Can you share best practices to do impactful market research on a tight budget?

Most of the cost associated with research is actually the cost of accessing a sample, so if you can figure out that piece, you should be in a much better spot. A couple of ideas:  1/ Talk to your happiest, unhappiest customers, customers that churned, and "prospects", if possible. Use your budget for incentives. This sample will at least give you the "extremes" of attitudes.  2/ There are some helpful online tools that you can sign up for and "trial" them at no cost- Optimal Sort, UserTesting, S ...Read More

Market research on a tight budget, or what I like to call "Scrappy research" - my favorite! First, let me start with a quote - “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” Many a research project hasn’t gotten off of the ground for fear it won’t be statistically significant or have thousands of responses. But guess what? Some market research is much better than NO market research.   Here are some quick ideas:   Email a survey to your existing customer base  Message targets on LinkedIn with surveys  ...Read More

For Primary Research on a tight budget, surveys via any number of free online tools are super common and can provide at least directional insights, though you may have to clear legal/privacy issues and you'll definitely have to be thoughtful about how you structure your survey (i.e. a small number of the most strategic questions) for maximum impact. Customer and prospect interviews provide higher fidelity insights since your subjects will be more engaged and you can blend exploratory with direct ...Read More

That all depends on the type of research, its purpose and the impact you hope it will have. The most impactful research, for me, has always been primary market research in the form of interviews with a population representative of the intended audience. All that costs is my time ("opportunity cost" is a discussion for another day).  On the other hand, sometimes the impact comes from the existence of the research in and of itself. For example, a report commissioned from a big-name research firm m ...Read More