Slides for a seminar on market research for startups and small businesses held at The Business Show 2014 on May 15 and 16. Short overview of DIY and new full-service but still affordable market research tools.

1. Market research
for startups:
understand your customers and
reduce your risks

2. The big ones
spend enormous budgets
to research the marketplace
US $ 31.2 billion worldwide
US $ 3.2 billion in the UK
US $ 9.9 billion in the USA

3. Those guys never
develop or market a product until they
reduced their risk to a minimum

4. 40%
26%
22%
12%
How do they spend those 31bln?
To understand their customers
and reduce their risks
Understanding:
U&A, qual, CRM
Risk reduction: pre-tests, modeling
Ad tracking
Other

5. Understand
• What do customers need?
• Are they ready to pay?
• What colors they like?
• What messages are relevant
to them?
• What services they expect?
• What and why they would tell
their friends?
Reduce risks
• What’s size of my market?
• Who will pay my price?
• Which design will sell better?
• What they understand
from my ads?
• Is free delivery necessary?
• Who will recommend me?

6. Well, maybe you wouldn’t
mind to understand and
reduce risks too?

7. Why startups
and SMEs are
not in the game?
It used to be expensive!
It used to take months!

8. This used to be true…

9. Nowadays most research
studies are just copy-pasted
by thousands of managers.
Expensive managers hours
in expensive offices.

10. DIY research was a
breakthrough in 2000s

11. SurveyMonkey: do it yourself!

12. 850 000 surveys per months!
Belong
to paid
accounts
47%
250-300
thousands
paid surveys!

13. SurveyMonkey: write q’re
Write your
questionnaire
Max 10 questions
for free
No logic &
complex
questions for free

14. Distribute link for your survey
Max 100 responses for free
Still those are YOUR responses,
you have to find them
SurveyMonkey: find responses

15. See summarized
and raw responses
Pre-defined charts
and tables on per
question basis
No export for free
No analysis at all
SurveyMonkey: analyze data

16. SurveyMonkey
is a great tool,
still some challenges
do persist

17. What questions to ask?
— It just seems easy to ask questions
— But usually takes a little more time than you expected
— Not only your questions – introduction, profile, branch logic
— Question types are confusing
— SurveyMonkey questionnaire designer is for professionals,
which is great if that’s who you are
— Results are quite sensitive to questionnaire wording, presentation
and a lot of other little things
— Bottom line: you have to learn new things to design
your own questionnaire

18. How to find responses?
— You’ve launched your survey, now what?
Data collection takes
surprisingly a lot of time,
even if you have an
active customer base.
1.5-2 weeks is average!
And what if you don’t?

19. How to interpret results?
For any non-trivial
questions answers
and percentages
itself are
meaningless.
You need action
standards and
benchmarks.
Both are usually
a byproduct of
previous research
experience.

20. Next-gen research tools
are here to help

21. Write questions
Find respondents
Get results
Analyse results
Select target
Write questions
Get analysed
results
Select target
Get analysed
results
Select target
Get analysed
results
Up to 24 hours
$0.10 - $3.50
per respondent
£7 - £40
per respondent
£1.70
per respondent

22. GCS: select target

23. GCS: build questionnaire

24. GCS: summary of results

25. Google Consumer Surveys
is good for …
Measuring market size
Do you own a dog?
Understanding customers
Which quality do you look for most when
purchasing a dog toy?
Timely questions
Which of the following messages do you like
most for a dog toy company?

26. ZappiStore: buy product

27. ZappiStore brings SMBs expertise
of global MR companies
TNS Conversion Model
helps you identify and size growth opportunities
for your brand
MillwardBrown eStatic
helps you select the best creative for your brand
Mmr Impackt
helps you to optimize your packaging design

28. ZappiStore: set-up and launch

29. ZappiStore is good for…
All situations when you have to show your
results to any outside parties
— You buy research product endorsed by
recognized analytics brand
— Still it costs thousands of pounds, though
much cheaper than the same products bought
directly from traditional agencies

30. Proved.co is about testing ideas
Start-up ideas
Product ideas
App ideas
Product features
Promo ideas
Product claims
Price points
— Get feedback from
potential customers
— Benchmark your
ideas against
thousands of others
— 2 hours to get
the resuts
— £ 35 – 170 per idea

31. Proved.co: set-up
Pick your plan,
narrow your
target group

32. Type in your
idea, and click
Launch!

33. Proved.co: first feedback in minutes

34. Proved.co: your idea analysed and
scored against thousands of others

35. Proved.co is good for
— Validation of any business-related ideas
— New business / new product
— New marketing campaign / new promotion
— New price strategy / price promotion
— Quick choice between two and more
— Directions, concepts, ideas, messages, etc
— Investment opportunities, etc.

36. Final
thoughts

37. — Whatever you do, it’s investment – of your
money, your time, your passion
— It’s time to understand your customers and
reduce your risks, like big guys do, because
your investments are much more precious and
risks are much more disastrous
— Research your market, test your ideas.
— You can do it yourself and learn a couple of
new things in the process.
— Or use a new generation of research tools:
easy-to-use, fast, accurate and cost-effective.

38. Questions? Comments?
Alex Lomizov
Co-founder @Proved
E-mail: alex@proved.co
Web: http://proved.co
Twitter: @proved_co
Facebook: proved.co
LinkedIn: alomizov