Professional surveys
18 June 2020To make a decision or draw a reasonable conclusion, we often require some information, need to learn the context of a topic, study the market, or carry out research.
Your first thought here is to find the information on the internet by yourself or ask your employees to help with the task. Of course, this method can bring certain results, including quite convincing ones, but let’s consider the advantages and disadvantages.
- + All information is checked, processed by yourself;
- + You or your employees must have learned something new in the process;
- + Maybe, you achieved the result.
- – You spent a huge amount of time on the research;
- – The research is superficial, maybe, amateurish;
- – You must have only covered the positions that you know or that came up in your favorite search engine.
Some people may be satisfied with such a result. But only a few know that a lot of information is not shown in search engines for different reasons: you entered an inaccurate query, or insufficient understanding didn’t let you find the necessary resources, or the resource you’re searching for is located on the farthest positions of a search engine, or – and that is very likely – the information is private and can be accessed only by those who work in the field and is not available to others.
How is the methodology of research in analytics agencies different?
Well, we won’t generalize, but first, it’s obviously a deep understanding of the topic studied. It ensures that research agency analysts already understand this industry, work in it, and know where and how to look. Besides, it ensures correct search queries when the information is collected. But most importantly, an analyst who is good at the topic will be able to ask the right, really relevant and useful questions which will really help in research.
Secondly, the methods of searching and collecting information. In this kind of work, you should not limit yourself to just search engines. Real analysts will get in touch with representatives of the industry, get insights and comments from them, and will contact specialists from the corresponding industry.
Thirdly, systematization of information. You must have at least once received a report in the form of a table with a huge amount of information, which was absolutely impossible to understand. Data collection requires a certain culture and discipline so that all the information obtained is later completely interactive and can be worked with, for example, with filters or pivot tables.
Fourth, the goal and conclusions reached during the research process. In order for the study not to be simple data collection, which, with due diligence and a substantial budget, can be partially replaced by parsing, you need a professional who manages all the processes, poses questions that need answers, and depending on them, sets tasks to find and collect certain information.
Fifth, the speed and quality of the net search. Imagine you need, for example, to find all casinos that have used Bitcoin and find out which of them provide the best conditions. So you open Google. And what are you going to type in the search bar? You need to clearly understand how to do a search efficiently, quickly, systematically, without missing anything.
Only in the case of such an approach, we can say that it is not parsing or a superficial amateurish look at a particular issue, but a full-fledged research work in a certain field.
In Data40, we strongly recommend that you conduct real research whenever you need it, because, as a rule, only having comprehensive information about the market condition at your disposal, can you make key strategic decisions in a prudent and informed way. It is with this approach that startups manage to take leading positions in already crowded markets, occupying niches that seemed, at first glance, to be already gone.