A treasured and profitable tool for your new company or startup is competitive research. There is a massive amount of valuable information out there, all accessible with just a few strokes of your fingertips.
Many people don’t realize that when starting a business or creating a business plan, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel just get busy doing competitive research. Observe how successful businesses in your industry operate and you can bypass a multitude of tough steps.
Looking at a competitors’ website is a transparent way to see what they are doing and how they do it. When you go to a website, you get a solid impression in just a millisecond. Ask yourself: Does this website provide what I am looking for? Can I trust the company behind the website? Would I use their product. Dig a few clicks deeper and you can find whether the pricing and/or terms are right for you. Also, look for any other barriers that would prevent you from using the product. This information is very useful if you are entering an industry, need to build a website and are looking for ideas on what content to use. Some useful ideas you can get with a bit of digging are as follows:
How to do a Competitive Analysis for Your Business
Keyword Information
By looking through a few important pages of a competitor’s website, or by using the old method of searching meta keywords located in the source of the front page, you can identify what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) keywords they incorporate. This should inspire you to utilize them on your own website. Additionally, you can pop some of those keywords into Google’s keyword planner tool in order to find similar terms and search volumes.
Trust
How does the company get you to initially trust them? It’s through their website. Does it have a clean modern look? Some major trust factors for users are testimonials, examples of clients that use them, an SSL certificate (a secure lock in the address bar or a green address bar) and an intuitive way to navigate the site.
Contracts
You can analyze a competitor’s contract in order to figure out how they do things. Their contracts will include information such as the terms of how they bill their customers, an idea of how their operations work, what they guarantee and the terms of those guarantees. I started a hosting company some time back and realized the value added of showing a guarantee on the front page. However, the guarantee is only as good as the terms offered in the agreement. Remember, the agreement can dictate the liability of the guarantee.
In the modern digital age, markets are flooded, and a competitive research strategy is necessary to build a sustainable business. The information you need to start a business can be found by doing the right online searches and using the correct tools. There is no reason to start from scratch when the information from your competitor’s years of trial, error and their modifications are available in order for you to make the best site possible.
Qualitative vs Quantitative
Quantitative data is all about about quantities, numbers; which we use to objectively access a competitor. When it comes to qualitative, it’s a bit more subjective. It is descriptive, meaning, we have to use our experience and observation to determine the competition, instead of just looking at raw numbers.
Competitive Market Research: How to make it work for your business
Market research is something that has been around since people began trading, and it remains a cornerstone of business success today. But how can your business successfully utilize market research to expand your reach and grow your customer base? There are a few tried-and-true methods of market research, but selecting the best method for your particular business may not be an easy task.
If your business has a website, it is possible to put a market research survey on your site. However, the only people who will see it are those that view your web portal. If you do not have the web traffic to generate a good set of data, this method is probably not going to work for you. If you have a large user base, you are sure to generate some important data, but you are still limited in your scope to those people who visit your site.
Email or telephone marketing is something that has repeatedly proven to be effective. By mass emailing or mass called a pool of people or businesses, you are sure to get a good set of data. However, you are once again limited to the contacts that you already have. If you do not have a list of emails or phone numbers, you do not have people to email or call. However, if you have a large client base, you will be able to leverage that for your market research campaign.
If you do not have web traffic or contacts, you should consider outsourcing the market research and your ACH check processing to a company like Check Issuing. We have the contacts and the ability to set up the market research campaign that will generate the information you need to be successful in expanding your business through market research. If you are interested in our services, please let us know, and we will be happy to get started generating a successful market research campaign for you.
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Everything You Should Know About Doing An Online Market Research Survey
Imagine for just a moment, there you are, creating a brand new product. You are designing the look and feel of the product; you are expanding and evolving its capabilities. You know everything you’d like to have this product do. Every last functional detail is covered in your amazingly big creative brain.
All but one detail, that is.
What your customers actually want. All the time you’ve spent creating a product, you’ve been doing it based on what YOU think everyone will want. But what if you could just know what everyone already wants BEFORE creating the product’s specs? Well, you can, my friends: it’s called Market Research. And while the creation of a product was a fun example, it certainly isn’t the only reason a small business might want to conduct market research. Maybe you want to expand into a new market all together? Maybe you want to make changes to a current line of products or add additional services to your company’s arsenal? Market Research can help get you there with precision and accuracy.
But Market Research, it is such a big word, how do we best accomplish it? Ok, let’s take a moment and talk a little about that.
First things first, let’s find out what the heck people want from you. The easiest way to accomplish this is by creating a survey. There are companies, such as Survey Monkey that can help you create a survey with good questions and all. You can sign up for a free starter package. The big key to unlocking revenue driven data from people is to ask the appropriate questions. And that’s not always super easy, which is why starting with an prepackaged survey company isn’t a bad starting point. The questions matter because the answers matter even more. Got bad questions? Get useless answers. You need meaningful answers that can help make your product or service a work of business art!
People hate doing surveys (wah wah wah…). Sorry for the buzzkill moment, my friends, but I’m not anything if I’m not honest with you. How do you solve people’s hatred, apathy and spite for helping other people out? Give them something in exchange for helping. Amazon Gift cards are an idea, but that could get pricey depending on how many surveys you want to acquire. You could offer them a discount on your current line of products or services. Just find something, anything, you think these people might want in exchange for telling you what they like, hate, love, despise, want. You could pay them for surveys, but in this case spentI’d highly suggest that you hire a third party payment processing company. In fact, I think I know one, their name is Check Issuing and their phone number is 1.866.535.3954. I hear they are fantastic people to work with!
Once you’ve done all the aforementioned, it will be up to you to interpret the information. You could bring in consultants to help with the data, but you might not want your office being overran with suits. All the same, it will be up to you to interpret the responses and gauge the future of your product or services from that point forward. Remember, information is king when it comes to marketing.
Or visit our main page on market research and see how we can help you distribute your payments to your partners.
Third Party Check Writing for Market Research Companies
Market Research is a key part in sustaining a strong competition over your competitors. Not only does Market Research provide relevant and imperative information, it aids you in identifying and analyzing the market demand, range, and opposition. Panelists hugely rely on their payments for assisting in helping your company grow, and they don’t want to wait long.
Checkissuing has been assisting companies like these get their payments sent out on time, every time, for many years now. We are the leader in market research payouts, and build strong panel member relationships that increase response rates while lowering attrition. We work very hard to ensure everything runs smoothly for our clients.
Our intuitive and user-friendly administration system enables market research firms to:
For more information about being your trusted third company for ach check processing service for market research payments please feel free to contact us
Checkissuing was founded in Phoenix in 2005 by a team that includes a combined 25 years in the payment and technology sector. We offer cutting-edge highly automated check-writing and disbursement systems built with layers of redundancy and protection to make sure that your clients payments arrive on time.
As we provide secure solutions for financial institutions, merchant account holders, third-party processors, or other users of payment disbursement services. Companies from a wide variety of industries rely on Checkissuing.com to fulfill their payment printing and disbursement needs.
