What marketing initiatives does your organization use to stay ahead of the competition? Do you always have the foundational information needed to administer an effective campaign?
When creating campaigns to stand out, many marketing teams struggle with understanding their business’s position in the market or solidifying their strategy for the future. And rightfully so—it can be quite difficult to prove your tech’s value over your competitors’ when you don’t have the intel to back up your claims.
To unlock the full potential of your B2B tech organization’s products and service offerings, and swiftly navigate the competitive nature of the tech industry, kick your marketing projects off with a strategic market research exercise. The precision, objectivity, and insights offered make it an ideal choice for businesses looking to scale—and an agency specialized in B2B tech market research can be uniquely positioned to help you get there.
Understandably, it’s not always easy to indicate whether or not your project requires market research on the front end (or to prove the need for it to your stakeholders). With that in mind, we created a list of 10 common business situations to help you identify when tech market research can be an invaluable asset to your campaign. Check them out:
1. A Changing Industry Landscape
If there’s a noticeable shift in the market—emerging technologies, evolving customer needs, or new competitors on the scene—it’s crucial to understand it and adapt your marketing accordingly.
Stay attuned to a fast-changing environment with these strategies:
- Keep a pulse on emerging technologies that have the potential to reshape the market and find out how they’re innovating
- Understand the evolving needs and expectations of your valued customer base so you can update your technology solutions to keep up with them
- Identify new competitors entering the scene or on the horizon and devise a plan to ensure that your technology is positioned to beat it
A partner specialized in B2B tech market research will recognize these shifts and collaborate with you to come up with agile strategies to help you capitalize on potential opportunities and proactively address impending threats.
2. Declining Performance of Your Tech
A warning sign that your business strategies need reevaluation is a drop in your sales and/or marketing performance metrics. Tech market research can serve as a helpful diagnostic tool to find out why your performance has dropped and how you can course correct. A great way to approach a market research exercise to evaluate your performance is by investigating customer actions, rival company strategies, and changing market trends. With the help of comprehensive analysis, your team will find new ways to improve your brand’s messaging, increase customer engagement, and move the needle up in your performance metrics.
For example, tech market research may reveal that a new competitor has entered the market, offering a similar product at a lower price point or with a fresh, new capability. Additionally, feedback from your organization’s real customers may reveal dissatisfaction with your current website’s UX. Armed with these valuable insights, you can refine your pricing strategy to remain competitive, modernize your product or service, invest in website optimization to enhance your user experience, or develop targeted marketing campaigns to bring your customers back into the fold.
3. Launching a New Product or Service
Launching a new product or service is like blindly navigating uncharted waters without a GPS to plot your course. Imagine that you’re an enterprise software company gearing up to introduce a fully enhanced project management SaaS solution for enterprise-scale companies. Without the foundation of tech market research, you might proceed to launch your software across a wide net, assuming a general vs. targeted need for your solution.
However, by conducting in-depth interviews with potential customers, competitor analysis, and evaluating industry trends, you’d discover that companies in your target market are facing specific challenges related to their distinct personas, such as internal collaboration, scalability, and integration with existing enterprise systems.
Here are a few ways a B2B market research agency helps you approach a product launch more intelligently and objectively:
- Find your way through unfamiliar market territory
- Gain valuable insights into current and future market demand
- Understand your complex competitive landscape
- Plan for unexpected environmental obstacles
- Reduce potential negative outcomes
- Fine-tune your messages to better connect with your target demographic
- Smooth out rough edges in your launch plan
These insights help you craft custom messaging to address the unique pain points identified by the companies that match your ideal customer profile (ICP). This research can also uncover market gaps in your competitors’ offerings, enabling you to position your product as a comprehensive solution with advanced collaboration features, seamless scalability, and integration capabilities that better meet market demand.
4. Entering a New Market
An entirely new set of challenges arises when you expand into markets outside your comfort zone. Tech market research can be used to help you better understand the intricacies of specific target demographics—including preferences, habits, and pain points.
Take, for example, a scenario in which you are a marketing leader at an established U.S. software services company that plans to expand your offering into EU markets. Without the help of a B2B market research agency, you might assume that this new market shares all the same preferences and needs as your domestic U.S. customers or rely strictly on historical data and experiences. However, comprehensive market research would help you uncover the distinct regulatory requirements of this unique market, its varying cultural preferences, and its strong demand for multilingual support.
B2B market research provides insights into a new market’s intricacies and guides you in making informed adjustments that will impact how you go to market. By aligning your offerings with the specific demands of your completely new audience, you can mitigate potential challenges and increase your chances of successfully expanding your global footprint.
5. Competitive Pressure
Dealing with increased competition requires constant vigilance. Let’s say you’re a component manufacturer that specializes in providing industrial chips across a variety of sectors. With a surge in new competition entering the market, you decide to enlist the help of a B2B market research agency to help you maintain your competitive edge. Through a comprehensive analysis, the agency’s research reveals that one of your new competitors is emphasizing sustainability features in its wafers, attracting environmentally-focused businesses.
You confirm that there is a greater demand for sustainable silicon solutions than you previously realized. Armed with this insight, you strategically reposition your existing line by emphasizing energy-efficient features you already incorporate but don’t promote. Simultaneously, the research identifies weaknesses in the customer service of another key competitor, allowing you to emphasize your excellent customer support as an additional differentiator.
As outlined in this scenario, tech market research can be a valuable tool to help your organization stay ahead. Remember that the simplest way to identify opportunities to differentiate your offerings is by analyzing your competitors’ strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. By applying market research as a preventative measure, you can give your marketing campaigns the secret sauce they need to fill your sales funnel and surpass the competition.
6. Customer Feedback Indicates Gaps
Asking for feedback from your customers can be a great way to find out what is missing in your marketing. Tech market research that includes customer input provides a more holistic and real-world view of how well you stack up against market requirements and puts you on a better track to meet the changing expectations of your target audience and alleviate their pain points.
Assume for a moment that your company is getting more customer complaints about late product deliveries. Through market research, you learn about emerging technologies in supply chain optimization and strategic alliances that could help address this growing challenge. When you combine customer feedback with market insights, targeted strategies—like building partnerships to optimize logistics or adopting advanced tracking systems—can be identified to streamline your supply chain processes. This does double duty by satisfying your customers’ worries while simultaneously enhancing your competitiveness and strengthening your market ecosystem.
7. Strategic Planning
It is essential to conduct thorough market research to make well-informed decisions during the strategic planning process. This can help you determine the direction of your business and your role in the industry. Integrating market research into strategic planning ensures that your planning objectives, including sales and marketing, align with your broader business goals.
Tech market research helps you discover promising new markets that offer rising product demand and favorable economic circumstances. During the strategic planning process, research findings can significantly influence critical decisions including market entry strategies, price determination methods, and product modifications to align with regional demands.
8. Technology Advancements
Using market research to stay ahead of upcoming tech advancements can be a great way to maintain your organization’s competitive edge. Keep up with new technology and changes in customer preferences by conducting market research consistently. By staying ahead of industry news and developments, you can ensure your brand remains innovative and your products and services are always up-to-date.
For instance, if you’re a fintech software company and studies show a trend toward using AI in your industry, incorporating this insight during product development and planning can help ensure that your newest software release is on par. Tech market research can help you satisfy the evolving needs of your customers in an era where there’s always something shiny and new for organizations to grab onto.
9. Global Economic Changes
Tech market research is useful if you wish to understand how the global economy influences the buying habits and preferences of your target consumers. By keeping yourself informed about macroeconomic trends, you can adjust your business strategies to match the changing demands of your customers and anticipate economic fluctuations. Because of this, you will be able to reduce potential negative outcomes and maximize positive ones.
For instance, you may adjust your pricing models or emphasize a product’s efficiency and cost-savings advantages based on market research that shows how purchasing habits change during economic shifts. By taking a proactive approach, you’ll be able to overcome obstacles and position yourself as a player that is responsive and flexible in the global market.
10. Data-Driven Decision-Making Culture
Tech market research is becoming more important for organizations as the market moves toward a culture more heavily rooted in data. Organizations that adopt data-driven strategies are better able to respond to changing market conditions and foster a growth mindset among their employees.
Consider this scenario: You are an online services provider. Findings from a market research exercise indicate that users are showing a growing interest in personalized recommendations. As part of your data-driven strategy, you analyze user actions and preferences to help create personalized site interactions. This enhances your user experience, decreases customer attrition, and maximizes marketing ROI.
Conducting regular market research, even when things appear to be stable, can help your organization cultivate agility and enhance your ability to remain relevant, adaptive, and competitive. Even when things seem stable, it helps foster agility and ensure your B2B tech marketing stays relevant, adaptive, and competitive in the ever-evolving business landscape. With the support of a B2B market research agency, you can enhance the user experience, decrease customer attrition, and maximize marketing ROI.
Your Journey to Market Research Insights
Leading B2B tech companies know that market research conducted at any stage in the planning process provides the results needed to outperform the competition and stay ahead of the market.
As you find yourself in the business scenarios discussed in this blog post along the way, remember that market research can be a great tool to consider. And when you’re ready, Yeager is here to assist you. Want to see more of what we offer? Check out our Research GPS offerings to see how you can get clear on your buyers, markets, and competitors to build a foundation for what’s next.
