Why is it important for a company to collect both primary and secondary data when conducting marketing research?

Admit it. You feel pressure when using your primary and secondary data to scale campaigns and revenues.

How could you not? So many hinges on you getting that one marketing strategy right.

You’re not alone!

If you are a marketer who tends to monetize data and aim at bringing in more revenue with your data, then primary and secondary data collection is your topmost priority.

Firstly, What is Primary Data in Research?

Primary data collection is a direct approach that meets your specific business needs. You can examine primary data and improve the outcomes of your marketing campaigns using DMPs and a lot more.

Primary data are best described as the original data – from the first source. It is like raw material. It is information that you collect directly on a personal level from your apps or websites, CRMs etc for your business.

Analyzing your first-party data helps you to identify critical metrics in making strategic and tactical decisions for optimizing your customers’ responses across all marketing channels.

Before you absorb all the vital points in this article, why not stop by this ebook on primary and secondary data and save it for more insights.

Looks Like Primary Data is so Necessary for You. Why? Let’s Find Out!

Primary data helps in bringing outstanding business outcomes. This primary data can be email ids, mobile numbers, cookies, ad ids, and other information you collect from your users or customers. Let’s see a couple of examples how it can help you:

For Sending Email Series to Establish Relationships

Welcome Emails- It is the first email a subscriber receives the moment they sign up for a particular list. Welcome emails increase the open rates, click rates, and build up more transaction rates and revenue. These emails help to establish relationship and recall of your brand

Subject Line Analysis- You can identify the patterns when users open your brand’s emails. This will help you to determine which styles help you to get more open rates, thus in turn help you achieve more ROI. 

Triggered Reminders- Abandon carts and browse mailings have consistently higher open and click rates than promotional mailings. For instance, you can send abandoned carts and offers to website shoppers and users to close the proposed deals when you have first party data points such as email ids.

Segmentation

As market researchers, you usually create groups of users who most likely respond to the same kind of products and services. But when you send different offers to different segments based on your users’ first-party data, it helps you in new acquisitions too. (Source: digitalwiki.de)

Product and Offer Optimization

You can review the performance of your products and offers from interviews, surveys, emails, field observations, etc to understand which ones perform better. After this, you can develop relevant offers from the data you just reviewed.

What Makes a User Click to Your Brand?

What is it that makes your user click on a particular brand? Is it the creativity of your brand, timings of your message/ offers to the customers, or the relevance of your product/offer?

Remarketing Campaigns

You should make sure that you understand your customers’ purchase patterns, need for buying, buying timings, and frequency. Conducting primary data helps you in better targeting and in understanding the frequently/occasionally interested buyers.

Not Only This You Can Depend Upon Primary Data for a Lot More. Curious to Know What More? Read Here.

You Own the Market Information with Primary Data- Because you collect the information yourself through Survey reports, questionnaires, interview responses and do not share it, so the information remains hidden from other potential competitors.

You Get Better Data Accuracy – Primary data is more accurate because it is the first-hand collection directly from your target population. 

More Control Over the Data with Primary Data – As marketers, you can control the research method easily. Also, it brings in more control over the gathering process of information.

It Provides Up-to-Date Business Information – The primary data are best described as a great source of latest market information that you can collect directly from the field in real-time.

Resolving Research and Analytics Issues – When you perform your own market research, you get to address and resolve your business-related issues which ultimately benefits your business.

Okay Now Primary Data Really Works for You but How Do You Collect It?

You simply select the sample using various methods and techniques of sampling. The most popular and traditional primary data examples/ sources used are:

  • Interview (personal interview, telephone, email).
  • Self-made surveys and questionnaires.
  • Field observations.
  • Experiments.
  • Action research.
  • New case studies.
  • Diary entries, letters, and other correspondence.
  • Eyewitness accounts etc.

However with the advancement in technology, the website and app owners are directly controlling their users and customers now. So, all the user data directly collected from websites and apps is called primary data too. 

What is Secondary Data?

Secondary data is the already collected data. Other marketers may have collected it for another purpose but it does have some relevance to your own research needs. So, secondary data is second-hand information.

Why Shouldn’t You Miss on Collecting and Harnessing Your Secondary Data?

How does it help marketers in marketing optimization and commercialization? (Source: worldclassmedia.com)

Making Campaigns More Effective

You can tap into secondary data to learn more about the behavioural patterns of your target audience. It will redirect you to run effective campaigns using a DMP.

Easy Market Research

It’s good to look for secondary data as it is wiser to investigate if there’s an existing piece of information that you can work with. More often, your research can be done with the secondary data itself, and the next step could be filling the gaps by conducting primary research.

Problem-Solving

Seek your internal record data as a great source of insights to solve a new or related business problem. This includes your:

  • Customer account information
  • Sales and marketing records
  • Product purchasing
  • Usage data
  • Previous marketing research reports etc.

Market Knowledge and Decision Making

You can collect secondary data and conduct marketing analysis to understand the patterns in market trends, customer behavior, and other insights to manage your marketing and strategic decision making.

Harnessing Your Secondary Data is Vital for Plenty of Other Reasons. Like? 

Easy to Access: With the internet revolution, it is impressive how secondary data sources are evolving. So now, you can have so much information at a mouse-click.

Freely Available or at a Low Cost: You can gather secondary data without investing any money. Most sources of secondary data are absolutely free for use or are available at very low costs. So it is both money and effort saving. 

Saves Time: That is to say that in just a few Google searches, you will be able to find some credible sources of data.

Helps to Generate New Insights from a Previous Analysis: You can know the nature of your audience, personalities, likes, dislikes, etc. from the previously collected data. Reanalyzing your old data may bring unexpected new conclusions and help you convert more

Has a Larger Sample Size: In other words, secondary data uses larger samples, so you can gather a better final conclusion. This makes your understanding of insights easier and helps to make decisions.

Anyone can Collect the Secondary Data: That is to say that if you are not an expert at market research, you can still perform secondary data analysis using qualitative research methods. So, absolutely anyone can go on with collecting these datasets.

Secondary Data Solves So Many Requirements. Right? But How Do You Catch Hold of Your Secondary Data?

Secondary data gives you valuable analysis on the basis of primary data. You can collect it from the sources of secondary data like:

  • Previous research
  • Mass media products
  • Government reports
  • Official statistics
  • Letters
  • Diaries
  • Web information
  • Historical data
  • Encyclopedias
  • Journal articles
  • Biography
  • Research analysis etc.

How Does Primary and Secondary Data Benefit You?

You need adequate, reliable, relevant and timely data for marketing problems and decision making. So, how does primary and secondary data really help you?

  • Primary and secondary data redirects you to tap opportunities effectively and run effective campaigns using a DMP.
  • The primary and secondary data helps you to find out the best way of communicating with your customers using surveys, questionnaires, interview responses etc.
  • You can know the nature of your audience, personalities, likes, dislikes, etc. and this in turn, makes it easy for you to reach the right audience at the right time and convert more.
  • It helps to know the market trends or movements of a market in a given period and draw conclusions and make business-related decisions in a better way.
  • In addition, it gives an idea of varioussegmentation of the marketand gives you a clear concept of whom to target and how.
  • Also, primary and Secondary data collection brings in the knowledge of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats(SWOT analysis) to make perfectly suited strategies to attain desired results and gain optimization.
  • That is to say that primary and secondary data marketing and research enables marketing effectiveness with-risk analysis, customer analysis, product research, and competitor analysis, etc
  • Similarly you get a good idea of what properties to add and what to remove from your products and services so that the customers respond well and minimizes risks.
  • You can predict market problems and then work on them if you have the resulting primary and secondary data examples.
  • Finally, primary and secondary data helps you to analyze and predict businesses and monetize customer data, to give phenomenal revenue results.

In conclusion, the science of primary data vs secondary data marketing can boost businesses through data monetization and help your business tremendously.

But What Not to Do When Collecting Primary and Secondary Data?

While doing data collection, you need to take care of a few things, including:

  • Firstly, why are you collecting data?
  • Also, what is the goal of the research?
  • How much budget can you allocate for the data collection and implementation?
  • On a total, what is the time you can give to the study and analytics? 
  • What market outputs and revenues do you expect from this?

Also, when you know what to do with primary and secondary data collection, WHAT NOT TO DO is equally critical for you. So, take a note of these here:

  • Firstly, do not rely only on secondary data to get a picture of the current market scenario and upcoming business trends. Primary data collection (surveys, interviews etc) must be your go to option.
  • Have a tight budget and quick time frame? Do not go for Primary data. Secondary data is a better way out.
  • On research that requires a high degree of accuracy, do not go for secondary data. Primary data would serve you best here.
  • Do not collect ‘only the primary data’.
  • However, do not collect ‘only the secondary data’.
  • Above all, do not trust the ‘web only’ for research and use more credible sources to collect data.

Finally, you need to determine which approach makes sense considering all factors involved to make the next move.

Let’s Conclude

Your primary and secondary data opens plenty of opportunities to monetize customer data and helps you earn revenues. In addition, primary and secondary data helps you in tapping market opportunities, communication, proper targeting and campaigning, time and cost saving, reaching the right audience, converting more audiences, strategic and marketing decisions, making great revenues and a lot more.

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Why is it important to collect both primary and secondary data?

Primary data and secondary data are both used in research and statistics. They can be used to carry out the same kind of research in these fields depending on data availability. This is because secondary data and primary data have the same content. The only difference is the method by which they are collected.

Why is it important to conduct primary and secondary research?

The purpose of primary research is to gather real-time data that will be useful in solving a specific problem. On the other hand, the purpose of secondary research is to gather existing research materials that may not directly address the problem at hand.

What are the benefits of using both primary and secondary research?

There are advantages to using both primary or secondary research. Secondary research gives you a foundation to build on, while the primary research fills in the gap by identifying specific needs. First examine your requirements and budget.

Why is it important to use both primary and secondary data in building strategic decisions?

The primary and secondary data helps you to find out the best way of communicating with your customers using surveys, questionnaires, interview responses etc.