How To Save Your New Business Idea with Market Research

I recently came across a compelling point of view from the Young Entrepreneur Council, focused on how to build your business in a local market, and their advice is valuable to any consumer-facing business. As the CEO of a new-age market research company, I was thrilled to see that their first recommendation was diligent market research.

With any new business or product launch, your passion for the problem you are looking to address and the ‘solution’ you have come up with could tempt you to let your gut drive key decisions for your new business.  However, it is critical to take it one step further so you aren’t basing important and costly decisions on hunches. You can and should use market research to not only validate your hunch but also to get clarity on consumers’ preferences and opinions when it comes to the problem you are looking to solve.
One of the most common market research mistakes I see is when clients look to test their new business idea. Some are simply focused on proving there is purchase intent right off the bat, before having delved into the problem they are looking to address. As a result, they may be testing an implementation of a possible solution that only solves part of the problem, and they lose the opportunity to develop their offering into a more holistic solution. In other words, they come into the market research process with too narrow a focus.
When companies require capital and human power to get off the ground, it becomes an even greater risk to launch too quickly with a solution that hasn’t been fully explored. You can save yourself a lot of time, money and energy by asking key questions to your consumers before making costly decisions.
As you think about conducting market research for a new business idea or product, consider exploring a few of the avenues and questions below to build out your solution further:

• Is your solution solving a real problem? What you deem a need could be viewed by others as convenience, i.e. something that’s nice to have.
• Is the problem ‘universal’ or isolated to certain types of consumer subgroups? This is important to gauge, even in a localized market strategy.
• Are there other related needs you could address? Through market research, you gain a deeper understanding of the extent of the problem you’re trying to solve. You may even discover other helpful features your offering could include.
• Are you talking to an honest audience? It is natural to use your network of friends and family as an initial gut check, but more importantly, you must test your idea with people who will be honest and are not worried about hurting your feelings.

Ultimately, it’s very possible that you’ll discover that consumers feel the way you thought they would, and that’s OK.  Market research may not always yield ‘a-ha’ insights, and it doesn’t always have to when you’re looking to validate a hunch.