Speaker 1: It's time to get analytical. Market research will never be the same, and neither will you after what you'll learn in this video. Hello world. Mike Ploeger and VisMe are back at it to dive headfirst today into analytics. Just like baseball has become an analytical sport, it's time for your business to become an analytical machine. 40% of marketers leverage consumer research to make decisions. They're putting in the hours to know everything they can about their industry, competitors, customers, and everything in between that directly grows their business. And while it may seem a little scary or like a heavy workload to take on, think again. In this video, VisMe and I will share everything that you need to know about creating a market analysis that will help boost your business. From the benefits, to components, to templates that you can edit in minutes, we've got you covered. Shall we? Now before we really dive into the nuts and bolts of this thing, let's just quickly recap what exactly a market analysis is. Put simply, it's an assessment of the market. Duh, right? More specifically, its purpose is to help you find opportunities for growth, develop strategies to overcome obstacles, and better position yourselves in front of your customers. It can be used to launch a new product, revamp your entire business strategy, or take on new ventures. But it doesn't happen all at once. It's a continued effort that keeps your market knowledge at a peak. You'll have insight into the size of the market, the demand for your products or services, purchasing habits of customers, any barriers of entry, what your competition looks like, and various other forces affecting customers and industry players. Writing a market analysis is like looking into the engine of a car and understanding why every little component gets that vehicle from point A to point B. You may be at point A right now, but soon you'll be sitting pretty, riding off into the sunset. Our first and maybe most important benefit to creating a market analysis is that it'll help you make informed decisions. Spotting risks, threats, and opportunities for growth is an opportunity that's hard to pass up. Information is power, and power is growth. Want to see what your competitors aren't seeing? Trying to stay on top of trends before they're even fully trending? Well, create a market analysis. Having that core understanding of your market and the direction it's heading is massively important. A part of your research is listening to the market and what potential, current, or even past customers have to say. You want to be asking these questions. Who or what influences their purchase decisions? What do they expect from brands? Why did those customers choose your product over your competition's? And lastly, how do your customers use your product and does it meet their needs? Once you have these answers, you'll be better positioned to provide targeted solutions and fulfill your customers' needs. As I mentioned in step two, you want to stay ahead of the curve. A market forecast will help you predict trends, financial projections, and characteristics of your target market. This will help you predict what to expect in terms of your revenue, cost, and profit margins. Then, you plan accordingly. And our fifth benefit is quite simple. How else are you measuring your business performance? Do you even know how you stack up against your competitors or what your customers are seeking? Stop winging it and start riding it. It's time to get into the components of a market analysis. When it comes time to start riding your market analysis, there's seven components that you'll want to include. The first is your industry's description and outlook. Determining its current state and future is paramount. You'll want to include information on what the industry offers, the size of the industry, any emerging trends, the rate of or potential growth for your industry, and the sustainability of your industry as a whole. If you're in the world of video production, how big is it now and where is it heading? Those are important questions to answer. Look to government agencies, trade associations, or your local chamber of commerce if you're having a hard time gathering statistics and reports to back your answers. Now that you and any readers have a better understanding of your industry as a whole, the next section you'll want to narrow it down to focus solely on the market that you're operating in. By doing so, you'll be able to more clearly predict how profitable you can be by tackling specific solutions and ideas meant for your target population. It's like getting the best bang for your buck. Take a look at this Visme infographic, which would be a perfect market analysis. By visually representing statistics and information through pie charts, bar charts, and other visuals, a reader can easily identify trends in market data that would otherwise be confusing or wordy. And remember, this is just one Visme template available to edit right now. You can change the colors, fonts, data, information, and everything in between to fit your needs. Now descriptions are quite simple. It's determining trends where it can start to get a little tricky. You'll want to study and note occurrences in your industry that have made impacts on its overall direction. What are some things to look for? Follow along. Changes in consumer preferences, change in market demographics, technological advancements, changing demand in specific products or services, influences in pricing by supplies, and any fluctuations that that's led to. Now that seems like a lot, and you might have no clue on where to begin, but we can help you there too. Check out websites like Think with Google or Google Trends. You also have U.S. Census business data at your fingertips. Or the Pew Research Center. Any of these places can help you see the bigger picture of your market consumer data and how it relates to the overall economy. Keep an eye on your competitors. Are they headed in a direction that you didn't see coming? Maybe they have access to information and analytics that you haven't seen. By watching them closely, you can make more informed decisions. Never skip out on an industry event. Network with industry leaders, subscribe to newsletters, sign up for webinars, watch the news, you name it. Stay current as best as you can. Step four outlines your competition and what you're up against. You'll have a clearer picture of what you need to do to keep up with other industry leaders, or better yet, how to surpass them. This isn't a one-time thing. This will be an ongoing process that shows you who your competition is, what their products and pricing looks like, how they stand out, or an overall bird's eye view of their business. And to give you an example, it'll look something like this. Now there are different ways that you can analyze the competitive market. The most simple is simply investigating them. Scan their website, stalk their social media channels, take a peep at their marketing materials and newsletters, study their reviews, and even buy their products. Do everything that you can to be connected with them and think how they think. Another option you have is using Porter's Five Forces. This breaks down your analysis into five sections, as you can see in this infographic. First up is the bargaining power of suppliers. Are you familiar with how many suppliers are in your area? This will determine how easy it is for them to raise their prices. The more suppliers, the more power that you have. Next is examining the bargaining power of buyers. If you have a lot of competition, then the power lies in the consumer, as they have more options to choose from. The competitive rivalry section will look further into how intense the competition is, how many competitors exist, and what's the quality of their product or service compared to yours. The threat of substitute products examines how easy it is for a consumer to say, yeah, I don't need you anymore, and find another seller. If there's cheaper substitutes for largely the same thing, you could be in trouble. And lastly, there's the threat of new entrants. What's the likelihood of someone new coming to your school to take your boyfriend or girlfriend? A.K.A. could a new business after new business launch and then lessen your market share? It's something you'll want to consider. If you don't like good old Porter, then another option you have is conducting a SWOT analysis. It's a framework for evaluating your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in a two-by-two grid. Your strengths and weaknesses are internal. They're things that you can control. Perhaps it's your workplace culture, patents that you have, technology others don't have, your location. I don't know. You tell me. Opportunities and threats are more external. You have no control over them. These are your market trends, cost of raw materials, economic growth or decline, etc. Your last option would be a strategic group analysis. This will group competitors in the market based on a number of characteristics, including but not limited to company size, product features, distribution channels, and price policy. If you're just starting your business or even just looking to take the next step, a great way to analyze the market and improve your positioning is by exploring what your competition is doing right. How are they adapting to those external factors out of their control? How do they build up their business? Look into their resources, management, operational strategies, marketing strategies, people, and everything in between. By understanding their areas of strength, more doors will open for you. You'll recognize what it takes to be sustainable in the market. You'll identify areas of improvement, and most importantly, you'll take continued steps of growth for your business. The second to last step is making market projections. Where is the market now and where is it headed? This will help answer how sustainable your business is. It's important to not simply guess in this step. Don't be lazy. Find hard, firm research that forecasts the market. Write this down. Statista and Euromonitor are two websites that could be very helpful. You can search a company like McDonald's and analyze market trends, competitor analysis, customer descriptions, and purchase behavior. And that's what you're looking for here. Hone in on market size, projected sales volume, average purchase price for customers, market shares, and industry net margins. But hey, look, another VisMe template to consider. This one is on industry trends for pizza. While it looks at global statistics on how much pizza is eaten to what toppings are the most popular, you can again edit it to fit your needs. It's easy to change the pizza pictures to whatever fits your business. Update the charts with your own numbers, and you could be sharing this to your employees or customers in no time. Your last step is to analyze outside environmental factors. You might be asking, why analyze factors that I have zero control over? And my answer to that is because they can easily disrupt your business processes. Studying them now will help you better prepare and resolve the issues when they arrive. One way to do this is with the PESTLE analysis model. The acronym stands for political, economic, sociological, technological, legal, and environmental. Let's break it down more to help you get an idea of how to plan it out. Political factors include taxation laws, government policies, import restrictions, or likewise. Economic factors are your interest rates or other economic policies. Sociological factors include things we've discussed like lifestyle trends, demographic considerations, location, and more. Environmental innovations and trends could be influential, like the arrival of 5G would be an example. Legal factors include any and all laws from employment to consumer protection to safety. And environmental considerations include your carbon footprint or extreme weather events. And before you go, let's visit one last template. This is another SWOT analysis example that literally spells it out for you. Each page consists of strengths, weaknesses, and so on for this marketing business. You can easily drag and drop new elements into the template, rework the colors, and customize the template to match your style. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you took plenty of notes because it's time for you to start creating. There's no shame in going back and watching again if you need to, but we can assure you if you follow the tips and processes we outlined in this video, your business will be much better off. You'll be able to stand up with the leaders in your industry. Don't let that goal slip your mind. If you made it to this point in the video, please do us a favor and drop a like on the video. And if you want to continue to learn and take your business to the next level, subscribe to our channel. It won't be long before we put out another video just like this one that's meant to help people just like you. Thank you again so much for watching. We'll look forward to seeing you again soon. With Visme, I'm Mike Ploeger, helping you make information beautiful.