This video talks about the differences between brand research and secondary research and how to best use them to understand your market.
Transcription
Hi, I’m Lee Frederiksen, and today I wanna talk about brand research and secondary research for accounting firms. Now, these are two things that people are sometimes confused about. They might not understand what’s the difference. Secondary research refers to the situation where you find research that’s already been done. You get it from a publisher, a research syndicator, somebody shared some research in the literature, so you’re looking online or you’re going to vendors to get access to certain kind of research.
That’s typically market research. It helps you with answering questions around, where should I compete in the marketplace? Which type of organization should I go after? You can get a good feeling in secondary research for the size of the market, any trends that are impacting the overall market, and who your other competitors might be. So, this kind of tells you, okay, we should be competing in the restaurant distributor market or the tech firm security market, but it doesn’t tell you how to win new business, how to win the clients.
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That’s really something we call brand research does. It looks at your firm and what are the things you can do to gain a competitive advantage that allows you to win the clients. So, you’ll do things like ask, “what are the priorities of your target client group?” What kind of buying process do they go through? How do they perceive your firm and other competitors? What’s the advantage you have over the other competitors in the marketplace? What are the messages that your audience needs to hear to be interested in what you do?
And what are the best ways to deliver those, social media, advertising, you know, sponsorships, you know, what are the best way to get in front of the audience? So, this kind of research has a characteristic of you doing original research, so you’re going out into the marketplace and you’re asking clients and referral sources about this. So, it’s a little bit more complicated and you’re probably gonna need someone to help you with that because clients and referral sources are much more open when they’re talking to an objective third party than when they’re talking directly to you.
So, if you get the right resources and you get it, that will help answer the second part of the equation. So, you’ll not be able to only use your secondary research to say, “these are the markets I should be competing in,” but you’re using your primary brand research to say, “this is how I’m gonna win that business.” Hope you find this helpful.
