Why it is important to conduct research before you start planning a new
advertising campaign?
It’s very important to conduct a research before you do any new project
because, you would want to have all the information you need,
and know exactly what you have
and what you need, and what you are going to
be doing.
Types of researches
Audience research is the type of research all
companies do to find out about their audience. This divided into 4
categories, the first one being Descriptive research, the name says it all,
this is used so people know who they are advertising to, it describes
the audience and their characteristics, like for example their age,
gender or even where they live.
The second
type of research is Analytical research, this is when you think a little
bit like your audience, when you put yourself in their situation, and you think
about what motivates them, and try understand why, what and how, like for
example why did the last product we advertised had more attention than this
current one, and you probably will be able to see what
you missed out.
The third
one is Predictive research, this is when you have to predict and
think about the future, and ask yourself "what if" you
will have to start thinking about a backup, because if something
that you weren't aware of happens,, like for example you change the
name of your company, how are you going to make it visible to all
your audience, that you didn't disappear or the
certain organization stopped, but instead just goes by a different name
now.
This type of
research is useful because, by using this you will be aware of whom your are
doing the advert for, like for example if you didn't do
this research and you were going to make an advert about cream for
skin, but because you didn't know the age of
your audience, you weren't able
to successfully do it, because barriers such as what age model you
are going to hire, appeared.
Another one
could be knowing how your audience thinks, this would be a very
important information because you are not the one buying the
products, and your audience is so by knowing exactly what
they want, is going to help you make the right type
of advertisement that is going to answer all the questions they
want to know.
This type of research is done by following this stages:
1. Target
audience: describe and define the target audience
2. Plan: plan your research
3. Research: collect the data
4. Analyse: what did you find out?
5. Apply: use the evidence in your own
advert.
Market
research is a type of research that companies usually do to, find
out about costumer’s needs and preferences.
This is used
to make sure companies are successful, this is a type of research that
companies do so they can know, who their competitors are, so they know who they
are working against and what they have to be to better than the other company.
Get to know the market, so they are aware of
everything surrounding them, so nothings gets them by surprise.
Or even just to know how to grow as a company.
This type of
research is useful for companies, because by doing this they
will know how their audience feels about their product, like for example
if they have a line of perfumes, that is mostly famous by its smell and bottle
shape, and they decide that they want to change the shape of the bottle, but
because they don't want to lose their audience they will do a research
and find out if that would be a good idea, or not.
Production
research is that most companies use when producing a new product, and it
basically focuses on the production of the product. This is used to gather all
material to allow companies that wants to make new products, do
it successfully and smoothly. This is used when companies want to do know
if they have everything necessary to develop their new product, like for
example if they want to make an advert , they will have to be sure if they have
right material and equipment's, and even make sure they have
budged to hire make-up artists and actors. This is helpful because by
doing this before actually doing the project, will help you succeed it,
because you will be aware of what you can or cannot do.
Primary research is the type of research used when
companies want to do researches that needs to be completely new, or
it hasn't been done before, this is usually done to
find an answer to a specific question. This could be done
by doing a questionnaire, surveys, interviews or group research. By doing
this you would be able to find the answer to your own question.
- An advantage for
this would be because they are the one that made it, they were able
to ask exactly what they wanted to know, and they would have
more control. Like for example a company that produces a certain product, and
they were thinking about making a new flavour for the product, but
they didn't know what type of flavours to produce,
therefore they would put on their website a survey of the different
flavours they wanted to do and their audience would be able to choose it.
- A
disadvantage would be that to a new research from scratch might take
a lot of time, and cost more than if you were just getting one already
done. This is because the time you using to do it, you would be using to
do something else. So it can be a little time consuming.
An example
of a primary research could be if a company wanted to know what they could do
to improve their sell, they would ask their audience what they would like to be
produced.
Another
example for this would be if a university wanted to open a new club but they didn't know what
types of clubs to open, so they would give every student a survey
with the names of the clubs and they would choose.
Secondary
research is the type of research that has been done by someone else, this is when
the information already exists, and this can be found in magazines, newspaper
and others.
- An advantage for this would be
that it’s easy, because someone has already done the survey for you.
- One disadvantage is that if you don’t
know who created, it can be very difficult to know if it is accurate and
honest. This is because secondary research cannot be checked therefore you won’t
always know if it is biased and accurate.
An example
for this would be if someone was writing a book about pets, would add to their
article a research about something that someone done it before, like do cats
actually have 9 lives, and they would add a research that person A did a few
years back to prove the hypothesis.
Quantitative
research is the type of research that deals with money, and amounts of things.
This is usually used when you want to collect data about something, and this is
usually used in questioners.
- An advantage for this would be
that it allows the person doing the research measure and analyse data.
- One disadvantage
would that you can be specific in your questions, like for example if you
do a survey you can only write "yes, no", while the
persons answer might be in the middle like maybe.
An example for
this would be someone wanted to know if there’s more than 25 people in persons
A classroom, therefore they would ask "is there more than 25 people
in your classroom" and the answer would have to
be yes, or no.
Qualitative
research is the type of research you do to find out how people are feeling, this
is to know each person’s opinions. This depends on the people thoughts and
ideas. This can be done in surveys and interviews.
- An advantage for
this would be that it’s easier to ask subsidiary questions, like yes and
no.
- A disadvantage for
this would be that the information gathered may be little, and doing this
might be time consuming, and it might not always be accurate, because if
you do not he questions to a decent amount of people it won’t represent
everyone, but instead just the people you asked.
An example
for his would be if you wanted to know the average of how many people from your
town went to university, you couldn't go to a University and ask the teachers,
instead just go to a place where you think the answers wont
e biased.
