Start a Marketing Research Plan
by Interviewing Experts

When beginning a new marketing research plan, let experts guide you.

If you want to evaluate a new market, product category, or industry, talk to experts.

They can provide overviews about trends, opportunities, and issues.

Experts are executives, consultants, trade magazine editors, journalists, industry association executives, technologists, professionals, financial analysts, authors, professors, distributors, dealers, and business owners. And, product users are experts too.

Telephone depth interviews work best with them. Experts are busy.

Speak to about 10 to 15 experts.

Experts are like harbor pilots. They guide you through unfamiliar territory.

Experts focus your on your industry or product category and have much knowledge and experience.

Discover and explore topics. Get a broad perspective about your industry with experts’ opinions and ideas.

Ask experts about,

• Trends
• Opportunities
• Problems and Issues
• Unmet Needs and Wants
• Solutions
• Best Practices

Ask at the industry and product category levels. Also, ask about best practice brands.

Use findings to develop direction for research plans, and begin preliminary marketing SWOT analysis.

You can learn a great deal from exploratory interviews without asking many questions or without knowing precisely which questions to ask.

Explore with qualitative research.

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