Week 11: Market Research – Revealing Gaps, Targets and Audiences for a New Product or Service Idea

Weekly Learning Objectives

By the end of this week you should be able to:

• Research and analyse the constructs of market research, and identify need and an audience for a new product or service idea;
• Imagine and develop a clear business outline of your intended audience outlets for distribution or purchase;
• Manage your independent learning effectively.

Week 11: Lecture – Guest Practitioner: Dan Parry

Lecture Introduction

Guest practitioner Dan Parry discusses market research in the graphic design industry, identifying gaps, targets and audiences.

References

SWOT Analysis (Links to an external site.)

Competitive Landscape (Links to an external site.)

Competition Comparision (Links to an external site.)

Tools

Hotjar (Links to an external site.) – Tracks customers on a website

Google Analytics (Links to an external site.) – Tracks audience behaviour and data on websites

Later.com (Links to an external site.) – Social Media Tracking and Analytics

Dan Parry

Market research.
https://www.tectoniclondon.com/team

Lecture notes

Build or launch successfully – understand your audience

• Service early customers quickly
• What assumptions are you making about audience, product, service and you ability?
• Is it that it will just work out?

Write down all your assumptions
Example – UBER

• Assumed people cared about the problems of the difficulty to get a taxi
  Standing on the edge of the road, middle of the night, etc.
• Assumed people would get into their taxi’s
• Assumed people would pay by card – People payed for taxi’s in cash but they wanted a seamless service – would people be willing to pay using their phone, it was a new technology at the time.
• Would people pay after the service, would people want to be rated.
• Assumed they would have enough drivers to scale up their business.
• Assumed the drivers would be happy.
• Assumed they could deliver their app all over the world.
• Assumed they could out-pace their competitors.

Big assumptions about passengers, drivers, transport, phone and app use – these where the theme groups.

You might assume it’s easy for people to access you product or that it’s easy for you to access your market.

Writing down your assumptions lets you understand your target market a little better and the ‘themes you’re trying to question and build’ (what does that actually mean?)

Group the assumptions into themes it helps understand potential blocks that will come up. These themes should help build a way to test the assumptions quickly, if you had an assumption that your business is viable and will grow into something valuable, you need to validate those assumptions quickly. Then you can build something your market wants.

One way to in/validate your assumptions is to ask questions.

Key ways:

Qualitative questions – help understand the human part of the audience. Ask people direct questions helps understand their needs. Doing this face to face will give you more than using surveys instead, although surveys might give you answers to more sensitive subjects. Interviews will show you reactions allowing you to probe further to find out why they gave their reaction.

Quantitive questions – having data is invaluable in getting into to the right route to solving your problems and making it something people are likely to want. It will help to guide you but you will more likely need lots of people answering you qualitative questions. The more you ask the better.

Using both methods will help you in your results.

Ask clear questions, don’t ask leading questions:

Would you get into a taxi at the tap of a button? Answer might just be yes/no

-vs-

How many taxi’s have you taken this month? How much do you usually spend on taxi’s?

These types of questions will give more discreet answers to allow you to look through the data and see patterns.

Logic-jumps

If a person answers yes to a question then the survey goes one way, if they say no then it goes in another. Good for segmenting data.

Make questions easy to understand, this is more likely to bring answers.

Book: The ‘Moms Test (?)’ by Rob Fitzpatrick. Teaches how to as non-leading questions.

Good idea to have two people conducting a q&a, one asking and the other (you/owner) taking the notes. If it’s your idea you may lead them down a path without realising it, keep the questions ‘neutral’ and take a step back whilst the interviewer asks the questions.

Ask the right people (don’t ask a dentist about neurosurgery).

Keep talking to the audience through the development. Post-launch – go for feedback, make improvements. Make sure the idea stays as the thing people want. If there’s a definite problem you will be hearing the same answer from a lot of people in the data.

Look at competitors, who’s trying to do what you do? How are they doing it, could it be streamlined to make it better?

SWOT.

Strength – what’s better, etc.
Weakness – what could you improve on, etc.
Opportunities – what trends are you aware of which others aren’t? Anything happening in your area which might work somewhere else.
Threats – What are your obstacles, what are competitors doing, etc.

See the negatives as challenges you can fix.

Look at the competition:

What two things define your product/service? On an x/y axis of a graph, then plot the competitors on there.

Uber:
1. Pick you up wherever you are
2. Cost effective

Taxi’s and private drivers do 1., but weren’t cost effective. Public transport is 2., but won’t pick you up wherever you are.

Depending where other sit on the same graph of those two axis’, you can see where the opportunities are.

Tools:

similarweb.com – (look up). Gives you web-stats, etc.
Find out how companies are being searched for – articles, sm posts, etc.

Social Media – Facebook groups are good to see people’s thought about a product or service. Don’t market your product in there though, unless the group asks. Join the group and build connections, be a contributor and people should start asking about you so then you can mention ‘in passing’ what it is.

Create your own group – build an audience before you launch? Get opinions this way? If you own the group you can set the rules.

Search for #’s and look at profiles. Who are they following, what’re they posting? Keep #’s to smaller communities; #museumsinsheffield rather than just #museums

Later.com
Paid version allows you to check #’s sizes so you can craft the #’s you use to create an audience. Instagram stories and questions help engage the audience. See yourself as a broadcaster, you want to be interesting and provide value. Don’t always post about you.

Posting questions on IG can make your followers feel part of something, you want their opinions, they’re important to you. Build this audience before you launch if you can, they will bring early feedback which you can include into the initial development to reduce making changes post-launch. Speaking to niche people, they will know other niche people to grow the audience further.

Twitter
Good for sharing ideas. Engage people and share the ideas, but be nice. Pick a channel (?), don’t spread yourself too thinly. Provide value to followers so people care about what you’re trying to do, ask their opinions, make them feel important. Don’t just launch ‘into the wilderness’ and then try to build it, get some in place beforehand.

**SYDF – how can I get people to care about it, target the posts**

Build up groups cross-platform. Validate before you build.

Email lists – allow you direct contact to ask direct questions or give select info.

Check out review sites, check reviews on Amazon, eBay, places people will leave feedback on services. TrustPilot, Yelp.

MVP – minimum valuable product – what’s the minimum way of launching to get interest in your product, Eg, start with a landing page and not the whole site/section. ‘If you need more information email here:’

EG. Buffer (?) outlined a problem on a single page, ‘developing a way to schedule Tweets, if you’d like more information register here:’ shared on Twitter and people registered their interest. Wanted to test a pricing structure so gave options for registrants to choose from, a tier structure:

£X gets you XX
£XX gets you XXX

And built up data to gauge how much people would be willing to pay for the service.

Test the language you use, make it easy to understand. Reapply the use of the data gathered (iterate) to further develop the previous results.

Reflections

Found some really useful pointers on how to better approach the use of social media to build up followers before a launch, how to get people on board and to interact, ways to find out who to target.

Some of the information we’ve covered in earlier modules but this brought it back into mind, since then it’s made sense of how to apply some of these methods to progress a project.

Week 11: Resources

Read | Watch | Listen

Below is this week’s list of materials. For the full module resource list, please refer to the Course Hub. We encourage you to also carry out your own independent research into themes delivered. Do not forget to use the Ideas Wall to share new ideas and thoughts.

1. Young, A., (2011). Brand Media Strategy – Planning in the Digital Era (Links to an external site.), New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

‘Getting Social’

‘Google & Facebook’

‘Execution is the X Factor’

Reflection

As with the Dan Parry lecture, I gained a lot of good points from the resources this week. I read between the lines a little because the books references sounded a little dated when talking about social media as it’s come on a long way since the book was written in 2011, however, the principles apply in the same way today as they did then.

Points about the type of message to post on the different platforms made sense, Linkedin for example carries more weight for an article about a project or product launch as it caters for longer posts and articles.

Instagram on the other hand is good for more direct promotion; images of the product with some detail or introduction along with the ‘link in bio’ to the place to buy or find out more.

There are also many pointers to how you can build a strategy for using social media to promote your products, how to engage users rather than just posting messages. How to tailor social media to work as a way to draw people into a central point for information rather than each account being a simple repost of the others.

A different message for Twitter, for Instagram and for Facebook, all linking to the same page which gives all the details of what, where and when a product is available whether it’s the online shop or the Kickstarter page.

Another point is one that I know to try but never succeed; that’s to post regularly. Again, the different platforms requiring different ‘rules’ – Twitter and Instagram are there to take a hammering with short regular posts each day where I think FB and Linkedin are suited to more informative posts about possible stages or release dates, production details, etc.

How can you ensure a business / creative idea is targeted and researched to maximise potential?

Week 11: Workshop Challenge

The Challenge

How can you ensure a business / creative idea is targeted and researched to maximise potential?

• Select one of your ideas from the previous week and develop a clear business outline of your intended audience outlets for distribution or purchase.
• You may need to evolve aspects of the proposition, and ensure there is a clear objective for the next stages of development.
• Your output will include product development, research insights and production challenges; all of which will come together in the final week of this module.
• Upload the artefact and evidence of any development undertaken (this might also include brand names and approach to the product’s story), and include a one page report outlining research, insights and development challenges.

Recap:

Narrowed down to either 7, 9 or 10 to take forward. Still unsure exactly which to take on so will be including them all into the thought process to some degree and see which one stands out the most useable.

Looking at David Shrigley (look on Instagram his website is still loading) as an example of publications with deadpan, instant humour – you either get it or you try to.

9 and 10 need to have the type of response David Shrigley gets. It needs to be more than just a funny caption contest and I’m not usually that funny.

Spot the difference – funny/not funny

More than one way to fold a hat?

Think again…

The above don’t fit the bill for this project, they just don’t have that bit extra I need a project to have to be convinced that I want to do it. I don’t think I’d find that in time for these but I have found something more interesting and it’s just for looking at.

Reference: Endpapers

“where the viewer opens the book and finds something entirely unexpected and delightful inside the front page.”

Holly Dunn, book cover designer

Paper Marbling

Most endpapers are made of marble-printed paper and although it’s straightforward to produce it isn’t the actual production of the endpaper patterns that I’ll be looking into. The resources and manufacturing techniques I refer to above are for the manufacture of the book itself and not the patterns.

The patterns will be taken from books that are found, there are no copyright from the patterns inside antique books as any they may have had has expired and therefore are now in the public domain.

Sources and Outlets

Although second hand bookshops would be a good source, I don’t think they would be a good outlet. From my experience they tend to sell collectible or specialist books, eg. illustrated, maps, cartoons and children’s books. If they’re a general outlet they tend to be set out for the customer to rummage around and not displaying new editions.

‘Perched on the border between England and Wales, Hay-On-Wye is a literary enthusiast’s paradise with an estimated 30+ bookstores’

Examples above of the kind of outlets to approach. Local towns such as Oswestry and Bishop’s Castle have a good ‘book community’ (think of something better to call it!) and towns such as Hay-on-Wye are special havens for bookworms.

Audience

Finance

Production

Specification will of course be determined by interest and production costs.

There are two options in my mind; a well-made hardback with traditional features such as a register ribbon, cloth outer covers – this texture will be a good contrast to the pages – along with plain, bright coloured endpapers.

Or, more specialised hand-bound issues using traditional techniques and materials of bookbinding; whole bound, foil blocking, ribbed spine, etc. this type of finish would mean a more expensive product but also more desirable perhaps? It would also mean a longer production time and a larger outlay of finances at the start of the process.

Inner pages will be an uncoated stock in-keeping with the originals.

It’s a working title…

Hand-in

This week’s outcome was a one page report outlining research, insights and development challenges, showing evidence of any development undertaken.

Download the PDF