There is a lot of confusion about what types of market knowledge a business should be collecting. Depending on a firm's size, market knowledge collected varies in terms of range, amount, frequency, etc.
It is true that collecting accurate insight about the market within which you're operating is a full-time job by itself. However, when you're managing a small business you need to be able to focus on specific things that will make a difference to your firm's growth.
Ability to grow your business means that you direct all your resources and capabilities towards a single objective: achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. These three words are actually quite loaded.
A sustainable competitive advantage means that you need to maintain a market position that is profitable, and sustainable over time, by using your resources and capabilities to offer value to your customers (i.e. meet their needs and wants), better than your competitors.
So, by default, you're not operating in isolation. You need to be able to understand shifts in your customers' wants and needs, you need to be able to monitor what your competitors are doing, and so many other things.
A key issue we've observed in our experience of working with SMEs is that their efforts to collect and analyse market knowledge begins and ends when they are starting their business. Most businesses conduct some form of market analysis as part of their initial business plan, and then rarely revisit this.
Market knowledge is not something you only collect when you're starting a business. It needs to be actively incorporated to your mindset as a business owner. You need to think of market knowledge as the tool that gives you the answer to the following questions:
Where is the market going?
How can we give value to our customers through our products, our ways of delivering them, our ways of serving them?
How can we provide solutions to our customers' needs and wants in ways better than our competition so that they don't feel inclined to leave?
If you are managing a small business or even a medium-sized one, the process of collecting market knowledge can be quite overwhelming. So, we have identified for you the key areas you should be focusing and what types of market knowledge you should be collecting. We've also conducted some background research and provided you with the three major benefits that existing research has shown businesses enjoy when collecting market knowledge. All these are in a very short and handy infographic, so as to ensure that you don't get overwhelmed by this, especially if you're just starting.
Before we end this post, we would like to provide some quick tips about ways and frequency of collecting market knowledge (which is a whole other issue, and we promise to return to it):
Collecting insight on all different types is something you should be doing at least once a month. Actually schedule that in your calendar.
You can follow your competitors on social media so that you can quickly get up-to-date information on their activities daily. You can also use SEMrush to get insight about the keywords that your competitors are trending for and other metrics (it's free for up to 10 enquiries per day!).
Keep on top of shifting customer trends using tools such as GoogleTrends. You can reach out to your existing customers with ideas about new products/services you're thinking of introducing, use polls on social media to test an idea, or less frequently, conduct a brief survey.
Ask for help. Collecting market knowledge is a process that requires being comprehensive, analytical, and critical towards the information you are researching and finding, both in terms of the sources you're using and the material you're perusing - check here how we approach market knowledge collection as part of our Research services. This is not an easy process, especially for someone that is inexperienced, or doesn't have the knowledge or time to identify the right sources and processes of collecting valuable and credible market information. This is crucial, because market knowledge will inform your decision-making and thus your investment of time, effort, money on specific ideas - lack of accuracy can therefore lead to mistakes that your small business can't afford.
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Let us know how we can help, either by reaching out to us on social media (Twitter and LinkedIn), via email (info@draseum.org), or via our contact form.
Take care!
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