MRIS Data You Can Not Get From Simply Monitoring Your Competitors

Market research information systems (MRIS) are typically used by a company’s marketing team to obtain useful insights about the status of the market to promote informed business decisions. An MRIS conducts market research with an aggregate of databases that include internal and external sources to present condensed market research reports that can assist in developing new and improved marketing strategies.

What Is Market Research?

Market research refers to the collection and analysis of data about the overall state of the market. This includes things like market size, supply chains, sales information for consumer goods, competitive intelligence, and more. Market insights like these help your company determine what it’s doing well and what it could do better to reach your target audience and determine ideal buyer personas. Whether you’re an established business looking to expand or a startup trying to build a niche market, you’ll need reliable data from market analysis to succeed.

Types

Market research reports will be comprised of data from two basic types of research.

Primary Market Research

This is the original research conducted by your company and it includes things like product testing, customer surveys, focus groups, and interviews. Primary research can be exploratory or specific. You might be looking for general ways to improve the customer experience, or you might have specific questions about a certain line of products. An MRIS makes it easy to compile all your primary research data and contain it in succinct research reports.

Secondary Market Research

This is the research you conduct with data from outside sources, which is where an MRIS really shines. Since an MRIS has access to data from thousands of businesses and other sources, it can compile detailed industry reports with virtually any information you could need.

Go Beyond Competitive Analysis

Comprehensive market research reports include elements of a competitive analysis, but they include important information beyond that as well. A typical competitive analysis includes monitoring your competitor’s products and sales tactics to determine how well their products are selling and see what you can learn from their marketing strategies. Insight into your competitor’s strategies lets you make use of what they do well while applying your own innovations to their more lacking strategies.

A market research report from a good MRIS gives you information about your competitors’ sales, expenditures, and customers as well. It also includes an overview of the entire market sector from experienced industry analysts and lets you predict how the market will continue to evolve based on trends in recent years.

Applying Market Research

While there are many good ways to compile market research reports, you’ll have to decide how to apply their findings based on your own company’s goals and budget. Limited time and limited finances are often the two biggest hurdles that keep businesses from investing in market research as much as they likely should. Still, a reliable MRIS lets you avoid these problems. The system can gather, analyze, and interpret data much faster than your marketing team could manually. The system frees them up to spend more time on developing marketing strategies based on its regular assessment of market opportunities.

Summary

With a greater understanding of the leading markets in your industry, you’ll be better prepared to find your target audience and attract buyers to your products. Refining your target audience based on new buyer persona data can help you to better focus on the solutions your business offers and produce content that more effectively leads to sales. Having hard data also means your future business decisions will be based on evidence rather than intuition, which should yield better results for you and your customers.