed information about ongoing marketing efforts.
What are the Online Tools that You Will Be Able to Make Market Analysis?
Google TrendsGoogle Trends is a big resource to learn what searches the internet users, meaning, your potential customers, are doing most every day. You can examine which word groups are searched on the Internet how often and where and even which other words the users searching for the mentioned words are interested in based on country and city.
YouTube
YouTube is a very good tool to get to know your competitors and to learn about them. Videos of your competitors and videos about your market will play an important role in drawing the roadmap of your brand. Therefore, you should definitely follow and research the agenda and what your competitors are doing on YouTube.
Tableau
Tableau is one of the data visualization tools that help you understand the results of your market research you made through analysis, visualization and business intelligence by establishing connection with the data and files you obtained. It allows you to get an interactive and shareable indicator table that includes current trends and variations with the help of colorful graphs and tables.
Ahrefs
It is a tool frequently preferred by SEO experts. It provides you with detailed ideas related to the keywords you think using. By means of the data it collected, it gives information on how you will be able to leave your competitors behind. It also allows you to create your SEO strategies.
Similar Web
Another tool preferred by SEO experts is Similar Web. With Similar Web, you can easily follow your competitors and trends.
Google Ads Keyword Planner
With Google Ads Keyword Planner, it is possible for you to make very detailed keyword analysis. For example, it can show you the search volume of keywords, how much these keywords create competition and even how potential keywords are related to each other. In addition, it allows you to discover new keywords.
Social Mention
“Social Mention” name is given to real-time search platform that provides detailed information about social media trends. It gathers contents created by users from almost all over the world into in a single flow.
What Should Be Paid Attention While Making Market Analysis?
Market analysis shows variation according to product, enterprise, region and many factors. Now that we detailed the question “What is Market Analysis?”, let’s list the steps that are required to be considered below:
•Think Like Customers: To understand what customers like to buy and why in better way, you should look at your offers from the eyes of a consumer. Then, you should apply this thinking style to your market analysis.
•Use Advantage that the Internet Provides: Online searches can provide you to acquire valuable information about competitors. Moreover, the Internet is also a very important resource to research other relevant data and sector statistics.
•Add Visual Elements: You can add graphs to show important data and numbers found in your market analysis. Visualized presentations can provide variety to your data.
•Do you know that you will be able to use ChatGPT while doing market analysis? Surely try it to get detailed information about your competitors!