Looking to make smarter business decisions this year? Start with market research.
Whether you’re launching a new product, refining your marketing strategy, or trying to improve customer retention, one thing remains constant: the need for reliable data to guide your decisions.
This is where market research proves its value.
Building market research into your budget isn’t just a smart move — it’s a strategic one. It ensures your organization is backed by insights rather than assumptions, helping you stay competitive and aligned with your goals.
Here are some of the most valuable types of market research to consider:
In this blog, our market research company explores each of these methodologies in more detail. We’ll also cover typical costs and considerations to help you plan your research efforts wisely — no matter what month it is.
Market research refers to a variety of methods that gather important data and feedback to promote business strategy.
Common methods include online surveys, focus groups, and interviews (all of which you’ll learn about shortly).
Using the data and feedback obtained, businesses can make the necessary improvements. Ultimately, this can strengthen every area of business, from increased customer loyalty to improved marketing to a healthier workplace culture.
Lastly, we recommend partnering with a third-party market research team like Drive Research. Sure, market research can often be conducted internally, but investing in a partner will save businesses precious time and money.
Now, we’re ready to dive into the numerous benefits of market research.
Recommended Reading: 10 Famous Brands That Depend on Market Research
Much like when planning for your 2025 budget, it is important to establish clear goals when deciding what type of market research methodology is right for your specific business needs.
Luckily, marketing research is successful in solving several common business challenges.
Original research provides organizations with the data and evidence they need to…
Market research comes in many different shapes and forms. It is not always easy to decide what methodology is best aligned with your 2025 goals.
A hybrid research approach (a mix of qualitative and quantitative studies) may be more your speed to receive the actionable data to achieve all of your business development, marketing, sales, and HR objectives.
Whatever it may be, our market research company can recommend the best approach based on years of experience working with various brands and industries.
Like many aspects of market research, there’s no direct answer to how much it costs.
The amount of money you budget for market research depends on…
There are also plenty of ways market research can be made cost-effective, based on your budgetary needs. Generally, research conducted online tends to be cheaper, which leads us to our first point.
Online surveys cost around $8,000 to $40,000.
We know this is a big range! The reason behind this is that there are many different factors that can affect the cost of an online survey.
These factors include:
The cost is also representative of the entire market research process, from the consulting to the reporting stages. Another factor to consider is the sample cost and number of completed surveys.
For instance, if you’re conducting customer surveys, it will cost less to draw from your existing customer base. If you are drawing from outside that pool, this can be more expensive.
The amount of responses you need is also a money factor. Think of it like this: 200 responses will cost more than 100, and so on.
This qualitative market research option costs anywhere from $4,000 to $12,000.
Common factors that influence the cost of a focus group include:
Conducting focus groups online is also a great way to save money.
You’ll save a significant amount of money versus if you conducted them in person. Online focus groups eliminate the need to rent out a space to conduct the research, which is a large reason for the cost reduction.
Conducted to gather detailed data points, in-depth interviews are often used for customer research.
IDIs vary in price but are a more costly option. The main reason for this is that IDIs require a hefty time commitment.
But this is for good reason – it’s important to take your time with this method, since it’s a one-on-one interview.
Additionally, there’s far more to IDIs than just an interview. Not only is creating an interview guide essential but participant recruiting and other factors are also involved.
All of these additional details will also play a role in the final cost.
Recommended Reading: 5 Tips for a Better Research Interview allow a safe outlet for workers to express their lived experiences when it comes to inclusion.
Whether a company wants more business or improved customer retention (or anything else, for that matter), there’s no way market research can’t help. Keep reading to learn why.
A common business goal when looking at the new year is generating new business in order to increase profitability.
Take this example: maybe you have many repeat customers who are more than satisfied with the product or service you have provided. However, where your business is lacking is in acquiring new customers.
With the probability of a customer selling to an existing customer being 60-70%, this is an ongoing challenge for many organizations.
If increasing your book of business is a top priority, we recommend conducting non-customer surveys.
Non-customer surveys are a great learning tool for all types of businesses and should absolutely be included in next year’s budget.
Based on your target market, whether it is a national audience or those who live or work close in proximity, surveying non-customers can provide detailed insight into why your target buyers are not currently doing business with you.
How to Survey Non-Customers
It can be difficult to collect contact information to reach those who match your customer persona but are currently giving their business elsewhere.
Not to worry! A market research firm like Drive Research will use a unique and tested approach to recruit survey respondents who match your ideal customer.
Depending on your audience type, sample sources include third-party panels, paid social media ads, or a combination of both.
Customer retention refers to the ability of a brand or product to keep loyal customers over a period of time.
Why Customer Retention Is Critical
High customer retention indicates a business is able to keep returning customers satisfied.
Even more importantly, high customer retention means an organization is not losing customers to its competitors. In many industries, it is a consumer market – meaning, a customer has several different brands to choose from.
As important as customer retention is for a business, it is a common challenge for organizations everywhere. According to SEM Rush, the average American company will lose 23% to 30% of its customers each year due to a lack of customer loyalty.
The bigger issue here is that the probability of selling to an existing customer is between 60% and 70% – whereas the probability of selling to a new customer is only between 5% to 20%.
In our experience, budgeting for customer experience (CX) market research in 2025 can certainly help.
More and more organizations are recognizing the importance of a structured CX program for their business.
With every new customer or client that leaves, so does a piece of your business, and that piece of your business is given to a competing organization. A large majority of why customers leave a business or decide not to go through with a transaction is because of poor customer service.
Our customers aren’t the only people who deserve to be happy and satisfied: your employees do, too!
It is important to understand what encourages employees to drive profitability and remain committed to your organization.
There are multiple reasons an organization should be budgeting for employee engagement.
Some common reasons organizations use employee surveys include:
Although many organizations choose to place a large portion of their budgets on improving customer-centric strategies, it is just as important to pay attention to the opinions and feelings of those who work for us in an attempt to improve employee wellbeing.
Losing top-performing employees can come at a very real cost. Not to mention the significant costs associated with new employee training programs.
While there could be many reasons why employees look for a new job, using custom surveys can pinpoint the exact issue of what is causing a turnover at your organization.
By obtaining employee feedback, organizations are able to better understand employees’ needs so they can become better brand advocates, performers, and less inclined to go on the hunt for a new job.
The employee survey process is quite simple. However, the toughest part of the process for some organizations is welcoming real, unbiased, confidential feedback from employees. Let a market research company help act as the middleman.
There is no denying the importance and impact marketing has on any business. Depending on your audience, strategies such as pay-per-click (PPC) ads, email campaigns, SEO, and improved website user experience can generate a lot of revenue.
For that reason, it’s rare that companies don’t have a line item (or an entire section) dedicated to marketing on their yearly budgets.
Marketing experts report there is a common rule of thumb when it comes to establishing a marketing budget.
When investing this much money into something, isn’t it better to use data and consumer feedback to drive ad copy, designs, sources of distribution, and so on?
It’s why data-driven marketing campaigns offer brands a better chance of seeing higher returns on their advertising investments.
And the best market research methodology for this objective is ad concept testing surveys.
You’ve likely heard of A/B testing. Marketers will launch two ad sets, each with ads that are slightly different from the other.
After spending some time and money on platforms like Facebook Ads or Google Ads, you decide which ad is better based on which performed better or generated more sales.
But did you know using surveys for A/B tests could provide more insights than the traditional approach discussed above?
The steps to conducting an ad concept testing survey include:
1. Defining your objectives. Are your ads already created? Are you still in the concept phase? What are your goals for the market research? What are you hoping to learn? Who is your target audience? Answering these questions at the start will ensure your objectives are met at the end of the project.
2. Choosing between monadic and sequential monadic testing. Monadic testing shows respondents only one of the advertisement concepts at a time. Sequential monadic testing shows respondents several ad concepts to compare and contrast. Learn more about the pros and cons of each type of survey design in our blog post, What is Monadic Testing and Sequential Monadic Testing in Market Research?
3. Writing the concept testing survey. Keep your list of objectives close as you write the survey. Assure that all questions are necessary and stick to the goal at hand. We recommend keeping the survey no longer than 25 questions. If you’re stuck, here are 11 Ad Concept Testing Example Survey Questions to Steal Right Now.
4. Programming and fielding. Once the survey is approved, it’s time to transfer the questions from a document to an online survey platform. Test the survey thoroughly with our programming checklist for surveys. Then launch the questionnaire to target respondents whether it be through online panels, social media ads, or with the help of an online survey company like Drive Research (we can take care of the entire survey process from kickoff to reporting).
5. After you close the fieldwork, begin analyzing the survey data. Remove any responses that are not high quality (Here’s how). Based on the feedback, use these insights to make improvements to the ad campaign.
The benefits of ad concept testing are endless. They are a cost-effective solution to gather quick, actionable feedback from your brand’s target audience.
As a result, the ROI of these campaigns is higher because you know exactly what message, design, and medium will generate the most interest.
Recommended Reading: Ultimate Guide to Ad Concept Testing Surveys
As a full-service market research firm, Drive Research has seen and done it all.
We have successfully partnered with organizations all over the world to improve their business strategies and meet challenging goals.
There are multiple market research methodologies to consider conducting in 2025 should they be right for your organization.
Here are just a few examples of other market research options available for your organization in the coming year:
If curious to learn the costs associated with conducting any of these studies, simply contact our market research firm today.
After understanding more about your organization and specific business objectives, Drive Research can provide a more finite estimate. This will help give a better indication of how much your market research budget should be for 2025.
Interested in learning more about our market research services? Reach out today.
