The Importance of Marketing Research and Goal Setting
Mar 27 2025
Management
Make a draft and write down the following questions and any other questions that may strike you.
z What goal do you want to achieve?
z What is your schedule like?
z What path do you get on to reach the goal?
z What are the obstacles in your way?
The Market Report
To write a marketing plan, you need a market report. You need to research to be able to prepare this report.
¾ One of the best research tools is search engines. Nowadays, researching is easy to do and you can achieve all the information you need with a Google search. Even Google itself has smartly used the others' search, and instead of re-entering the phrase you want, it offers you suggested phrases that are derived from other people's search. You are not the first person searching for that topic; thus you can smartly use the experience of others as well as that of Google in your search. Never say, "I have experience and do not need research". Use the experience of others, too.
¾ One of the research tools is to consume products and services similar to your business products and services so that you can identify its strengths and weaknesses as a customer and apply the result in your research.
¾ Analyze research results to write a market report. On the whole, analysis is required throughout the marketing process; from goal setting to market research and then program implementation, you need to analyze how successfully the program was implemented and what goals were achieved. Even when you study the market to find its requirements and the mainly consumed products, you are again analyzing.
a) The Target Market Analysis
The aim of the target market is to know who you sell your products to. What age ranges and which income classes and what genders? Male, female, or children? In case of children, are parents going to buy things? For example, if you intend to sell baby clothes, the target market encompasses the babies' mothers. You can neither design a smart marketing plan nor have good sales unless you know the target market's details.
Customer needs are the driving force of your business
¾ Research what the needs are regarding your product. Your product must meet at least one need of the target market. If you want to integrate the smart marketing effectively, identify the customer needs intelligently and define your product based on a need that can be met. Ensure that your products solve a particular problem for your customers
The more based on the needs the marketing plan is developed, the more successful it will be.
¾ Identify the culture of the market you want to sell your product in. Why do large multinational corporations like Apple and Microsoft have offices in the Middle East and Europe and Africa? To get acquainted with the culture of the people in those regions. Representatives of Google in Germany are all German and they are all Norwegian in Norway. The reason is that the market culture must be identified to give Google new ideas.
Conduct research about the target market culture. For example, what are the gender-based roles of men and women? Women do not have any roles in society in Saudi Arabia; therefore, you need to find what to do when you intend to sell goods to Saudi women. It is not a good idea to ignore that market because women do not have a role in, rather you must find the formula with which you can enter the market.
¾ Identify the behavior of the target market. For instance, who makes the purchasing decisions? If your product is baby clothes, your target market involves mothers, though for children. Or in some areas where patriarchal culture is more prevalent, you need to affect the men's purchasing decisions to be able to sell your products
¾ Geography is an important factor in influencing the target market. Thus, define it carefully for yourself. For example, if you are going to sell a product in Canada, identify your target market, is it Toronto or Quebec or Vancouver? With regard to the large size in various areas, the condition of each city may be different. While considering your product marketing, ensure you include factors such as language, age, neighborhood, etc
One of the largest telecommunications companies in Canada is Rogers. In one of its advertisements in a neighborhood where Portuguese mostly reside, the company writes: little Portugal. That is, it even plans for one of Toronto's neighborhoods. This is how you can succeed. When you have the target market information separately, the expectations from the program will be more realistic
b) The Competitive Analysis
¾ One of the most important things in market reports is the identification of the competitors and their activities. What are the products, marketing methods, pricing and advertising strategies of competitors? Analyze competitors' performance and identify their creative work. ¾ Sometimes you have to follow the competitors in every respect. When you are a small company, there is nothing wrong with cloning a big company such as Apple because big companies have done a lot to improve their methods, but copying is worthless without creativity and improvement.
Ideas and money hugely back the activity of a large company. Therefore, just consider if you are capable enough to copy the idea? You may not achieve anything at all by copying. Try to improve and develop that idea and adapt it to your business. Even if a competitor's program is not fully implemented and the results are not clear, you can use it as a model. It is still possible because you are not going to copy the program identically, but you will adapt it to the requirements of your company.
Remember that a company's marketing plan is part of that company's business plan; therefore, when modeling, consider whether the ideas are in line with your company's goals.
The forerunners of implementing an idea are not always the winners, sometimes those who improve the idea will be winners.
¾ When facing your competitors, instead of wasting your time to thwart their plan, seek to attract more customers. In this case, some customers of your competitors will also be attracted inevitably. There was a time when the competition between Apple and Samsung was so extreme that neither of their software was compatible with the each other’s; now, however, they make software that can copy all the programs of one to another. ¾ Should we identify only successful competitors, or all the competitors, even failed ones, must be analyzed? All competitors must be identified. Analyze the performance of successful companies and the behavior of failed companies and find out the reason for their failure.
Interestingly, a successful rival is successful, and you will not necessarily succeed if you act like that competitor. This is because their method may not be right for you, but when you analyze a failed competitor, you can learn why they failed and at least avoid implementing the strategy that led to their failure, and besides you can get ideas. In fact, the experience of their failure will help you to keep finetune your ideas and develop new business plan. Keep in mind that plenty of failures were once successful. For instance, at one time, the Atari game had its own market and was very successful, but other games were quickly replaced, and the previous ones disappeared. Therefore, both successful and unsuccessful competitors must be analyzed, but separately, and you can use that competitive analysis to plan your marketing program. ¾ Do not pay attention simply to what the rivals do in appearance because it may be different from what they do in practice or think about. What you witness might be an introduction to achieve another goal
Consider your opponent as a chess player who has several plans for each move and plans for the next few moves in advance.
Identify your rivals' plans and try to find out their thoughts and ideas. First, see what they do, and second, what their purpose is in doing those things.
In competitive analysis, do not just analyze the results, but seek to find the reason for their actions so that you can learn the attitude and ideology of successful samples
Targeting
The most important question you need to answer when developing a marketing plan is your marketing goal. When you specify a goal at the beginning of the process, program changes will be minimized. z Set goals based on your abilities and capabilities. z Determine realistic and achievable goals; avoid things such as, for instance, I will become an Apple company at the end of this program! A goal is realistic if it is set based on the available facilities and conditions
. When you deceive yourself and cut ties with reality, you close all the doors on yourself from the beginning.
Set your goals based on realities, rather than aspirations. However, a plan must also be defined for
wishes and then, you make the wish come true by
achieving different goals.
z Set flexible goals for yourself. When you do not achieve the intended goal, avoid negative energies because this is like a kind of failure. z Determine a deadline to achieve your goal. There is a chain store called Casco that offers the wholesale only and you have to become a member to buy from the company. Once I went there, I saw a whiteboard in front of the cashier with the goals of the day written on it; for example, to sell gold membership to 100 people, to sell regular membership to 500 people, to sell business membership to 1000 people. As customers passed in front of the cashier, she reduced the figures. They might not have reached the predetermined goal, but goal setting is important, and they set goals for each day. This information will be analyzed in the following days. The reasons they did not reach the aim will be identified; something like there was a special event that day or it was a certain day of the year. In smart marketing, we look forward but analyze the past. Step by step, we define small goals and evaluate ourselves along the way. Even when we achieve our goals, we must consider how we achieved that goal. I am a dreamer, and I have achieved all my dreams in life. Even the name of my first company is "Royasazan", but the fact is that my dreams were as big as my stature was. I grew up in a typical white-collar family. I have written over 85 volumes of books so far, but I took this dream step by step and designed plans to achieve my goals and for each step I had a plan.
z To determine your goal, identify the type of customers and the market. Paying attention to who the customer is and what your services are like would raise plenty of questions. The consumer behavior when going to a restaurant is different from when s/he decides to buy a car. The former costs several hundred dollars and the latter do millions of dollars. You must consider the product being sold and the type of customers you are selling your products to. So the marketing method of these two products is different. z Is your goal of marketing sales or branding? Do you want to promote your brand or reach a certain level of sales at the end of the program? Answering these questions will help you better identify the target.
A smart goal is both profitable and novel.
The choice between the goals of sales or branding depends on the subject of your business and the following:
9 What products are you going to sell?
9 What is your risk tolerance?
9 What size is your company?
9 How much is the marketing budget?
9 What methods do you choose for advertising?
Focusing on branding requires high initial capital.
You cannot start branding at the beginning of your business. Although you may not have enough financial resources in the beginning, you can focus on short-term sales for a while. For example, you can devote the first six months only to branding, and from the second six months, focus on sales. Every company sets a set of marketing goals for itself. The goal of a car company is different from that of a computer company or a restaurant. All car companies may have a common goal; that is, to promote their brand and increase their sales; each one, however, requires a different plan to be achieved.
Goals may seem similar, but what sets them apart is the way to achieve them. In fact, the roadmap is important. The differences in this roadmap are derived from the market research.
For more information on how targeting is developed, you can read "Smart Goals", my other book in this regard.
