Posted: on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012.

Feedback is one of the most powerful management support tools used to gain customer insight, test potential markets and learn about your in-house reactions from employees and peers.  Change is inevitable especially during these economic times as new markets are emerging and expanding while spending patterns are changing and consumers are tightening their purse strings. Having the best view of the markets is an area to highlight for 2012 and when considering your options moving forward.

At Product2market, we carry out market testing and online survey feedback gauging services for SME’s and Multi-national Enterprises. This enables Business start up’s and existing enterprises to build a greater Marketing and Sales’ Strategy by achieving numerous objectives. Some of these objectives include the following:

Gaining feedback from potential customers will help you identify new markets, territories and/or angles for your product or service.

Learning from existing customers will mean that you are constantly improving and making your service/product better.

Market testing will mean that you are always striving towards a goal based on real feedback and opinion thus avoiding complacency and the risk of  slipping behind the Competition.

Adding something new to the mix will keep employees learning something and give them fresh areas of focus.

To carry out ongoing market testing and gain constant visibility of the market, a number of resources can be used both in an online and offline capacity.

Resources of potential use range from the following:

Direct surveys

Use online surveys such as www.surveymonkey.com to gain feedback via your website, social media or as part of your email marketing shots. Offline, why not present feedback forms (where applicable) to customers post service-use to gain immediate understanding of their likes/dislikes?

Market testing via telemarketing

Hire an agency to make some cold calls in order to gather feedback from your potential market. The acting body will be able to present a report of data with real business intelligence which will give you an objective to focus on.

Online/Desk research

There is an endless amount of data available online and offline which will give you insight into your target market. A certain amount of desk research is always beneficial as it allows you to gain an understanding of competitor activity along with media activity coverage and past trends of interest within your Industry via articles.

Focus Groups

Several agencies use focus groups as a tool to understand interest in new or potential products/services. Those taking part in the groups will be entirely neutral and subjective and reports given will be the same.

Forums

Online forums are built for the purpose of opinion airing of broad and specific target markets. Using forums such as www.boards.ie to learn about market thoughts will add more data to your research.

Product2Market provide market testing services to a variety of Enterprises to help Company owners gain greater visibility of existing and potential target markets. New Territories, Verticals and Demographics can be gauged as potentials for new Business. For more information on our market testing services.  Contact the Product2Market team today!