How Market Research Changed My Business
Gogs a édité cette page il y a 8 mois

Recently, I watched as three similar businesses poured resources into developing their operations on a specific social media platform. Their initiatives were unsuccessful as the medium appeared to be a mismatch for our industry.

Helping a food brand, we developed a strategy where influencers genuinely incorporated products into their daily lives rather than generating clear promotions. This strategy produced engagement rates 218% higher than conventional marketing posts.

During a marketing workshop in Eastern Province last month, I was surprised when a business owner told me he was paying 5K SAR monthly to his "digital expert" who turned out to be a young amateur running campaigns from his bedroom! No judgment on hustling students, but professional certification and training matter enormously in this field.

Recently, a skincare retailer spent 300,000 SAR in conventional marketing with limited outcomes. After moving just 25% of that spending to social collaborations, they achieved a dramatic growth in sales.

Initiate by identifying ALL your competition – not just the obvious ones. Throughout our analysis, we identified that our largest rival wasn't the famous business we were watching, but a new company with an innovative model.

For a banking institution, we created a flexible layout approach that automatically transformed controls, fonts, and structure based on the selected language, generating a 42% growth in audience participation.

I currently use several applications that have substantially improved our competitive landscape analysis research:

  • SEO tools to track competitors' keyword performance
  • Brand monitoring software to track rivals' digital footprint
  • Website analysis tools to track changes to their websites
  • Newsletter subscription to receive their promotional messages

Six months into operations, our conversions were dismal. It wasn't until I chanced upon a comprehensive study about our niche that I understood how ignorant I'd been to the business environment around us.

A cosmetics company changed from multiple single collaborations to longer-term relationships with a smaller number of influencers, generating a substantial increase in sales and a significant decrease in marketing expenses.

I suggest organizing competitors as:

  • Primary competitors (offering nearly identical solutions)
  • Indirect competitors (with partial similarity)
  • New threats (new entrants with innovative capabilities)

I use a basic tracker to track our competitors' costs changes every week. This has already enabled us to:

  • Identify periodic discount patterns
  • Recognize special offer tactics
  • Understand their value positioning

With extensive testing for a meal service client, we discovered that advertisements presented between night time substantially surpassed those shown during standard peak hours, producing one hundred sixty-three percent higher conversion rates.

When I started my e-commerce business three years ago, I was certain that our unique products would sell themselves. I overlooked market research as a waste of time – a mistake that practically cost my entire venture.

  1. Verified local success stories - Not just general case studies, but real results with Saudi businesses in your specific sector. When I spoke to our current agency, they showed me exactly how they helped a company resembling ours boost their Riyadh customer base by two hundred fifteen percent in 8 months.

I spend at least two hours each regularly reviewing our competitors':

  • Online organization and navigation
  • Content strategy and posting schedule
  • Online platforms engagement
  • Customer reviews and ratings
  • Search tactics and positions

  • Team members with recognized industry qualifications

  • Dedicated departments (not one person doing everything)

  • Proper organizational structures

  • Experience with Saudi compliance requirements and compliance issues

  1. Cultural expertise - This is HUGE and often overlooked. Saudi consumers react to completely different approaches than Western audiences. The leading digital company will understand nuances like the importance of Ramadan campaigns, regional preferences across different Saudi cities, and how to engage effectively with the Saudi demographic you're targeting.
  • Place the most critical content in the right upper area of the page
  • Structure information segments to advance from right to left and top to bottom
  • Apply stronger visual importance on the right side of symmetrical designs
  • Confirm that pointing icons (such as arrows) orient in the right direction for RTL designs

Last year, I was sitting in this elegant office in Riyadh (you know, one of those places with the glass walls and overpriced modern art), agreeing as an agency promised me the world. Six months and fifty thousand Http://Cgi2.Bekkoame.Ne.Jp SAR later, our traffic had increased by a whopping... wait for it... 3%. Not exactly the result I was hoping for! ‍♂️

As someone who has created over 30 Arabic websites in the last half-decade, I can tell you that applying Western UX practices to Arabic interfaces falls short. The special features of Arabic script and Saudi user expectations require a completely different approach.