3 Ways Market Researchers Can Be More Agile Right Now

In response to the pandemic and ongoing current events, organizations have adapted technologies and redefined their business strategies. In the midst of ongoing change, market research has laid the groundwork for driving experience transformations for customers and employees.

With tighter competition, quickening product cycles, and demand for continuous innovation, there’s more pressure for organizations to make data-driven decisions faster and better. The ultimate goal: understand and meet your customers where they’re at, in near real-time.

Market research is essential to helping companies have the right data to inform their decision-making. Here are a few ways organizations and market researchers can ensure they don’t fall behind.

1. Consolidate your market research technology to accelerate decision-making.

Acquiring the right tools and solutions for your business is just one part of the process. Consolidating technology in one centralized platform allows organizations to truly capture value from them as it all needs to work together. Rather than using your new tools in disparate and siloed ways, find areas to bring them together to get a more holistic view of customer engagement, experience, and behaviors.

With greater access to new technology and innovations in the market research space, organizations are needing to do things better and faster. According to Qualtrics’ 2022 Market Research Trends report, 67% of businesses say the pandemic has increased their interest in adopting new market research technology.

The emergence and digitization of tools have given brands more control over how their research is run and how the data gets used. These new technologies increased the speed at which organizations operate, with minimal lead time, allowing brands to be more responsive to business conditions and take an agile approach. After all, in new and unpredictable landscapes, spotting trends early on and understanding customer behavior is one of the foremost competitive advantages.

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2. Turn your data and insights into execution.

Organizations need to harness the power of data collected – both structured and unstructured – to better understand what their prospects want and what customers struggle with, care about, and want to see next. We know that less than 40% of marketers use consumer research to drive decisions. If you can capture the right data and analyze it properly, you can turn insight into action.

Market research teams have the skills to capture and analyze data, but many struggle with having a clear, actionable strategy in place to capture the best value from their efforts. Despite having access to all the right tools and data, 23 percent of organizations have no clear market research strategy in place. As organizations move swiftly to gather data on trends and try to make moves on market shifts, many organizations lose their focus on strategic efforts. The result? An abundance of data without meaning, and insights without a purpose.

Addressing these challenges to unleash the potential of your market research data is key. Ensure you have a concrete plan in place once you have gathered the insights. Don’t just listen and understand data – act on it.

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3. Bring your full team in. Everyone can be an expert, regardless of level or experience.

The pandemic helped accelerate the digitization of market research, helping organizations do it in a more efficient, accurate, and swift way. We know that 63% of organizations conduct market research through internal teams and external consultants. However, to get the most value from market research, it’s essential that organizations stay close to the process – and not just rely upon insights that are handed off to them.

How a research project ultimately impacts the organization is a key measure of its success. All too often, however, the results and studies are overlooked, ignored, or discarded when others in the organization fail to understand them. Not only do researchers need to understand the analysis of their data, but organizations need to have the ability to provide other teams across your business with easy-to-read tools and insights as well.

It’s crucial to implement an all-in-one centralized platform for ease of insights. This will make it easier for your organization to digest insights. This means greater efficiency for you. More heads to go analyze and understand the data. More strategic thinkers to act on your insights. A better way to reach and understand your customer.

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Make sure you present the data to your team in a way that drives action. You want to show stakeholders exactly what the data is telling them and how it’s useful to them and your customers. From the research team to design team and more, anyone can be an expert regardless of how much experience they have. The ability to have a platform that can pull consolidated insights can be measurable and actionable across all departments. As we look to the future of brand and business growth in this data-driven age, it’s clear that high-quality data and having a clear strategic plan with your team is a key catalyst for success.