After investing the funds and time to run a marketing program, a smart company owner or manager needs to evaluate the effectiveness of it, especially to ensure that the marketing strategy is successful or not in attracting the attention of potential buyers. One indicator of the success of a marketing strategy is the percentage of potential buyers who become product buyers. For that, you need to do market research by asking potential buyers about the effectiveness of the messages conveyed through marketing activities. Then, prepare a marketing report by summarizing research results that are useful for improving company performance.
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Part 1 of 3: Evaluating Marketing Activities
Step 1. Consider the benefits of conducting market research and creating marketing reports
What information do you need? What is the next step after management reads the marketing report? This activity can work well if you invest money and time. In order not to waste it, make sure you have a plan in place to make the most of the market research results.
Market research is an activity undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of a marketing program. Specifically, this activity aims to find out how far the marketing program has succeeded in attracting the attention and interest of potential buyers by calculating how many potential buyers have become buyers
Step 2. Define the profile of the prospective buyer
Before identifying the interests or needs of buyers, first determine the criteria for market share or potential buyers, namely people with certain profiles that you want to reach through marketing programs. These criteria consist of gender, age, profession, hobby, community, or other aspects that give rise to the desire or need to buy the product. In other words, they are the people who are most likely to buy the product and their needs form the basis of the marketing program.
- You can provide the product you need if you have accurate information about their profile. To do this, ask yourself, "Who should I offer the product to?" and "What kind of product do they need?"
- Analyze product buyer data by age, gender, education level, personality, lifestyle, hobbies, profession, marital status, and local traditions.
Step 3. Find out the buyer's needs
People buy products to fulfill certain needs. So, they will buy the product that they think is able to provide the best solution.
For example, based on the results of customer surveys and market research, it is revealed that there are problems experienced by users of certain products, for example students or employees experience problems when their cellphones turn off during their daily activities, and they can't even study/work if they forget to bring a cellphone charger
Step 4. Determine the appropriate steps to solve the problem
Think of the best solution in response to their needs. Why do you think that a particular solution is the best? Why did you solve the problem this way? What are the benefits or solutions provided by the products you offer?
For example, to solve the problem of a dead cell phone, you manufacture a cell phone charger that fits in a backpack. Product buyers use backpacks to carry laptops and work/study equipment. Thus, they can charge their phones anytime anywhere
Step 5. Determine the effectiveness of your solution
Collect data to find out if your product is capable of solving the problems faced by buyers. In addition, you can conclude whether or not the problem needs to be addressed. If product sales continue to increase, this shows that the solution you provide is indeed useful.
After some time, backpack buyers have become more and more and feel helped by cell phone chargers built into backpacks. They also rate your product better than competitors' products. This means, you have succeeded in creating brand equity in the eyes of buyers. Read articles online or books on brand equity if you want to find out more about this
Step 6. Determine the competitive advantage of your product
Find out the specifications of competitors' products and the benefits that make your product superior to competitors' products. In other words, find out the advantages of your product that competitors' products cannot provide. Why is your product unique and better? This step can help you determine your competitive advantage and use it when developing your marketing program. If it can be maintained, a competitive advantage can increase sales and the number of customers.
Step 7. Evaluate the current product marketing strategy
Market research aims to gather information about how to market your product currently and find out how much potential buyers are responding to. Then, you need to analyze the steps to market the product that are currently being carried out. For example, if you market your products online, apply the following strategies:
- Upload information, articles and other content to the company website regularly. This step can increase the number of visitors who access the website and increase the percentage of visitors who return looking for new content.
- Give visitors the option to subscribe to new content sent to them by email. They will receive a weekly email with a link to the new content.
- Make sure the main page of the website has an interesting display, such as a photo of a famous artist wearing a backpack with a charger attached. When a visitor accesses the website, make sure he has no trouble finding the menu to access the page he is looking for and get the information he needs.
- Provide the option of shopping through the website so he can buy the product online and receive the backpack within 2-3 business days.
- Also include information about other sales channels by including the address and name of the store that sells the product. Perform analysis to find out the number of products sold in each store.
Step 8. Conduct an evaluation to measure the effectiveness of the marketing strategy you are implementing
Is the marketing program able to convey product information to potential buyers? If the information is submitted via a blog, does anyone read it? Does the marketing strategy attract people to visit the website and make purchases? If not, you will need to provide advice on changing your marketing strategy in your marketing report.
- Include comparative data on the market share of your product, competitor's products, and trends in the market share of similar products. Is your market share rising, falling, or stable?
- If you want to know how to calculate market share, read a wikiHow article or book that explains it.
Step 9. Prepare a marketing report by summarizing the data obtained from market research
Market research results need to be processed and included in a marketing report consisting of a maximum of 2 pages of executive summary and the next few pages containing detailed information.
- In the marketing report, present information on the definition of market breadth, name of competitors, market area of competitors, and estimated market share.
- You may use marketing reports to propose changes to your marketing strategy. This change is useful for increasing sales as a result of investing time and money to run a marketing program.
Part 2 of 3: Preparing the Executive Summary
Step 1. Know the executive summary function
You need to prepare a summary of market research results in the form of a short report of 1 page, a maximum of 2 pages. Make sure all important information submitted in the marketing report is included in the executive summary. Usually, management will read the executive summary first to get an idea of the research results.
Executive summary is a concise report that presents quantitative data in detail as a summary of market research results. When presenting data, present it in the form of a list or table for easy reading
Step 2. Present information about the company
In the executive summary, you need to present information about the company's activities, company address, number of employees (if any), and other information related to the company. In addition, include plans to create or sell new products and sales targets for a certain period, for example the next 1 or 3 years.
- For example, if the company wants to create a new product in the form of a handbag with a cell phone charger, include this plan in the executive summary.
- You also need to provide information about the sales channels used by the company and competitors. Is it different? What's the reason? If so, does your product have a competitive advantage that can support the success of your marketing and sales program?
Step 3. Include the research objectives in the marketing report
You need to explain what you want to determine through market research, for example: the effectiveness of the website content, the ability of the marketing program to reach the right potential buyers, the success or failure of the website to provide correct information about the product to potential buyers, or other aspects that you want to evaluate.
Step 4. Conduct an evaluation to determine the ability of the marketing program to reach potential buyers
Usually, market research is done to analyze how well you are able to convince people (who meet the criteria of potential buyers) to buy the product that is being marketed. However, make sure you reach people who are willing and able to buy the product. If the marketing program is not effective, explain why you feel the need to do market research and provide suggestions for improving your marketing strategy.
For example, you want to evaluate the success or failure of a backpack advert to reach students because they are more likely to wear backpacks. If the ads are found to reach more adults, who generally don't wear backpacks, this issue deserves an evaluation
Step 5. Present a product marketing data conversion report
This report represents the number of potential buyers or website visitors who purchased the product. This data can be obtained through the counter of the number of website visitors. If the number is very small, explain why this needs to be evaluated and make suggestions for improvements that need to be made.
For example, if only 1 person bought a backpack out of 20 website visitors, you might want to review the website design, ease of shopping, or backpack prices
Step 6. Present information about difficulties in collecting data or providing complete analysis results
In the executive summary, you need to provide an explanation of whether there are obstacles to obtaining data when compiling the report. Thus, the reader knows that the data analysis or discussion of the topic in a particular section is incomplete. At times, researchers have difficulty collecting comprehensive data. If you experience this, please describe the cause in the marketing report that is being prepared.
Part 3 of 3: Preparing a Marketing Report
Step 1. Present market trend forecasts
In addition to analyzing the effectiveness of the marketing strategies implemented so far, you need to estimate the effectiveness of marketing programs in the future. State the factors that could affect product sales, such as the more people using the internet, the more visitors accessing the website, or other aspects that support or hinder the success of your marketing program.
- Consider the possibility of new competitors emerging if your business is successful. Significant operating profit increases market competition. If there are currently no competitors, it is certain that competitors will emerge one day. So, prepare a plan to maintain a competitive advantage regardless of the presence or absence of new players in the market.
- For example, as the learning method changes that have been done face-to-face to virtual learning, you need to explain that these conditions can hinder the company's performance and tell how to anticipate this.
Step 2. Calculate the company's return on investment as a result of implementing the marketing program
You need to ensure that the investment of funds for advertising has a positive impact on increasing company revenue. For that, calculate the costs incurred to pay for the product marketing program, then compare it with the increase/decrease in sales since the start of the program. Take into account the time difference between the start of implementing the marketing program and the increase in sales. Consider the benefits of investing in advertising.
Step 3. Conduct a survey, then compile the incoming data
Surveys can be conducted using a marketing program's website or email. In addition, you can gather information from focus groups made up of people who meet the criteria as a potential buyer group.
- To get complete and accurate data from the focus group, ask a number of well-thought-out questions. In your marketing report, you need to include the questions asked of the respondent and why you asked the question.
- When conducting a survey or asking a focus group, ask respondents to tell where they first got their information about your product. It is possible that the survey shows that most respondents are familiar with your product when reading information on blogs or articles on company websites.
- Present data obtained from surveys and focus groups in marketing reports. You should also include questions and answers in this report. Present the answers to each question in percentages. For example, 40% of the total respondents received information about backpacks for the first time through blogs or company websites.
- Qualitative research results (on respondents' answers obtained from surveys and focus groups) may be presented in 5-10 pages. The answers to the questions asked may take 5-10 pages.
Step 4. Use marketing reports to make changes to improve company performance
Market research aims to find out what is already going well and what needs to be improved. If you can make the right changes, the effectiveness of your marketing program increases without spending more.
- Ask respondents about the differences and advantages of your product compared to competitors. If they don't see a difference, ask for more information to find out why.
- For example, most respondents think that your product is almost the same as competitors' products, even though the cellphone chargers in the backpacks you sell are more durable because they are stored in plastic boxes.
- Take advantage of respondents' answers to draw conclusions. For example, you conclude that the website should display information confirming that the cell phone charger you are selling is more durable than competing products.
- Make the decision to change the content of the website and other marketing communication media. After some time, you need to do an evaluation to find out the impact of this change on the market share. For that, do market research to measure the company's performance after changes are made.
