Market Research and Analysis

In the classic text on marketing, Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind, branding consultant Al Ries writes:

For years, all of us in marketing taught our students to build a marketing plan around the "four P's" - Product, Price, Place and Promotion.
I began to realize some years ago that important steps needed to precede the four P's. All good marketing planning must start with "R", Research before any of the P's can be set.

Market Research

Anyone can theorize. Go to any marketing or SEO forum on the Internet and you'll find enough theorizing to fill the Library of Congress; net value of said theorizing: $0.00

We have no respect for marketing professionals who engage in marketing without the benefit of market research. Theory has cost businesses billions of dollars.

General Purpose MR

eToys.com
eToys.com once had market capitalization near $10 billion. How much of that was spent on market research? Did these people have children? Market research could have saved stockholders billions of dollars by fixing a number of the exact size of the market wherein online retailing on toys is actually viable.

Pets.com
In 1999, Pets.com spent $61.7 million to sell $5.8 million of goods. A tiny amount of market research would have shown that the online market for pet supplies could not support multi-million dollar advertising.

WebVan
WebVan.com went down with $829.7 million of red ink. Did anybody bother doing market research? No amount of imaginative market research could suggest that a market of that scale existed for Internet grocery sales. Shoppers prefer to feel their fruits and vegetables before they buy. Shoppers prefer to check expiration dates on food products.

SEO Specialty MR

Market research extends beyond researching what percentage of the demographic will be likely to buy your products. As an SEO firm, we research what factors are conducive to higher click though ratios, and what factors are influenced by consumer behavior and lead to higher conversion ratios. This also includes search engine algorithm testing.