Welcome to GroCurv’s podcast Right On Track where this week we discuss market research and your brand. As a marketplace for marketing services, GC enables young and fast growing brands to meet and work with the right agency partners.

In this series, we share learnings from hundreds of brands that have used GroCurv and its partner agencies to grow fast, profitably. Allowing you all to learn lessons on how to make the most of your marketing investment.

This week, we focus on Market Research- What is market research and why is it so important for your brand? Why do we use it and how should we go about it?

If you're considering hiring a market research agency, then you're about to make a wise investment that would most likely provide significant advantages to your business.

A market research agency may develop, conduct, and analyze customized market research for your business and provide the critical data and pointers, allowing you to make strategic decisions based on facts. Furthermore, they'll ensure that the feedback you receive and the conclusions you draw are completely objective. So, let’s dig a little deeper and explore what a market research firm can possibly bring to the table for your business.

Market research agencies ultimately help businesses by putting the collected data into action. Some activities conducted by market research agencies include:

• Conducting surveys
• Conducting interviews
• Facilitating focus groups and workshops
• Undertaking methods to observe customers
• Collect relevant information, analyze data, report findings

When you hire an agency, make sure that they are properly differentiating between quantitative and qualitative research. Simply put, quantitative data deals with facts and figures while qualitative data pertains to human experience. Both are relevant for you to make informed business decisions.

We all know how referrals are a powerful source of repeat business for marketing agencies. When a happy client recommends us to someone he knows, we are riding on the trust of the relationship the two share. This eases the process of creating trust with the potential client. And so, haven’t some of our best wins have been through referrals?

But sometimes the referral well does dry up. Economic conditions change, or clients themselves don’t have any further introductions to make. Sometime existing projects haven’t gone so well. Much can impact the flow of leads for marketing agencies; especially the referral flow.

GroCurv, a sales and marketing services marketplace, is in the “stranger winning high value business from strangers business".

Market research is increasingly leaning towards building better consumer insight. What is it that they are really looking for? What are the problems they face?