Undertaking brand research helps you gain valuable insight towards the health of your brand. It helps you recognise what percentage of your target audience is actually aware of your brand and how it performs against the competition.

Brand research is especially important for new businesses that are still trying to establish their hold in the market and want to strategize how to effectively do that. Before you start with the research, here are a few questions (answered) that might pop in your mind:

What is Brand Research?

Brand research is done, in simple language, to unveil the truth about your brand. It answers questions like ‘Is my target audience aware of my brand?’, ‘Why does my audience choose my brand (or in some cases, the competitor brand)?’ and much more. A comprehensive brand research will make you aware of competition, threats, strengths, opportunities and weaknesses of your brand and the competition.

Brand research will provide valuable and actionable data about how your brand is performing and why it is performing a certain way.

Why You Need to Conduct Brand Research?

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The above graph shows the parity in growth rate and profitability among brands that conduct research at different frequencies. The question arises ‘why is there this difference?’ The answer is quite simple actually, research provides the marketers (or business owners) with solid data that can be used to derive effective strategies for marketing, operations, and all the other areas of your business.

According to a well-established branding agency in London, another reason research is important because it takes out all the guesswork from the equation. On many instances, major decisions about messaging, tonality and even business direction are left upon guesswork. With a comprehensive brand research, you can be sure about what you want to do in future and what strategy is best applied to achieve your goals.

How to Conduct a Comprehensive Brand Research?

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• Qualitative research- This kind of research brings in focus groups in most cases. These are ideal for specific brand concepts in depth. You can also employ one on one interviews over the telephone or online surveys. Make sure the questions are unaided and open ended. This will result in subjective answers. It is also advisable to conduct a 360 degree research that involves samples of target groups, employees, management and stakeholders alike.

• Quantitative research- Unbiased and large scale research will be more objective and will help you confirm the results of your qualitative research. Ensure that the sample that is being targeted for the research is a healthy mixture of all kinds of age groups, income groups, and spans across different demographics and a large geographic area as well.

• Competitive analysis– Whether you are rebranding or launching a new product of simply introducing a new offer on the existing product/services, it is vital to understand the current market scenario. Gaining an insight into what the competition is doing, what is their USP can help you position your brand in a distinct and noticeable place, thus driving conversions.

Conclusion

To wrap up, I would like to point out that conducting research is just the beginning. To convert your results into growth is key. Document your results and use them as a guide to build strategies that will resonate with your brand and your target audience.