Digital marketing plays an integral part in business as it offers a more efficient way of marketing compared to its traditional counterpart. With the right digital marketing plan, an organization can get ahead of the competition and increase their consumer reach online. As such, conducting extensive market research is vital to form a sound digital marketing strategy.

Market research goes hand in hand with digital marketing. Gathering consumer preferences and current market trends before promoting a brand, product, or service can help an organization save thousands of dollars as well as eliminate the risk of targeting the wrong audience. Furthermore, with the arrival of the digital era, online and mobile market research methods can now be utilized as a more cost-effective and efficient approach.

How Can Market Research Help Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

1.) Honing the Message

Connecting with the audience is important in digital marketing. By garnering trust, the company is more likely to have an increase in sales. This may be difficult to achieve as digital marketing isn’t a one-on-one connection, but a way to overcome this is through listening which is a huge part of market research.

There are various tools available that can help you determine relevant keywords and phrases. This includes social media platforms. By monitoring the consumers’ language, their activities and the common terms they use, organizations can identify market trends and create detailed buyer personas to hone their message. Messaging that resonates well and addresses specific pain points of different buyer personas, in turn, will increase traffic and generate more clicks and conversions.

2.) Targeting the Audience

Digital footprints can now be easily traced as more prospects openly share their daily activities including their interests, thoughts, likes, and dislikes. Segmenting the consumers based on their wants and needs will help craft a more personalized message, further enhancing virtual encounters. Furthermore, this can identify people that influence the brand which can garner more trust as prospects are more likely to form a connection with trusted sources.

Through market research, digital marketers can also place targeted ads and send individualized emails to increase traffic and consumer engagement.

3.) Determining Effective Channels

Not every social media platform is suitable for all brands. It is important to note which sites are relevant or have more engagement to avoid unnecessary resource-spending. Re-evaluate where your target audiences congregate or determine their “watering holes.” Another question to ask is if your brand’s image is suitable to be marketed through that channel. You can also conduct surveys to determine which places or websites the consumers have seen or heard the brand. Digital marketers can then focus on these channels and spend their marketing budget more productively.

4.) Updating Consumer Preferences

Consumer preference changes from time to time so the generated buyer personas may not always be accurate. As such, keeping in touch with the consumers’ activities will help researchers update buyer personas and create more relevant content, generating more traffic and engagement to the channel.

Again, market research makes this process easier by monitoring and listening to the consumer and better understanding current trends and topics.

Without market research, the potential of digital marketing cannot be fully maximized. Understanding the importance of market research to digital marketing will help you or your organization formulate an effective digital marketing plan and strengthen your virtual presence.