When you are starting work with a new market, you need to have an excellent understanding of what is going on. I want to cover typical approaches to understanding the market and how to use them efficiently.

Ask Your Customers

That has to be the very first thing you do. Ask your customers what they want, when they want it, and how it has to be served. These questions should give you enough information to start market analysis and prepare a foundation for further market research.

It is worth collecting such feedback regularly, e.g. every quarter, and analyzing how demands are changing. No matter if you are a small entrepreneur or a big corporation, you still have to do it.

You can also prepare a separate list of questions for separate groups of your customers (segments). Depending on who they are, where they are from, and other factors they may have completely different needs, and you definitely want this information to satisfy them.

Use Dedicated Specialist

Using a dedicated specialist to understand the current market situation and make forecasts is another good option. Usually, such people play the roles of business analysts, product owners, and other business experts.

These specialists know what your customers need from their own experience. Unlike marketing specialists, who are concentrated on overall strategy, they have in-depth knowledge of customers’ business flows and hidden needs. Consequently, they provide a lot of valuable information regarding current and future needs and tendencies in the market.

Dedicated specialists could also give recommendations on the current marketing situation in your company and how to improve it in the short or long term. These recommendations are often based on market forecasts and worldwide marketing practices, so they usually help a lot, especially if the market is big enough.

Prepare Marketing Strategy

Why do you need to understand the market? To build a good and reliable marketing strategy, of course! That is what we are going to discuss in the end.

Having all the information about the market situation and preferences, you could build a strategy that will suit a current and future situation and satisfy most of your customers. However, it could also raise more questions and edge cases. So, you can return to customers and experts to clarify these questions and then continue the building process.

However, there is a high chance that you’ll have several unclear areas, unpredictable customer segments, and irregular situations. It is okay; you can not predict everything. You could either use some default or regular approach for such customers, hoping it will be good enough, or skip these areas and segments to address them when you have more information and experience.

The final advice is to repeat this analysis flow regularly, e.g., once or twice a year, and improve your marketing strategy to become a reliable and successful company!