Being 100% sure of anything is not only impossible, it is durn expensive.

Market research is a common conundrum for every business.  In a perfect world where coffee is always fresh, all women are drop-dead gorgeous, and government obeys, a businesses would buy plenty of primary research to be completely certain about their marketing decisions.  Not only would such circumstances stuff obscene amounts of money into my own pocket, but the risk side of the businesses risk/reward equation would drop to zilch and assure huge rewards.

Sadly, complete research would cost a fortune and never be complete.  Even Oracle has to guess once in a while, rolling multi-million dollar dice on limited research and a hunch. Former Joint Chief of Staff Colin Powell — who led the rescue of Kuwait — once said something like “I research until I have 60% of all critical information, then I go with my gut.”

Most start-ups operate on 1% … or less.

This is the toughest part of raising a business from diapers.  Before funding (and even afterwards) the amount of cash available for research is limited.  Yet investing in research greatly reduces the probability of failure.  CEO’s of struggling tech start-ups need to invest in many things, but often scrimp on understanding their market, segments and buyers to the fullest rational extent.  This lack of insight causes their business to burn through cash in trial-and-error market outreach, which rather defeats the purpose of the CEO’s original frugality.

CEO’s need to invest in market research in incremented fashion, and in an order that is counterintuitive.  The pieces of information required are most commonly in this order:

1. 1^st segment whole product: Most products start niche, and in order to survive they need to achieve dominance in one key segment.  Knowing what constitutes a whole product for a chosen segment will help assure shorter sales cycles and sustaining revenues.
2. 1^st segment genotypes and motivations: In almost the same breath as above, knowing who actually influences a purchase decision and what their motivations are is critical to promotions.  You can have a whole product and still sell it in a way that attracts nobody.
3. Branding and messaging: Spending a few quid to perfect corporate and product messaging and your brand sets the stage for blocking competitors in your first segment and making you more buzzable.
4. Market definition: Once established, understanding the broad market and all the segments therein allows growth planning, which leads to long-term product planning.
5. Competitive positioning: Competition research, combined with your market definition map, shows which segments should be assaulted and in which order to effectively maneuver past competitors and ultimately surround them.  This is the key to market dominance.
6. Repeat 1-3 for each new segment: Those who do a good job in their first segment will be condemned to repeat it for every segment thereafter.  The process never stops — competitors, shifting markets and market lifecycles keep changing and this makes your marketing research life a living hell (which is why Silicon Strategies Marketing is in business — so your life can be less hellish).

Bottom line for budding entrepreneurs is that you need to research, but do so in an order that allows minimum investment at each stage, and in an order that assures success.  If Collin Powell had waited for a complete set of information Kuwait would be part of Iraq and Sadam Hussein would still be smoking stogies in one of his palaces instead of fertilizing crops in Tikrit.  But Powell did enough research to win.