Technology is becoming more prevalent in the marketing world. The benefits are impressive. Marketing Week reports that automated platforms make it possible to gather and process critical market research data more efficiently. In a world where brands can't afford to take customers for granted, automated research tools offer a prudent and cost-effective way to conduct the market research necessary for success in a competitive marketplace.
Fuel Cycle reports that market research automation is being used in five main ways. While companies are picking and choosing the best ways to implement these improvements, automation is being used primarily for automated data collection, mobile data collection, customer loyalty feedback, online community automation and social media monitoring efforts.
Market Research Automation Saves Time and Money
In the past, many market research-related tasks were time-consuming and required a significant time investment before results could be evaluated and used. Automation has sped up the process making it much easier for companies to collect data throughout the research and buying cycle. Automation impacts every step of an ad campaign from initial messaging before the campaign is launched through calculating ROI, and every step in-between.
Specifically, when a campaign is live, automation can assess results immediately. This frees up humans from tedious tasks so they can turn their attention to analysis and strategy sessions designed for the purpose of taking immediate action.
Automation Improves Ad Effectiveness
One of the major reasons business managers are turning to market research technology is to improve ad testing research and speed up results. Since testing is crucial for making adjustments and responding to market data, improved efficiencies add to the bottom line as money and time saved.
Experts conclude that faster data collection makes it easier to spot trends. In the past, when data came in at a slower pace, it was practically impossible to have the perspective necessary to spot trends quickly.
Better Analytic Tools Provide More Accurate Data
As analytic tools improve with the capability of tracking consumer behavior in real-time, the data collected improves. Fully understanding when, why and how customers buy is the goal of any market research. What inspires customers to finally make the commitment to buy? Many brands are learning how to use smartphones to track this type of data.
Another automated research tool being used is a loyalty program app for collecting data on loyal customers. Data is collected on the buying habits of these frequent shoppers for comparison purposes to learn how and why their habits differ from the competitors' customers. This technology is capable of sending out automated customer service alerts to respond as needed.
Automated Research Versus Human Market Research
The increased efficiencies afforded brands who embrace automation research results in stretching the research budget to gather more data faster. Human researchers have no reason to fear losing their jobs to robots anytime in the near future. The popular consensus of marketers still believes that a marriage between robots and humans provides the best of both worlds for marketers with humans offering up creativity and insights that aren't forthcoming come from automated tools.
Once market researchers truly understand the benefits of automation, they often appreciate the practical advantages. Instead of spending a lot of time involved in tedious data scrubbing tasks, Qualtrics reports that human researchers can now spend more time on analyzing the results.
The future looks bright for automated market research tools. MarTech Series estimates that over 50% of the $8 billion dollar global marketplace predicted for 2025 will be using marketing automation.
There is always some understandable resistance to change whenever people feel they may lose their jobs to a robot. Fortunately, in this situation, there is some good news. Qualtrics reports that 26% of marketers believe that automation will actually create more research jobs in the future.
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