All too often, business owners decide to market to their potential clients or provide sales presentations without the full scope of their client needs and how they can most effectively meet them.
Without knowing what your client truly needs, your marketing and sales process are a shot in the dark. While it is imperative to have a strong sales and marketing process, step one is to do Market Research and Competitive Analysis to take you from floundering MSP to expert provider.
Market Research and Competitive Analysis
What is Market Research?
Market research helps you find the right customers for your business through data collection. This could be first-hand information that you learn yourself or secondhand, which is public. The idea here is to use this information to your advantage to create better solutions for potential and current clients.
A few ways you can do this are:
- Social media
- Surveys
- Focus Groups
- Interviews
Once you have learned more about your customers, you’re able to conduct a competitive analysis.
What is Competitive Analysis?
This entails taking what you’ve learned and comparing it to competing businesses. In other words, your job is to determine what areas you need to improve on to make your business more desirable.
Market research and competitive analysis will not only provide you access to your customers' behavior patterns, but also your competitors' strategies and more. Setting aside time and money to focus on market research allows you to develop a strong marketing and sales approach that, when paired with the right strategy, can create massive results.
Bottom Line?
Market research will allow you to better understand the customers/clients you want to serve. Competitive analysis will enhance your marketing process by getting an idea of your competitors' strategies.
Have you done your research?
Entrepreneur and former MSP owner Chris Wiser is founder and CEO of 7-Figure MSP. Read more 7-Figure MSP guest blogs here.