Market research is foundational for understanding customer needs, identifying market opportunities, and fostering growth. Developing research skills is crucial for students to be well-prepared for future marketing careers. Here are six essential strategies for market research, including necessary skills, expert insights, and practical classroom exercises.
1. Use Multiple Data Sources
Skills Needed: Analytical thinking, data synthesis, and strategic vision
Using multiple data sources allows researchers to triangulate information, ensuring accurate and reliable insights. This approach is critical in validating assumptions, reducing risk, and ensuring market strategies align with consumer behavior.
Shannon Listopad, owner of November Consulting, emphasized that gathering data from multiple sources is essential to form a comprehensive view of the market. This means collecting information through surveys, focus groups, industry reports, social media, and more. “Get a comprehensive view of how your offering fits in the market dynamics, and always keep in mind the overarching goals of your business,” Shannon advised. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with data, so researchers must focus on synthesizing it to align with business goals.
Activity Idea: Divide students into teams and assign each a different data source to analyze (e.g., consumer surveys, competitor analysis, market reports). Each team will create a summary report that identifies market trends and gaps. Once they’ve finished, have students present their findings to the class to build a complete market analysis.
2. Create Detailed Customer Personas
Skills Needed: Empathy, demographic analysis, and communication
Customer personas help marketers understand their audience’s unique needs, crafting relatable strategies that resonate. Your campaigns might miss the mark without a clear picture of whom you’re marketing to. Research from Single Grain confirms that creating personas can make websites 2-5 times more effective for targeted users.
Ryan Esco, the CMO of FireRock Marketing, recommended creating detailed customer personas to understand specific demographics and their pain points. Go the extra mile by detailing psychological and behavioral characteristics, such as motivations, behaviors, and preferences, to ensure marketing strategies are relevant and meaningful.
“By crafting detailed profiles that go beyond basic demographics to include behaviors, preferences, and pain points, we’ve been able to tailor marketing strategies that resonate deeply, driving engagement and conversion,” Ryan said. “A specific instance of this was our work with a local retail client looking to expand online; by understanding their core customers’ online shopping behaviors and preferences, we developed a digital marketing strategy that significantly increased their online sales within just a few months.”
Activity Idea: Assign students to build customer personas based on a hypothetical product or service. Have them research relevant demographic data, conduct surveys or interviews, and create personas that incorporate realistic profiles. Each student or group should present their personas and explain how marketing strategies could be tailored for each segment.
3. Analyze Customer Behavior Online
Skills Needed: Digital literacy, pattern recognition, and competitive analysis
As digital marketing becomes increasingly data driven, understanding consumer behavior online helps refine campaigns, improve SEO strategies, and strengthen brand positioning. Behavioral analysis often improves customer retention rates and engagement, as shown in a study from Harvard Business Review.
Magee Clegg, the CEO of Cleartail Marketing, encouraged new professionals starting out in market research to leverage online behavior analysis. Understanding consumer journeys involves analyzing keywords, SEO performance, and reviews to shape the marketing strategy effectively. He also advised watching the competitive landscape closely to identify untapped opportunities and differentiate the brand.
“We increased a client’s revenue by 278% in just 12 months by deeply analyzing their target market’s online behavior and tailoring the marketing strategy to match these insights,” Magee said. “This involved not only keyword research and SEO optimization but also creating targeted content and ad campaigns that addressed the specific needs and pain points of their potential customers.”
“For marketing professionals looking to improve their skills, I’d stress the importance of integrating customer feedback into your market research process,” he continued. “It provides invaluable insight into what your audience truly values and how you can better serve their needs.”
Activity Idea: Provide students access to a digital analytics tool or publicly available data from social media platforms and instruct them to analyze consumer behavior online. They should identify trends, keywords, and insights that could shape a marketing campaign.
4. Develop Empathy for Customers
Skills Needed: Active listening, critical thinking, and interpersonal communication
Empathy is one of the most critical skills for marketing professionals in this current digital age. Empathy allows for a deeper understanding of customer needs and pain points. It drives innovation and leads to more authentic and effective marketing strategies.
Matthew Montez, the founder of The MBC Group, believes in developing empathy through direct customer engagement via interviews and social media listening. He recommended “putting yourself in the shoes of the people you’re aiming to serve” to understand rational and emotional drivers.
“Embrace the iterative nature of market research,” Matthew added. “Your understanding of your customers should evolve as you test assumptions, gather more data, and refine your product or service. This ongoing process is not only critical for the initial launch but also for sustaining growth and adapting to changing market conditions.”
Activity Idea: Have students conduct one-on-one interviews with consumers or hold focus groups about a hypothetical product. Then, have them write a brief report reflecting on the insights gained from these interactions and how their findings might shape a marketing strategy.
5. Conduct In-Depth Customer Interviews
Skills Needed: Interviewing techniques, qualitative analysis, and open-mindedness
In-depth interviews uncover customer motivations and challenges that aren’t immediately apparent through surveys or focus groups. This qualitative insight can help refine products, services, and marketing messages.
“In my experience, one of the most important steps in conducting effective market research is talking directly to your potential customers,” shared Jason Hunt, the CMO and cofounder of Merged Media. “There’s no substitute for in-depth customer interviews. When my company was developing a new software product, we spent months interviewing current and prospective clients to understand their pain points, workflows, and needs. Those conversations shaped the product in ways we never could have anticipated.”
Jason’s advice to young professionals is to meet with real people, ask open-ended questions, and listen to the answers with an open mind. “You need to understand both the rational and emotional drivers behind customer behavior,” he said. “Immerse yourself in the customer experience as much as possible. That’s the only way to gain the kind of insight that leads to truly innovative products and services.”
Activity Idea: Have students draft a set of open-ended questions and conduct mock interviews with their classmates. Encourage active listening and have students analyze responses to identify recurring themes. They can then discuss how their findings could influence product design or marketing.
6. Highlight the Unique Value Proposition
Skills Needed: Competitive analysis, value differentiation, and persuasive communication
Differentiating your product is critical in a crowded marketplace. A clear UVP helps consumers quickly understand the benefits and drives purchase decisions.
According to HubSpot, a well-crafted UVP improves customer engagement and conversion rates: “Your value proposition is a unique identifier for your business. Without it, buyers won’t have a reason to purchase what you sell. They may even choose a competitor simply because that business communicates its value proposition clearly in its marketing campaigns and sales process.”
Activity Idea: Provide students with case studies of successful product launches or a hypothetical scenario to identify a product’s unique attributes. They should draft a UVP statement that aligns these attributes with customer needs and present how they would incorporate it into a marketing strategy.
More Market Research Classroom Materials: The Market Research Bundle
If you like these activity ideas, consider checking out the Market Research Bundle. With the bundle, your students learn the process of conducting market research from start to finish. The “Market Research Essentials” courseware contains time-saving resources for educators and covers how to define research objectives, develop surveys, use sampling techniques, perform data analysis, and present results, among other relevant research topics.
Students can also put classroom concepts to work with the Stukent® Market Research Simternship™. This simulation puts students in the role of a research analyst at Buhi Supply Co., a simulated e-commerce company. Over 12 unique rounds, students will analyze focus groups, identify key findings, create surveys, and visualize data.
To learn about Stukent’s first-in-the-world Simternships and courseware and to get FREE instructor access to Stukent materials, visit our website.
