Market research for designers in 5 easy steps

This blog is part of the Brand Foundation Series. The first five posts discussed your vision and mission, how you can define your why, your values & beliefs, how you can make your business stand out, and how you determine your ideal client.

Today, I want to discuss one of the underestimated and overlooked methods of working with your ideal clients – market research!

No matter where you are in your design journey, market research is a practical necessity. However, many small business owners miss its value, relying on assumptions, intuition, or surface-level knowledge of their audience.

Yet, market research delves deeper, enabling you to understand your ideal client’s genuine desires, which may differ from what you, as a designer, believe they need.

With this insight, you can tailor your packages to bridge the gap between your audience’s desires and your design expertise. You can offer pricing options that align with your audience’s budget and adjust your positioning and messaging to attract the right clients.

This, in turn, will influence your online presence and the topics you address in your marketing efforts.

With this blog, I want to show you how you can leverage market research to gain a deeper understanding of your clients, so that you can provide what they truly need, paving the way to more enjoyable design projects AND financial growth.

I’ll also share the mistake that I made that almost jeopardised my business and how I have improved my processes to get responses like “It feels like you’ve read my diary”

Why market research matters for designers

You’ll probably have gotten an idea of why market research can be important from the introduction, but I often speak to business owners (this is not designer-specific) who do not fully recognise the value of market research, assuming they already understand their clients or underestimating its impact on services, pricing, messaging, and online presence.

This is why I want you to meet Emily.

Emily is a talented graphic designer who decided to launch a design studio specialising in branding and marketing services after working for an agency. She is passionate about design and believes in her abilities.

Yet, in her eagerness to kickstart her business, Emily overlooked a crucial step – market research.

Emily envisioned her design studio as a place to use her creativity and expertise to help businesses shine. She believed her passion for strategic branding would attract clients who shared her vision of creating meaningful and impactful brand identities.

As Emily set up her studio, she thought all clients seeking branding and marketing services would appreciate her years of expertise. She expected them to grasp the value of strategic branding, be willing to invest in premium services, and maintain realistic expectations regarding project timelines.

The Resulting Challenges:

1. Attracting the wrong clients: Without a clear understanding of her ideal clients, Emily’s marketing efforts cast a wide net, targeting ambitious female business owners. The outcome? A flood of inquiries from clients seeking quick design solutions at minimal costs, perceiving her services as commodities rather than valuable expertise.

2. Pricing mismatch: Emily did not show her pricing on her website based on the assumption that clients would understand the value of strategic branding and the price tag that comes with that. However, many potential who booked a consultation call were shocked when she mentioned her prices, leading to numerous inquiries and calls that didn’t result in signed contracts.

3. Unrealistic expectations: The clients who did engage in Emily’s services held unrealistic notions about project timelines. She did not share her processes on her website or social media posts, assuming clients would understand the scale of these projects. Instead, they assumed complex branding projects could be completed within days, leading to frustration on both ends.

4. Preparation issues: Emily often grappled with clients who were unprepared for the design process. Clients frequently lacked branding materials, content, or essential assets, causing delays and stress.

The lessons learned

Over time, Emily came to appreciate the significance of market research. She recognised that a profound understanding of her ideal clients would enable her to effectively tailor her services, pricing, and messaging, attracting clients who genuinely valued strategic branding.

Emily’s journey conveyed a valuable lesson – Market research extends beyond discovering what your clients aim to achieve with a new brand or website. It’s about:

• Grasping the deeper needs and expectations of your target audience.
• Identifying market gaps – what your audience requires but currently lacks.
• Crafting a unique approach to cater to your audience’s wants while providing what they genuinely need.

Importantly, this doesn’t mean lowering your prices if your current audience insists they can only afford $500 for branding. Instead, you have two options:

1. If you wish to serve your existing audience, consider creating a streamlined, productized service to deliver at a reduced cost.
2. If you’ve realised you’ve been attracting the wrong audience for your premium-priced services; the key is to adjust your positioning and messaging.

What to consider before you start doing market research.

Before starting your market research journey, consider this important lesson:

As a brand and website designer, I’ve seen clients struggle with significant business challenges.

While a new website or brand design could make an impact, it couldn’t address the fundamental challenges they faced—lack of effective business processes, financial insights, targets, and, most importantly, a solid brand strategy to attract their ideal clients.

With my experience from previous corporate roles, I believed I could help them boost their revenue and find effective ways to attract their dream clients so I decided to shift my business.

I transitioned from offering deliverables to focusing solely on brand strategy. After investing in a renowned strategist’s course, I proudly took on the title of a brand strategist.

I conducted market research to validate my approach, and I appeared to be on the right track!

However, I encountered an unexpected twist that almost jeopardised my business.

I failed not only to bring my audience along on my journey from design to brand strategy but also to genuinely listen to what potential clients were searching for. Consequently, when I launched my new brand design, website, and services, it was met with silence.

Here’s the lesson:

Lesson 1: It’s crucial to remain open-minded and listen attentively to potential clients while conducting market research. Look beyond the elements that confirm your ideas and ensure you’re addressing their genuine needs.

Lesson 2: Understand your target audience’s perspective. Learn their terms and what solutions they seek. Align your messaging with their language and needs. For instance, clients searching for help reaching their ideal clients were more likely to search for a coach or marketing expert rather than a brand strategist.

Market research is about tuning into your audience, understanding their language, and meeting their true needs.

How to do market research for a small business

Now that you understand why market research is crucial for your design studio let’s delve into the practical aspects.

1. What are your objectives?

Before you jump into market research, consider setting clear objectives. Market research is a process designed to gather information, but not just as much as you can. You want to avoid asking questions about 5 different topics. You’ll most likely overwhelm them, and you won’t have the time to drill down and ask follow-up questions, leading to superficial answers.

When you set objectives, you’ll give yourself a clear focus and direction. This will help you define what questions you need to ask.

For instance, an objective could be: “Identify audience’s main pain points to uncover common issues and challenges faced by your audience.”

Let’s quickly go back to my personal experience — When I was in the brand strategy course, I realised how differently I approach many aspects of business based on my corporate background. When I started to voice my take on these topics, I got requests from other designers to help them with these topics. I even did a free workshop for a handful of them about Dubsado and client workflows.

This made me realise:

• This was the industry where I felt I could help best.
• I had to position myself as a mentor using my brand strategy experience as a skill in my toolbox rather than as my positioning or the main service.
• But I also realised I needed to be much clearer about which designers, as not everyone within an industry will be ideal clients.

To help me with this, I conducted two rounds of market research:

• 1st round – Niche clarification: I talked to as many designers as possible. From designers who worked at or had an agency, freelancers with their projects coming from agencies, and designers who saw themselves as business owners. I asked about their main struggles, what type of support they would be most interested in, and their budgets. This helped me to narrow down which type of designers I felt (based on my experience and what I enjoy teaching) I could support the best.
• 2nd round – Understanding my target audience: I narrowed my focus and wanted to talk to designers who identified themselves as business owners (these had gone through the processes of onboarding clients, had websites, and often had some social media presence). Through this research, I delved into why they felt confident as designers but not as business owners. This led me to use terms like “sustainable,” “aligned,” and “profitable” and provided insights into what they had tried and what did not work for them, like; generalised programs that did not understand the intricacies of a design studio or trying to piece together their business based on templates from other designers.

Both rounds of market research had different objectives, which allowed me to get the type of information I needed to start making adjustments to positioning, messaging, and services.

2. Deciding your market research approach

Selecting the right participants for your research is crucial. So, you’ll need to determine how and where you’ll do your research. If you ask your Instagram audience while they generally do not engage with you, there is a big chance you hardly get any response.

Or if you go to a Facebook Group aimed at starting your business, and while you want to work with people who have been in business a while, value your expertise, and can afford premium pricing, these are not the right people.

So, be sure to spend some time brainstorming where you can find the best audience for you. Consider their demographics, online behaviours, and preferred communication channels to narrow the possibilities.

That’s the where, now, let’s look at the how. Here are a few ways:

• Online surveys and questionnaires: Platforms like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms provide user-friendly interfaces to create surveys.
• Face-to-Face: You can interview your participants via Zoom
• Social Media: Social media can be a goldmine of customer insights, but as mentioned, ensure you have the right audience to ask questions.

While surveys may appear convenient for their repeatability, they often give you surface-level responses. The first answer that comes to mind is the one written down, and it might not be as detailed as you need.

Although more time-consuming, in-depth interviews give more detailed information and allow for clarification and follow-up questions. This is important because once you’ve found your ideal client, you want to use their language in your website copy, and when you speak to them, you’ll get better answers.

3. Determine the right questions

Based on your objectives, you will need to determine your questions.

When using a survey:

Keep the questions concise (10-15) and provide an estimated completion time. This will help to get more participants.

I would recommend using a combination of open-ended and closed questions. Closed questions will speed up the process of filling in, but you’ll also want to have more detailed answers not just to know about their problems but also to see what kind of words they are using.

I’ve used surveys a couple of times before I did face-to-face interviews because it felt much less scary, but once I started the interviews, I noticed a world of difference with the usability.

When it comes to competitor research, I will also do desk research (social media, website), but when learning more about my ideal clients, I prefer interviews.

Here are some example interview questions:

• What’s the biggest challenge you have with (your specific topic)
• Why do you think this is a struggle?
• Is solving this a priority at this time?

  • If yes, why is this important to them? What’s their main motivation for wanting to find a solution?

  • If not, what’s more important to them right now? What’s their biggest priority (as it relates to your product/service)?  Or what has stopped you from taking action?

• What would happen if you didn’t solve this problem? What will your business look like?
• What else have you tried before to help you with this?

• • What’s worked well? What hasn’t worked? Why?

• If you are looking for help with this, what would be the perfect solution to help you?

  • How much would you feel comfortable investing in this?

4. Analyse the data

Don’t stop after you’ve had the conversations. This step is about making sense of the information you’ve gathered and transforming it into actionable insights. What will help with this is to record your interviews and use a tool like Otter to get your interviews transcribed. Then organise your findings in spreadsheets or whiteboard applications like Miro to identify patterns, recurring words, or insights aligned with your objectives.

5. Make adjustments to your business or brand strategy

This is where you put your insights into action. Use the research findings to fine-tune your niche, messaging, or offerings for a better market fit. Market research isn’t an endpoint; it’s the starting point for adjusting your business or brand strategy based on your audience’s genuine needs and language.

As mentioned earlier, one of my steps was adjusting my messaging. It didn’t take long before I received an inquiry from a client who, while not a designer, was an ideal fit. Here’s a part of what she shared in her application:

I have ADHD and the business/focus/branding/website stuff just feels so overwhelming for me. I feel like I waste so much time just trying to figure it out, I have gone to workshops and bought courses but, I just don’t even know how to implement or get started.

I don’t know if this makes sense, but when your website said “You don’t need another workshop you need a second set of eyes on your business” I felt that LOL. Like really felt that. I need someone else, badly. Before I burn out trying to do it myself.

Honestly, her words brought tears to my eyes. After making what I considered a ‘bad decision,’ I began doubting my choices and it shook the confidence I had in myself as a business owner. While this client really could use my help, I don’t think she knows how much she has done for me with this inquiry.

I was finally on the right track. There have been numerous refinements since that messaging change, along with several rounds of market research, but I hope this illustrates what market research can do for you.

I’m confident that I wouldn’t be where I am today without the time I invested in market research.

Now, I encourage you to take action. Where do you need more clarity when it comes to your ideal client?

Up next

Next up in this Brand Foundation series is learning how you can connect with your ideal clients. Now you know what your mission and purpose are, how you want to show up to your audience, how you can stand out, and you know what kind of clients fit well with this it is time to use the information you received f
rom your market research and get really clear about who your ideal clients might go to if not working with you. It’s time to do some competitor research.

How do you feel about your knowledge about your ideal clients? Do you feel like you are talking about the right pain points?