Research may sound foundational, but it’s not something to leave behind as your business grows. In fact, data-driven research could be your most powerful tool for growth. Read on to learn how B2B market research works, practical steps to conduct it effectively and ways to maximize its value for your business. 

What is B2B Market Research?

Without data to inform your strategy, marketing can easily slip into the territory of guesswork. Business-to-business (B2B) market research is how brands ensure their business decisions are based in reality, and how we ensure we understand our audience — other business decision makers in this case — as they really are, rather than what we assume about them. During the process, we leverage data about our competitors and target audiences to inform everything from messaging to paid media strategy and beyond. This data is particularly important in the B2B space, where sales cycles are longer, transaction values are typically higher and audiences and markets are more niche than in business-to-consumer sales (B2C). 

With thorough and strategic B2B market research, you obtain concrete data to inform your most critical business questions:

  • Where are your best opportunities? Where could you encounter risks?
  • How can your product or service best address audience pain points and needs?
  • How should you position your brand and offerings? What message do audiences need to hear?
  • Who should your sales team target – and when, or where?
  • Where can you fill the gaps left by competitors?
  • Is your strategy taking the latest market trends into account?

4-Step Process for Conducting B2B Market Research

When done right, market research provides the foundation for strategic decision making and business growth. To ensure your efforts are effective, follow this four-step process, complete with tips to avoid common pitfalls.

Infographic gears with four steps

1. Partner with a Professional Analyst

You can — and should — conduct some of your own market research to inform your perspective on your audience. But it’s well worth working with a professional, too — ideally, a subject matter expert in your target industry. 

On a practical level, industry analysts perform research more efficiently from a broader audience. They typically have resources ready to go and may even have existing data you can use, saving you time and money. Additionally, their insider knowledge ensures your research is thorough and aligned with industry trends and best practices. 

They’ll be able to help you ask the right questions, interpret the data you collect and bridge the gap between you and your audience. Working with a professional market research partner is well worth the investment, and this strategy is closely tied to Conveyor’s own thought leadership strategy (more on this later). 

As we walk through the next steps, just bear in mind that you’ll often get the best ROI if you partner with an industry analyst.

2. Set Guidelines to Stay on Target

Trying to learn everything about your audience at once isn’t practical. Clearly outline what you want to achieve before you begin. Are you exploring a new market, assessing the potential for a new product or identifying customer pain points? Avoid the pitfall of being too vague; your goal is focused research that yields actionable insights.

In addition to the “what,” you need to pinpoint the ”who,” too. This is the specific segment of your audience that you want to research. 

Say you have a medical solution that you market to multiple audiences, including insurance companies, hospitals and residential care facilities. You should tailor your research to each audience segment separately, as their needs, priorities and decision-making processes differ. Narrowing your focus helps ensure your results will be relevant and specific. Like being too vague with your purpose, generalizing your audience can weaken the insights that come from your research.

3. Choose Your Research Methods

Well-rounded research consists of a combination of qualitative, quantitative, primary and secondary research:

  • Qualitative research reveals your audience’s motivations and behaviors.
  • Quantitative research provides measurable data points about that audience.
  • Primary research connects you directly to your audience, usually via surveys, interviews, focus groups, and direct feedback. 
  • Secondary research is the industry reports, competitor analysis and market trends you consult. This information comes from professional analysts who have studied and written about your audience. 

Primary research is the best way to get firsthand accounts tailored to your specific needs. While it can be quantitative, this is often where you’ll find your best qualitative insights. Secondary research is often the most efficient way to get quantitative data about a representative population (but it also provides valuable qualitative data).

You have lots of options for executing your research, but price is going to be an important factor to consider. Your three main options for research range in expense and include:

  • Hiring a large research firm like McKinsey or Gartner for custom, end-to-end research ($$$$)
  • Using your own content, audience lists and a tool like SurveyMonkey ($)
  • Working with an industry analyst or trade publication and using their existing data sources or generating your own custom research, then working with them to publish your findings ($$–$$$)

An experienced agency can help you choose the best path to maximize your ROI and navigate these vendor negotiations. They can also help you interpret your findings and use it to generate a sales or marketing strategy.

4. Start Data Collection

A few tips while collecting data:

  • Ensure you phrase and present questions in primary research to minimize bias and maximize your chance of getting honest answers.
  • Lean on technology and tools that can make your process more efficient. SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics can help you collect primary data, while tools like Meltwater and Brandwatch allow you to monitor and measure third-party conversations happening around a brand online (in the news, on social media, in blogs, forums, etc.)
  • You can use AI tools like ChatGPT to kickstart your research, but you’ll need to manually verify the information you find.
  • Vet your secondary sources to ensure they’re credible and up-to-date — while you can look at historical trends, it’s good to have info on what your market looks like right now.
  • Keep a central database and make sure you record relevant metadata.
  • Don’t collect data just because you can. Stay on task and stick to your goals!

Composing B2B Market Research Questions

If you’re doing primary research, the quality of your insights can be completely driven by the questions you ask in interviews, surveys and other touchpoints. The questions below are a sampling of what we’ve used on past projects. It’s important to note that these are all open-ended, as they are intended as conversational-style interview questions. When conducting a larger scale survey, we reframe questions like these so participants can answer by multiple or ranked choice, which becomes critical when you want to crunch larger data sets and look for trends.

Brand Awareness

These questions aim to uncover what the market knows and thinks about your brand:

  • How did you learn about [Brand Name]?
  • Have you worked with any other companies like [Brand Name]?  Who were they and what was your experience?
  • What triggered your search for a solution like [Brand Name]?
  • What advantages do you associate with [Brand Name] over other options? Disadvantages?

Persona-Focused Research Questions

Persona-focused questions can help you understand who makes up your market and offer valuable data for sales and segmentation as well as content and messaging strategies:

  • What industry sector do you work in? What is the size of your company?
  • What is your job title? What are the job titles of those you report to and work closely with?
  • What skills and tools do you use on a daily basis?
  • What websites, blogs, social media accounts, professional associations or publications do you follow for industry news and continuing education?
  • Which aspects of your role are most time-consuming, frustrating, stressful, etc.?
  • How is your work/performance measured?
  • What are your primary responsibilities?
  • What problems do you need to solve?
  • What are some business-related Google searches you’ve conducted recently?  Where did you find useful answers?
  • How do you participate in the process when your team needs a new business solution?
  • What are your reservations or concerns when purchasing a solution?

How to Use B2B Market Research

This is the most important step in a B2B market research plan — actually using the data you collect to drive business decisions. While there are a lot of options available for using your research, let’s look at three major areas: go-to-market, segmentation and thought leadership.

Go-to-Market Strategy

Use your research to debut a new product or service armed with better insights about your audience, competitors and market dynamics to:

  • Tailor your messaging to address specific pain points and needs.
  • Reach potential clients/customers on the channels they use most.
  • Inform a content strategy that draws in and educates target audiences.
  • Determine the best timing and pricing for your product launch.
  • Design promotions based on audience preferences.
  • Identify regional or local opportunities.
  • Differentiate your offering from competitors.
  • Set realistic KPIs (key performance indicators) for your sales and marketing teams.

Market research for your go-to-market strategy can balance out the uncertainty of launching something new, set clear expectations internally and put you in a better position to make your launch successful.

Segmentation and Targeting

Your market research should reveal new insights about who makes up your audience and help you create groups based on job roles, company size, region or past interactions with your brand. Having these groups established can help you move beyond a one-size-fits-all strategy and create sophisticated marketing campaigns that use unique messaging for each audience. 

Using your market research to create reliable segments can also help you improve ROI for your marketing tools, increase efficiency and scale effectively; for many tools (e.g., HubSpot), segmentation unlocks new capabilities. For example, you can use segmented lists to automate targeted email campaigns, nurture leads with tailored workflows and send personalized follow-ups based on specific behaviors or demographics.

Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is a major pillar of what we do at Conveyor, and it’s a strategy that hinges on market research. By leveraging data-driven insights, thought leadership pieces allow you to move beyond basic brand promotion and sales pitches and deliver an asset to your audience that is truly valuable and unique to you. In the age of AI, offering original content backed by real data is a major differentiator.

Here is our process for leveraging B2B market research into a successful thought leadership strategy:

  1. Work with an industry analyst to set goals, choose research methods and collect data about your target audience and industry.
  2. Produce a research piece (e.g., a gated white paper) that tells an industry-level story – for example, about the current state or future of your market (as opposed to a product or sales story).
  3. Use media partnerships with trade publications to create lead gen content like webinars or feature your in-house experts in panel discussions or speaking opportunities at trade shows.
  4. Support your original research with ungated content assets on social, your blog and any of your other owned channels.

The initial B2B market research then kicks off a full-funnel thought leadership content program that continues to grow and work for you. Some of the core benefits of leveraging your research like this include:

  • Associating your brand with a trusted industry analyst
  • Telling a story that’s not sales-driven, drawing more interest from and providing more value to your audience
  • The opportunity to then leverage your story into sales assets with webinars, blogs, etc.
  • Gaining market insights to inform continued strategy for marketing, sales, product development and more
  • Getting your in-house team in front of the market as valuable subject matter experts

Do More with Your Market Research

B2B market research isn’t just for huge companies that have the resources to work with the Gartners of the world. It’s a worthy exercise for businesses of all sizes and a practice that offers genuine value whether you work with a big-name analyst or not. The key is what you do with the results of your research, how you ensure that you’ll get the return on your investment — because, when used right, market research can be a powerful driving force in your marketing and sales engines.

An agency with experience in research-based thought leadership can be the catalyst you need to tip the ROI scale in your favor and start seeing those gains. At Conveyor, we specialize in turning market research into actionable insights and compelling narratives that fuel measurable growth. 

Put our work to the test with a free competitor audit, complete with our own market research of your space and our experts’ insights for your best path forward: Request a Free Audit.