What we do

Market profiling and buyer behaviour

“People who mean to be their own governors should arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives.”

James Madison

Market research can help you profile and understand how your target market ticks.  Perhaps you need to look at a new target market, or an unfamiliar geography?  Or perhaps there are a group of potential customers you need to understand more about?  

We tailor what we do to address the specific issues you have. 

There are a wide variety of different techniques we can use to help you better understand your market and reach the right audience.  We offer a range of services in this area to help meet a wide variety of different requirements:

  • Profiling new opportunities
  • Market sizing
  • Identifying and defining target audiences
  • Understanding buyer psychology and behaviour
  • Market segmentation
  • Customer persona development
  • Promotional strategy development

There are many different research techniques we can employ but we are great believers in horses for courses.  We never try to impose a specific ‘pet’ model since one size never fits all.

Use this service to help you:

  • understand and quantify future opportunities,
  • profile and refine your understanding of your target audience,
  • understand buyer behaviours and motives for engagement,
  • identify the best channels to use,
  • develop effective messaging,
  • develop an evidence-based marketing strategy.

Brand image and awareness

A sound understanding of how your market perceives your brand is an essential foundation for any brand strategy.  However, that’s just a starting point.

Simply knowing how things stand today, or even how things have changed over the past year, is often not enough to tell you what you need to do next. 

Some brand gurus would no doubt tell you that developing a marketing plan ought not be over complicated.  You still need to get your messaging right, of course.  However, as far as targeting is concerned, all you need to do is promote your brand as widely and as frequently as possible. 

Simple right? 

Simple, that is, if you have a large marketing budget.  Then you can afford to splash out of regular promotions across multiple channels.  Realistically most brand managers face hard choices as to where and how to spend their budget.  A well-designed piece of market research can help you make such decisions effectively. 

Good quality brand insight really comes down to understanding what you need to do next, not just monitoring what’s already happened.  That’s the kind of research we believe brands need and that’s the kind of research we’re most interested in getting involved with.

Use this service if you want to:

  • … build and strengthen the profile and image of existing brands,
  • … rationalise and bring clarity to a confused portfolio of legacy brands,
  • … make decisions about whether you need to re-brand,
  • … make decisions about how best to re-brand,
  • … develop evidence-led briefs to guide your marketing agency,
  • … develop effective marketing messages and campaigns.
Brand image

“If you are not a brand, you are a commodity.”

Philip Cotler

New product development

Hand holding compass

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around.”

Steve Jobs

Developing a new product or service is a challenge.  But it can be made a lot easier when the process is guided by feedback from the market.

However, the kind of insight you need often depends on what stage of the development cycle you’re at.  Are you, for example, looking to develop an entirely new product or just develop an improved version of an existing one?   

You don’t need to leave tough development decisions to chance, let us help you get the insight you need to make sound evidence-based decisions.  Tailor your development strategy to address real customer needs and preferences.

Use this service to help you:

  • Discover emerging market trends, unfulfilled needs, and potential opportunities to support early-stage idea generation,
  • Decide which features to build in and which to leave out of a new product or service,
  • Prioritise between difficult choices in finalising a product design,
  • Define and size the target market for a new product /service. 
  • Use hard facts to demonstrate the scale and nature of the opportunity for investors and key stakeholders.
  • Formulate the optimum pricing strategy for your product launch.
  • Devise an engaging promotional strategy for a forthcoming launch.

Customer experience

Customer engagement and loyalty is now more important than ever.  It has always been critical for building a strong pipeline of repeat business.  However, in a modern age where customer reviews and recommendations have a significant impact on winning new business, strong customer engagement and endorsement is essential.

We believe in helping our clients get meaningful feedback from their customers to help prioritise future improvements and build loyalty.  That could be designing and managing an end-to-end customer loyalty research program for you.  Or perhaps you just need our help and guidance in setting up a program that you run in-house. 

Use this service to help you:

  • Devise a strategy to improve customer loyalty.
  • Reduce customer churn.
  • Win more repeat business.
  • Win more recommendations and positive ratings.
  • Identify and focus on the key drivers of positive customer engagement.
Customer experience

“If you build a great experience, customers tell each other about that.  Word of mouth is very powerful.”

Jeff Bezos

Pricing strategy

Pricing image

“If you have a great product and service paired with the wrong pricing strategy/business model, you don’t have a business.”

Richie Norton

Pricing is a key part of the marketing mix, yet it can sometimes be addressed as a bit of an afterthought. 

However, we all know that if prices are set too high, sales volumes and market share will suffer.  But, set them too low and profits get squeezed unnecessarily.

Market research helps get the balance right, identifying the optimum price range for your offer.  Whether it’s an existing product or a new one, we can help you with this.

You can model the impact of price increases or discounting on likely volumes and margins, performing a variety of what-if analyses.  Make the case for your pricing decisions in a language that your CFO will understand and appreciate.

Use this service to help you:

  • Set prices for new products and services.
  • Understand the likely impact of price changes on market share or margins.
  • Model the impact of different pricing levels for both new and existing offerings.
  • Understand how different groups of customers will respond to different pricing strategies.

PR surveys and thought leadership

In a single 30-day period in the autumn of 2020, the Financial Times published 70 news items that referenced market research surveys on their website. 

The media loves the hard numbers that market research can generate – when done right, it gives journalists something tangible and interesting to write about.

It’s a good way to generate marketing content that will attract not only media interest but also helps to engage with prospects. 

When elevated to the level of Thought Leadership it can help position your brand as experts in your field, demonstrating a genuine understanding of your market.

We have over 30 years of media experience, working alongside journalists.  This provides us with an insider view what is likely to resonate best with a media audience.

Use this service to help you:

  • Generate content for a PR campaign,
  • Generate marketing content for your website,
  • Generate compelling marketing collateral for your salesforce,
  • Design and execute Thought Leadership initiatives that raise your profile and strengthen your reputation.
  • Generate robust content for a Thought Leadership whitepaper or mini website.
  • Become a recognised Thought Leader in your market.
Girls reading newspapers

“If everyone is thinking alike, then no-one is thinking.”

Benjamin Franklin

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