Market research should drive many business decisions, but doing it properly is not cheap and not easy. Too often, so-called ‘market research’ is no more than a survey, and often a poorly-written one at that.
However, there is a useful role for the simple survey, and that’s to create newsworthy content.
This is surprisingly easy to do. One company I know once took a summer student to a trade exhibition and got them to ask half a dozen questions to over 100 visitors. The survey was cleverly designed to produce results that would be irresistible to the main trade journal in the company’s market, but its real effect (and the intention) was to present the company as one which understood the sector better than most.
A good writeup on the company’s website could also attract a few links too!