Market research is an essential tool that assists a wide range of companies better target their target audience. By engaging directly with both existing and future consumers, this sort of research helps a firm better understand and predict the potential success of a product or service. Market research, in particular for financial marketing, is a critical component in the overall effectiveness of a ROI-focused integrated marketing strategy. Here is a brief guide outlining some crucial actions your financial firm may take to begin performing meaningful market research:
Identify what your intended audience is in greater detail.
To improve the comprehensive grasp of your industry and market trends, investigate demographics that will enable you to identify both opportunities and risks while acquiring new consumers, information such as age, household income, education, work, interests, financial habits, and anything pertinent to your company.
An analysis of such data may yield results in various ways. To find out how many of your rivals provide comparable services, such as investment services or first-time homebuyer assistance, you may start by looking at your consumers’ existing product and service requests. What methods will you use based on what you’ve learned from your early research?
- Competitive Analysis entails assessing your company’s and its corporate competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities for you when launching a new product or service, as well as any barriers or dangers you may encounter when entering the market. The importance of your target audience to your competitors and how and why their audiences differ is equally essential.
- Surveys / Questionnaires involve directly asking current customers for honest feedback. The results can be gathered and presented in a variety of ways, such as a satisfaction scale survey following an email or phone contact or a more in-depth questionnaire in the hopes of obtaining written replies that will provide more insight into the consumer’s thoughts and sentiments. It is also crucial to note that sending out surveys on a timely and strategic basis can assist in identifying whether any customer’s opinions and demands are unmet by your or competitors’ offerings.
- Focus groups are face-to-face interactions with a small group of people who have chosen to participate carefully based on demographics and other relevant consumer data. This method then enables the firm to obtain high-quality insights and consumer feedback. This research approach allows you to translate such opinions, interpretations, perceptions, and so on about your bank’s, insurance’s, credit card’s, or other financial institution’s reputation and services into better sales, marketing, and operational strategies.
To gain new insights from consumer feedback, financial institutions must conduct market research to understand better why target audiences make certain decisions, their needs and interests, and the overall buying trends within the finance and banking industry.
Market research provides insights into goods and trends, forecasting sales possibilities, and the most effective approach to implementing a marketing plan. Such insights help minimize risk associated with new product offerings, brand reputation and new servicing models across the sector, and research is an essential component financial service market research companies will undertake for their clients.
Agility Research & Strategy is a leading consulting firm working across 38 markets for the world’s top luxury and premium brands. With over 30 years combined experience on understanding the Affluent Consumer, we can help financial institutions across banking, wealth management, insurance and payment systems understand affluent and high-net-worth consumers’ financial needs. We are truly Fluent on the Affluent™.
AFFLUENTIAL™ is a Data, Analytics and Information services firm focused on the affluent consumer across verticals. Powered by our Proprietary Digital Insights Engine, we deliver cutting edge timely insights using through our Data Vault™.
