In marketing, when budget is developed, frequently market research is the first row to be reduced……or simply never appears.

I can understand why……but I don´t agree for two reasons.

First, some outputs from research are necessary to improve investments. TV Advertisings can go from very bad to good with easy editions, better to take a little of media budget to get the right TV Ad.

Second, market research not always means we pay money to an agency for do it and wait them to give us the answer. In fact, even having an agency, if we don´t see the face of some consumer/customers when filling the survey, answering the interview or talking in the session, we will never understand well the research.

Desk research of other categories, other markets, talk with sales guys…..go out with them, talk with customers, talk with consumers……visit retailers and talk with them, performance reports…all of them are internal sources of information.

The only rule to make this actions a real research activity is: We need to know what we ask to who and what we want to know.

Asking retailers if consumers prefer yellow or red versions is a no-sense. However, to ask retailers how frequently consumer buy, detect if they are recurrent consumers, ask for main complaints or the main arguments to reject is very smart.

In B2B, if we visit a purchase manager, not the guy to ask if our product is the best. He will know with detail the authorization process, from where request is set to the final PO…he will have all of the purchasing journey for us….our guide to invest!!!

You can find this and more tips about marketing, innovation & entrepreneurial in practicalestrategy.com