The competition is becoming stronger in every sector, and the solution that is always proposed to us is the same: differentiate ourselves from the competition! Before reading this article, if you want to delve deeper into the topic of how to position your company in the best way, we recommend that you read our article “Where your competitors cannot reach you” by clicking the link below.
But how can we do it if we don’t have a clear understanding of what our competition is doing? That’s where preliminary market analysis comes to our aid.
Indeed, market analysis is essential to understand exactly the market we operate in and, even more importantly, to discover where and how to invest more profitably. A comprehensive market analysis is very complex and takes into account many numbers, data, and statistics… But we can get a quick overview of our market and customers thanks to the advice you’ll find below, and thus obtain practical and applicable advice right away.
What is a market analysis?
The academic definition states that
a market analysis is the study of the economic context in which the company operates and the socio-economic and cultural fabric in which its potential customers are located; a good market analysis must also take into account the historical period and the needs related to it of the customers in relation to the possibilities of the company under study and its competitors, whether direct or indirect.
That’s interesting, but is there a way to understand one’s market without analyzing huge amounts of data and statistics? Obviously, for some data, no. However, to understand the intentions of our potential customers, their needs, or the challenges they face daily, we have a couple of tools that can come to our aid and help us gather fundamental information for our marketing strategy.
Where do we start?
The hardest part is always starting, overcoming writer’s block and beginning to gather the first information, but understanding where to start is very easy. Where can we find the answer to any of our questions on the internet? Obviously, Google.
And Google is not the starting point just because it is the first thing that comes to our mind, but because it is the search engine where all people look for what they need or what they are curious about or what they want to discover… Whatever it is, Google knows, as they say.
Too often, we believe we have the answers to the simplest questions that characterize our market, but they are almost always vague and imprecise, requiring a much more in-depth search. We must not take anything for granted and be careful to gather all the information necessary for our strategy.
And being attentive to what Google allows us to discover is precisely the first step in uncovering hidden worlds within the needs or habits of our potential customers, worlds in which we can connect with them. Take a moment to digest this concept, because we will often be addressing it in this guide.
First results
When we search on Google, obviously the first results that catch our eye are the most important ones because they attract the majority of user traffic.
In most searches, we will find paid ads at the top, which we can recognize thanks to the word “Ad” that appears above the title of the result. These are links for which advertising campaigns have been activated: we will need to take these results into account to understand who are the competitors in our industry.
Below the ads, we find organic results, which are links that are at the top of the search engines. To end up in that position, Google checks many factors including user interest and source credibility, so it is not easy to reach the top of organic search results. Read the content of the sites that are in the top organic positions carefully, because they contain all the information that your target audience is looking for.
Related searches
After looking at the top of the Google results page, now let’s see what we find at the bottom of the page. Right there, we find the second step of our research: related searches.
Understanding the market means understanding what your customers’ needs are, and what better way to understand them than to let them tell you? Related searches are precisely the keywords that users have searched for.
And here we also discover the second tool that will be useful for this analysis: Google Trends. This tool is a classic for analyzing trends and trends of the keywords that interest you.
Furthermore, Google Trends also provides analysis of temporal and geographical data, namely a map that helps us understand where and when the greatest interest is generated. This way, when you plan your marketing strategy, you can already have an idea of which areas to start from and which are the best times of the year to do so.
Answer the public
Another tool that certainly cannot be missing in our research is Answer the public, which allows us to understand users’ questions about topics of our interest in order to better construct our communication strategies
To better understand how this essential tool works, we have written an article specifically for it, which you can read by clicking on the link below
Social media
Obviously, we cannot overlook the digital “square” par excellence: social media. Each platform has its own target audience, so all we have to do is understand who our target is to access a sea of content created directly by our potential customers.
The use of social media has now become a daily habit, and we use them for every aspect of our life, from searching for information to entertainment. That is why a huge amount of data is hidden there that will help us connect with the mindset of our target customer to better understand their needs
Thanks to these latest data, you will be able to have a very detailed overview of your market and thus plan the best marketing strategy for your company!
