Free Market Research From Big-Name Companies -- www.OnlineOrganizing.com

You Are Here: Home - Newsletters - "Organized For A Living" - Article

	Free Market Research From Big-Name Companies

	by Jennifer Tribe

You know you need to do some market research. Maybe you're writing a business plan or are testing the waters for a new product launch. Perhaps you're looking to improve your marketing efforts. Whatever the reason, finding the STATISTICS you need can sometimes feel like a daunting task.

GOING TO THE SOURCE

Never fear. Research companies employ full-time ANALYSTS to study particular industries, products, or services and compile detailed statistics in long reports. Chances are good that if you're interested in a particular market, somebody has already analyzed it. There's just one small snag: reports from these big research companies can be quite EXPENSIVE. Several thousand dollars, even tens of thousands of dollars, is not at all uncommon. At these prices, such data is all but unavailable to small-business owners and infopreneurs. The good news is that there's a way around those hefty prices.

PRESS RELEASES

Research companies make their money selling information so they need to PUBLICIZE that information as much as possible. As a result, most of them issue press releases concerning every report they produce. These press releases SUMMARIZE the findings of the report in a few neat paragraphs, and almost always include a handful of key statistics. Often, this overview information contains all the data you need for your business or marketing plan.

WHERE TO FIND THEM

To find press releases, visit the on-line MEDIA ROOM of the companies that cover your market. Below are some major researchers and the markets they track:

Forrester Research: information technology
Frost And Sullivan: information technology, consumer healthcare, energy, electronics, chemicals
Gartner Group: information technology
Jupiter: information technology
Marketdata Enterprises: service industries, healthcare
NPD Group: consumer products and issues
Roper ASW: consumer attitudes and behavior, advertising effectiveness
Simba Information: publishing, training and technology advertising
Yankelovich: lifestyle trends

If your market isn't listed above, or you want to find more companies, you can always search a NEWS WIRE -- such as Business Wire or Canada Newswire. News wires send out press releases to various media outlets on behalf of their corporate clients, and post to their web site every release they send out. These press release portals will give you access to a very broad range of topics and industries.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARIES

Executive summaries are often used by the research companies as marketing tools to whet the appetite of clients for the more detailed report. They can range in length from one to 10 pages or even more, depending on the length of the full report. Like press releases, executive summaries review the key FINDINGS of a report and reference the main statistics. Executive summaries are typically found in the catalog of REPORTS on each research company's web site.

Jennifer Tribe is the founder of Juiced Consulting -- showing you how to turn your expertise into money-making information products like books, audio tapes and teleclasses! Visit her website at www.juicedconsulting.com.

Would you like to reprint this article in your publication -- or distribute it to a wider audience? Click here for reprinting instructions.

Want to receive these kind of articles via e-mail each month? Sign up for a free newsletter subscription.

Click here to return to "Organized For A Living" -- August 2004...