Should I use a Market Analysis Template?

What is Market Analysis?

A Markey Analysis, in simple terms, is a broad study of your target market. It’s a crucial part of any business or start-up marketing strategy because it helps you do three things:

• Measure your competition;
• Measure your customers;
• Measure your product.

With a structured and well thought out analysis of the market, you should be able to study exactly who your main competitors are. What are they doing with their product, and what challenges they've faced and overcome.

You should also be able to get a look at your customers. What do they look for in a product like yours? And, in a nutshell, are they going to be interested in your product at all? It's a tough question to ask, but doing now can save some headaches along the way.

When you look over these factors, you get to see one vital thing:

• Where you can position your product or service on the market?
  
• What solutions does it offer to your customers that the competition can’t do or does worse?
• How can you measure up against your competition?
• What strategies can you adapt?

It's effortless to take the easy way out and try to create a product for everyone. However, by doing this, you’re going to be limited in the quality of your product where it stands out. Focus more on what you can do better and work that as best you can.

How to make a market analysis?

As we mentioned in the title of this article, yes, it is possible to use a Market Analysis template when looking towards analyzing your market trends. However, doing so, without prior knowledge of how it works could be detrimental to your entire plan.

Keep in mind before we start here, that all business ideas can come in all shapes and sizes. If you have a relatively small business and a perfect established relationship with your customers, there may be better ways for you to invest your time and money than this. If you're looking to expand your business with a better understanding of the market, let's get started.

Also, in your business plan, when you're looking for funding, a Market Analysis can make you stand out, so we must get this right.

What does my industry and market size look like?

This section should include an overview of how your primary sector looks. Here you could include points that discuss the current size of it, trends popular within it, and how the life cycle looks.

This doesn't necessarily mean you should focus only on the here and now. Keeping in mind growth patterns that could surge in the coming future is an exciting point for investors, and it shows you know your industry well.

What do my customers look like?

In this section, you're going to be looking at creating a more specific profile around what your market looks like. As we mentioned before, it's tempting to go the easy route and say that the world is your market. But this is going to make things much more difficult for your product to perform well.

It's always better to focus on narrowing down. What specific market can you attend to? Are you a translator based on medical texts? Go to your niche and then take a look at:

• Target demographics: You need to know everything that pertains to your market (age, income, shopping habits, etc.). Then, you need to be able to explain why you're going to be best for them;
• Market: Be transparent here and show how large your market is, not only does this show how on top of things you are, it gives you (and possible investors) a clear view of how you could progress in the future.

What does my competition?

This is a great question, not just for your Market Analysis, but also for you to keep asking yourself at all times. For you to excel against your competitors, you must keep tabs on them. This includes both direct and indirect competitors, take a look at what their strategies look like, and figure out their strengths and weaknesses to see how you can make your own space.

Also, take a look at the barriers of entry, what could come between you and making it in this market space? You must not just study your competition's weaknesses, but your own as well. Keep this as transparent as possible with swot analysis. It's going to avoid problems with investors later on.

What does my projection look like?

You need to be able to define, right from the start, how your business could get market shares in your industry. It doesn't have to be detailed to the point of exhaustion, but a clear idea of how you want to build your success and battle with pitfalls is going to help investors decide to go with you. This could include everything, including different products and even a simple pricing plan.

What regulations are there in my market?

Look at the expansion of electric scooter businesses spreading across the globes; it's easy to spot out, using a quick Google search, which ones of these did not conduct a study on the government regulations in their market that could bring them to a halt. This is why many of them are still tied in an expensive and time-consuming legal battle.

Don’t make their same mistakes and find out the government restrictions in your industry.

Marketing research template?

The quick answer to this question is: yes. If you feel as though it could help you create this more time and cost-effectively, go for it. You now understand how they work and how they’re built, so you want to get lost along the way.

However, to offer another answer, make sure you build on it. As we talked about at the beginning of this article, every business is different and has different needs. Don't be afraid to work on the template until it fits how you want to grow.