Understanding your market is like possessing a map and compass to navigate the evolving business landscape. Without it, you risk building a marketing strategy upon a shaky foundation of feelings and guesswork – and ultimately, your marketing efforts become more experimental than focused and intentional.
Conducting a market analysis is akin to taking a thorough survey of the landscape before embarking on a long journey. Data can illuminate the path to informed, impactful, and effective marketing campaigns. Whether you’re expanding into a new market or looking to better understand the terrain you currently operate in, a market analysis will be the trusty guide on your marketing journey.
(As a strategic services partner of Experian, B2E has access to 3,000+ data elements for nearly 110 million households spanning demographic, financial, psychographic, behavioral, communication preferences, life stage, and more.)
Let’s unpack the key components of a market analysis that informs deep-level strategic decision making.
Define Your Audience
First thing's first: who are you trying to reach? An effective market analysis begins with an understanding of your “ideal customers,” or the audience segments that are responsible for a majority of your results. Understanding your ideal customers – and finding more of them – should be a goal for every business.
What are their demographics, psychographics, preferred channels, decision-making styles, and pain points? The more specific you get, the more laser-focused your marketing efforts will be. Avoid taking shots in the dark, and instead, use detailed audience information to communicate in meaningful and effective ways.
Understand the Competitive Field
Customer behavior can be largely influenced by the competitive landscape. Your competitors’ offerings, pricing strategies, strengths and weaknesses, and how they market themselves is crucial intelligence that should inform your business strategy.
Use competitive analysis to identify and study your chief competition. Then determine which gaps you can fill, how to differentiate yourself, and the unique offerings that will add value for your customers. What’s more, ongoing competitive assessments will help your business adapt to changing market conditions and effectively navigate new challenges and opportunities.
Gather Population Insights
Statistical data can hold immense power in painting the bigger picture and validating assumptions. You’ll want a good understanding of how your products align with the characteristics of the market you’re evaluating. This is key to accurately understand the size and scope of opportunities for your business.
Are your target customers young? Then you’ll want to know how many 18-30 year olds reside in the area. Do you provide home services? Then you’ll find valuable intelligence in how many residents are homeowners and the age of their homes. Is your product expensive, or a luxury item? Then income level, disposable income levels, and spending styles will illuminate how many in the market have the greatest purchase propensity. Each layer of data makes your analysis richer and more accurate.
Decode Important Consumer Behaviors
To take your market analysis to deeper and more insightful level, look for consumer behavior insights to bring a new level of strategic decision-making into view. Behaviors are a key validation of what will truly resonate with a target population.
Through Experian ConsumerView, we can access a trove of insights into the lives and purchasing habits of tens of millions of Americans while still respecting consumer privacy. It contains rich details about factors such as leisure activities, hobbies, interests, travel habits, use of financial products, diet and fitness habits, and media consumption. Understanding the heads and hearts of potential customers is a critical component to unlocking a data-driven, customer-centric approach to market analysis.
Market Analysis: Turn Knowledge Into Action
Market analysis, at its core, is about uncovering insights that guide the right actions. Data insights form a bridge that connects your findings to a successful marketing strategy. At the end of the day, deeply understanding your customers is the recipe for lasting success in any market. If you need help with a richly insightful market analysis, the friendly data scientists at B2E can help!