Marketing Research Career
Market research is about gathering info regarding people, companies and market systematically to analyze and understand what your audience needs. The results acquired from the research are summarized, and a report presented to the management of the business for them to make decisions regarding the operational strategies regarding their targeted customers. An organization that has adopted effective marketing research tends to understand the prevailing customer preference trends that constantly keep on changing, the industry shifting, and legislative trends; thus, getting the idea of where to focus on or shift the business too. Most people consider marketing research career to have low awareness among the graduates as well as in the general marketing world. Marketing career has various vital insights, including sales, public relations, promotions, marketing, and advertising.
Marketing research is essential in influencing sales of an organization. The market research is typically a complete overview of a particular market, how the market is going to progress, what’s the sales potentiality, in-depth research on all the venture companies or the competitors within the market. In contrast, the sales research is all about research on the major player of the market and the sales if affected due to various purchasing groups (Eddy & Hart, 2012). However, sales research is the process whereby the department or salesperson has to conduct a research and gather the relevant information regarding the prevailing competition, services, clients or prospects that an enable the company to utilize the data in developing an effective sales outreach. I will say the sales research are specific to a particular individual and/or company. You can either do this manually or automate it with a personal assistant.
Moreover, marketing research is significant in the process of public relation. Public relations, at its core, are applied communications. Communications is the basis for all business (Wilson, Kemp & Edwards, 2011). A sale, which drives the business enterprise, is the result of a relationship (whether with a salesperson, a spokesperson or a brand), which can only be built through conversations. Public Relations is about making those conversations happen. This, in my mind at least, makes it an essential element in any business strategy. This, however, necessitates marketing research market that can be ideal for creating effective public relations. Additionally, it is through marketing research that an organization identifies influencer marketing. There are more and more one-man-media that are growing their audience in narrow niches. Nowadays, people have ever-rising interest in particular individuals who are sharing their opinions and promoting a particular lifestyle.
Additionally, marketing research is essential in the promotional aspect of a business. Promotion is considered to be the company’s voice which can be sent to the loyal customers of the company to persuade them into purchasing a certain product (Fischman, 2012). Thus, it is relevant for the company to conduct effective marketing research to ensure the message is sent clear to the targeted audience. In the promotional aspect, various channels have to be used, including social media, magazines, billboards, shopping outlets, radio, and televisions. However, it is through conducting marketing research that the organization can identify the ideal channels that can be used to meet a large number of audience. For instance, it is through marketing research that organizations have realized that Social Media Marketing (SMM) has been the best tool for business promotion in recent times. The main reason behind this is SMM’s durability that has helped in creating a positive image and perception of the brand name of the company right before the eyes of target audiences. Irrespective of the number of tools you implement, one fundamental thing that needs to be done at first is a preliminary study of the targeted social audience. This would help in a big way to plan your strategies efficiently, that would promote businesses in the desired direction.
Also, marketing research plays a critical role in the process of marketing for a company. Marketing research should be considered in the process of marketing (Supiano, 2014). Most of the organizations that enjoy longevity due to owners of the businesses conducting regular research as a way of understanding pinpoint the realistic competitors, identifying consumer problems, and target market. This is the ideal way for the entrepreneurs to sustain themselves within the marketing trends as well as maintain a competitive advantage through seizing business opportunities. The research is key to making better business decisions. Successful people often act instinctively by talking to the consumer as well as maintain ears on what the consumers way regarding the business. This can be achieved by engaging them in conversations on various channels and monitoring their comments on social media. One of the ways of acquiring information regarding the business is through channels including magazines and newspapers, listening to the radio, and watching TVs.
Furthermore, marketing research plays a critical role in advertising. Marketing is a social value of services and products for the customers created to sell this service or product (Kaplan & Grossman, 2010). Marketing methods include the choice of target markets based on market analysis as well as market segmentation and understanding consumer advertising and behaviour value of the product to a customer. For the most part, marketing is used to create a brand, as we defined it above. This is much more comprehensive than advertising. Advertising, as a rule, is an element of an integrated marketing plan. Marketing covers all planning and research activities to determine what types of advertising will work, when and where advertising will be posted, and how demographically it is targeted. Marketing also covers such details as packaging, delivery, quality of customer service, product presentation, customer perception, and market research. Marketing can be seen as a general process that focuses on the organization, implementation, and management of specific branding elements of the campaign. Advertising, on the other hand, is a particular marketing tactic. It usually entails certain media, such as newspapers, television, radio, the Internet, billboards and other types of advertising targeted at specific markets. The reason that two words, marketing and advertising, are confused is because many small businesses do not engage in marketing, they participate in advertising with minimal marketing or without it. Advertising is considered to be a marketing process component (Ibarra & Hansen, 2011). It is the part entailing the process of getting the information out to the target audience concerning the business, the type of services and products it offers. Marketing and advertising are vital elements that can drive the organization towards success. The marketing researcher is tasked by the company to conduct a feasibility study of the company and the target audience. Then the management has to abide by the conclusions of the research if they want to witness the success within the competitive market segment.
The potential career that I believe best fits me is a marketing research analyst. A Market Research Analyst’s job is to come up with the right answer by using limited information (Christensen et al. 2016). More than simply guessing, market research analysis makes inferences about the behaviour, beliefs or attitudes of a large number of people by observing or polling a small subset of this universe. Any conclusion indeed reached this way will never 100% accurate, but at least statistically we know exactly how wrong we might be, meaning we know the amount of confidence we have on our answers (and this is much better than an educated guess). Additionally, a market research analyst penetrates a particular market to extract all the possible data which can be derived as a piece of information and then can be used as knowledge to make the proper business decisions in the targeted market. A research analyst has uncovered all the market insights, which includes the market trends, market segmentation based on sales or application, the regions which are engaged for the particular market.
In conclusion, Market research carrier is the best way to start a business herself. An entrepreneur startup can start by market career to place a business at any stage.
Marketing research carrier path also the best in industry Market research has low awareness not only among graduates but also in the general non-marketing world. I plan on pursuing a market research analysts career path since market Analysts create methods and conduct phone or email surveys, organize focus groups, follow business trends and news and do everything that they need to do to gather the data that they need.
References
Eddy, P. L., & Hart, J. (2012). Faculty in the hinterlands: Cultural anticipation and cultural reality. Higher Education, 63(6), 751-769.
Wilson, J. H., Kemp, D., & Edwards, S. (2011). Manage Your Career.
Fischman, J. (2012). Fake peer reviews, the latest form of scientific fraud, fool journals. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Available at: http://chronicle. com/article/Fake-Peer-Reviews-the-Latest/134784.
Supiano, B. (2014). How liberal-arts majors fare over the long haul. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Kaplan, R. S., & Grossman, A. S. (2010). The emerging capital market for nonprofits. Harvard business review, 88(10), 110-118.
Ibarra, H., & Hansen, M. T. (2011). Are you a collaborative leader. Harvard business review, 89(7/8), 68-74.
Christensen, C. M., Hall, T., Dillon, K., & Duncan, D. S. (2016). Know your customers’ jobs to be done. Harvard Business Review, 94(9), 54-62.