Market Research Strategies

 Primary Research

When it comes to the primary research for my business, I'm partially limited by my intended target demographics. As seen in my customer profiles, the vast majority of the 'characters' I drew up were more introverted, as this is what I primarily expect of people who are more interested in writing and reading. While I know that there will be exceptions, I believe that most of my target demographic would not be the sort of people I can easily catch outside on the street for an interview. Therefore, I find it unlikely that I'll be able to question people on the streets.

With this in mind, I feel that a similar method that could be far more feasible is creating a questionnaire via Google Forms and sending it out to my class-mates along with other people that I know throughout the college. I feel that this would work quite well as all the students in the college fall into my targeted age range of 16-27 year olds. Additionally, I feel that a good number of people in the college would hold some interest in writing/reading (I know for a fact that a good friend of mine has an interest in writing, and therefore could be a good possibility for answering a questionnaire). Therefore, the main method I'll be utilising for primary research will be questionnaires sent out via email. As a final note, I believe the majority of the data received via this questionnaire would be qualitative, leading to a lot of bar graphs for how I'll present the final data received.

Alongside this questionnaire, I could also potentially try a focus group with my family. I've never done a focus group before, but I know that they would be receptive to my ideas and would be able to give me good feedback and let me know if there's anything that needs to be tinkered with regarding my marketing techniques/business ideas as a whole.

Secondary Research

For the secondary research for my business, I'm slightly limited by the nature of my business. Due to the fact that my business is focused around writing commissions and short stories straight from the imagination of different people, it's somewhat hard to find figures and records for sales from any competitors. Most of the businesses that could be considered competitive to my idea are businesses on Etsy which also do writing commissions (and Etsy doesn't show any sales figures apart from the simple number of how many sales the shop has made).

A good source of secondary research that I've found are past questionnaires that can give me some insight in what kind of things my target audience are interested in, therefore giving me a greater idea of how to tailor my marketing strategy in order to attract more of my intended demographic. As an example, I've found the results of a survey asking people about their reading habits, primarily whether what they were reading is fiction/non-fiction, where they found the book and the way that they read the book (physical books, e-books, magazines, etc.) This survey could give me a lot of good information about what kind of literature my target demographic enjoys primarily, helping me tailor my marketing specifically to their interests. (https://medium.com/@lilastories/what-are-you-reading-results-of-a-reading-survey-783feaa6995d)

Another strategy for secondary research, albeit a slightly more unorthodox one, could be taking a look at the social media accounts for other brands (ideally something focused in writing, although I don't have to go that specific if I can't find anything). Due to the online nature of my business, I feel that a good way to market my business will be via social media. Therefore, taking a look at the social media platforms for other more successful brands will allow me to see how they present themselves publicly, giving me ideas for what kind of things I have to promote/talk about on my business' social media accounts.