Jeff Nock is an experienced leader with years of dedicated work as an executive and consultant to growing startups, established companies, and non-profit organizations. He shares critical insight into market analysis below and explains how it benefits businesses of all sizes.
Jeff Nock
Through years of experience helping companies improve and expand their potential, Jeff Nock has developed a well-rounded understanding of the vital pieces of a growing business. Apart from a few other critical characteristics, Mr. Nock is convinced that businesses can only achieve their potential if they have a full understanding of the market they are operating within.
Market analysis, says Jeff Nock, is both a quantitative and qualitative assessment of your business’ market, which considers customer segments, buying patterns, market volume, economic environment, competitors, and more.
“Using market analysis, companies define their niche and gain insight into the hurdles and barriers in the way of success and what effective means should be taken to reach success,” says Jeff Nock.
He explains that a market analysis will help companies to understand that they are clearly solving a problem as Kleenex did with tissues, or incrementally improving the market like Google did with an Internet search. Once they have confirmed their value proposition, companies need to identify their target market, or who has the problem or needs the incremental improvement. Then market analysis or customer discovery should be done to confirm proper product/market fit. Companies simply can’t do with their products or services what other companies are already doing. Those companies already have market share. Companies must identify a sweet spot or niche where they are better than anyone else or create a product or service that is exponentially better than the competition’s in order to be successful.
“It all begins by understanding your value proposition and being willing to listen to your target market to learn,” says Jeff Nock. “From there, you should start by identifying customer personas and build user profiles and consistently get feedback from people within those profiles as you build your product or service.”
The target customers will be the ones most likely to buy your product and the people who will convert into loyal (hopefully lifelong) customers. Business leaders should discover what it is the target audience wants and needs as well as their interests and general demographics. Jeff Nock encourages including data on their spending habits, the potential growth of your market, where your customer is physically located, what their daily behaviors are and the trends that define them.
“Any market analysis should be data-driven,” says Jeff Nock. “The more solid, unbiased customer discovery data you gather, the more useful your eventual results will be in business planning.”
Before building any products or services, it is imperative to get enough positive, objective customer/prospect feedback on the market demand for what you are planning to build. Too many startups and even more established companies build products or services before having a good understanding of their competition. A thorough competitive analysis should result in a clear understanding of where the product or service will fit in the market and why it will stand out to potential buyers.
From there, Jeff Nock says, businesses have to iteratively continue to conduct market analysis to ensure that next-generation versions of their product or service are desired by the target market and that the company is continually up to speed on the competition.
“Good market analysis, including customer discovery and ongoing competitive analysis, can save companies hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars and months or years of time developing products or services that aren’t ultimately desired by the target market. Good market analysis is like a lighthouse that leads you to success” says Jeff Nock.
