Marketing Research Will Improve Your Sales

Marketing Research helps you find out the little things about your customers

Exactly how well do you know your customers? Do you know if they prefer Coke or Pepsi? If they would rather go out bowling than out to eat? How about if they like to watch TV as opposed to watching YouTube? How do they feel about college football and professional football? And what about if they would rather vacation in the US or take a trip to a foreign country? Marketing research will tell you.

You may be asking yourself: Why would this matter to me and my company, I don’t sell any of that and it doesn’t relate?

Actually, it does. A lot.

The more you know about your customers (part of a buyer persona) and what they like and don’t like, the more you can market to their likes and in some cases dislikes.

For example, a mortgage company wanted to increase the number of second mortgages they were writing. So they went into the research and found that those that took out a second mortgage also liked to go on cruises more than the average person. So what did they do? They developed a marketing campaign that if you took out a second mortgage, you were entered into a contest that the grand prize was a 7-day cruise. After running that promotion, they say a 14% increase in mortgages written.

Get to know your customers

Research like this is critical, so it can pay to know a little bit extra about what your customers like that may not relate to your business, as a way to set your company apart from your competitors, and also bring in new business.

Here are a few other insights. Did you know that:

• People that go to a salon or beauty parlor are 111% more likely to donate to charity
• Households that have someone take care of their lawn are 18% more likely to go to the doctor
• Those that go to a dentist office are 61% more likely to own more than $100,000 in stocks

These are just a few insights that you can get from research on your customers. And by knowing this you can then develop marketing activities around it to increase business.

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