When someone exclaims MARKETING, what immediately comes to mind?
Advertisement, sales calls, commercials and infomercials?
When asked what career paths Marketing can offer your, how do you response?
Ad Man, digital designer, or salesman?
My impression, (even when I knew better), was that Marketing and Advertisement were 100% synonymous: the entire spectrum of the marketing industry composed of either designing ads for different mediums or traveling to customers to conduct sales. Advertisement and sales, however, do not compose the entirety of the marketing communication mix, let alone the industry. Evidently, my perception was clouding many promising opportunities from myself. One prospect was market research.
Who should we market ourselves to? What communication strategy is optimal to connect to that market? What can we “say” to bind that connection? How can we reach our goals? What should those goals even be? Before you can consider a marketing campaign of any sort, these questions must be answered. How we answer those questions, and many others, is with Market research.
In market research you collect, analyse, and interpret data on the market. Your interpretations provide the building blocks for all other fields within marketing. Yet, despite its significance, the field is often overlooked when one is considering a career. Market research can provide you with, or provide an excellent start to, a fulfilling career. To reduce its overlook, the following five tools that a job in market research can provide you with are presented:
1. Strategic Development
Is it your goal to develop the long-term plans behind the marketing operations? Market research may then be an optimal start for you. Market research provides the criteria that determines what decisions are made, and what directions are taken. It, therefore, should not be a surprise to note that researchers are often the provisioner of not only research, but also the strategic recommendations, and implementation processes associated with their findings. It is one of the closest fields associated with strategic marketing.
2. Communication
Insights from data collected must be clearly presented to clientele. The amount of insights, and data collected, can be substantial. Subsequently, market researchers need to input a significant amount of work into compressing, communicating, and clarifying their findings. The experience creates exceptional communication skills.
3. Organization and Planning:
A research design can be anything from a laboratory experiment, to a full-scale mixed methodology report. Accordingly, the research process takes significant thought, planning, and organization to come to fruition. Therefore, by necessity, Market researchers develop impressive organization and planning skills.
4. Networking:
Market research can be difficult and time consuming. It is, however, indispensable. Having the skills to conduct research allow you to be an asset to anyone in any industry. The consequence is limitless network opportunities.
5. Industry Knowledge
A considerable aspect of market research is keeping up, and analysing, trends in the market. Keeping up with the trends puts you at the forefront of the industry knowledge. Being at the forefront allows you to be one of the first to observe the trajectory of the market and see where opportunities may lie.