You don’t go on holiday without finding out about your destination.

You don’t accept a new job without checking the stability of the employer.

You don’t invest in a new car without checking it’s right for your needs.

You don’t develop your business without trying to discover your market size, value, potential and competitiveness… do you?

An essential element of any business strategy should be early stage secondary market research.

In order to analyse your market and make decisions on growing and developing your business, you must understand the business context you’re operating in:

• Who are your customers and how many of them are there?
• What are they currently buying and do they really need you?
• How can you talk to them and sell to them?
• Who are your competitors? What are their strategies and their tactics?
• Can your customers afford you?
• Who are the other key stakeholders or influencers in your market?
• What other issues might affect your business in this new market (regulatory, economic, demographic, technological…)

Know your market size and potential, know your competitors, know your customers, know your market’s trends and drivers.

To do this, use Secondary Research & Analysis. You can use previously published sources of information to provide a pool of information from which to analyse your market, and answer these vital questions at an early stage.  This is a cost-effective means of capitalising on an opportunity or preventing an costly error in business direction.

At ThinkTank we know that most of your competitors aren’t using research properly, so this is one way you can get ahead of the game.

As Benjamin Franklin famously said:

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest”,

So let’s take his advice, beat the trend in recession-ridden Ireland, and be smart about how to generate and guarantee profitable new revenue streams.

The knowledge economy is what will save our economy according to our elected representatives, so let’s take the first step close to home. Invest in knowledge, understand how important research is, and incorporate it into your planning process.

Guest post by Roisin Bell

Visual courtesy of James Joyce.

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