Charging Forward With Your Market Research Needs!

Tag Archive for business

4 Questions To Ask Yourself When Starting Market Research

March 11, 2013 J. Nolfo Business, Market Research, Marketing, Small Business

Market ResearchI am a big promoter of market research in all forms and in all types of businesses.  Research can help in start-ups, small companies and large Fortune 500 type companies.  Although I am a big proponent of using market research, I am a bigger proponent of using market research wisely.

Why?  Because I have seen money wasted in the name of market research when the company did not know what they were truly trying to understand.

Here are 4 tips to think about when starting about market research in your business.

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Don’t Forget To Evaluate Marketing

February 25, 2013 J. Nolfo Business, Market Research, Marketing, Small Business

MarketingMost of the business I talk to, they each worry, consciously or unconsciously, about two things, sales and marketing.  Now, they may worry about other things within their business, as well.  However, they all seem to worry about these two.  Nearly a year ago, I wrote two blogs about using market research to improve marketing (you can check them out here and here).

In these two blogs, I wrote about about using market research to evaluate your marketing program.  However, in those discussions, there was an assumption that companies are actually evaluating their marketing.  It is said that companies know that 50% of their marketing budget is ineffective, however, they do not know which 50%.

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An Open Letter To All 200+ Million LinkedIn Users: Correctly Invite Someone To Your Network

February 7, 2013 J. Nolfo Business, Small Business, Social Media

LinkedInDear LinkedIn and All LinkedIn Users,

I am writing to you today because of a problem that I am seeing occur more and more.  For me, the problem has become more pervasive, and more of a nuisance, over the past 24 months as I have tried to proactively grow my network, not only in size, but also in quality of people both inside and outside of the industries I am involved in.

I am concerned as now that LinkedIn has grown to over 200 million users, the problem is going to be more of an issue as more people get on LinkedIn and start to use it on a regular basis.  Maybe it is because no one has educated the masses of users.  Maybe it is because some have lost any sense of off line networking and do nothing but online social media based networking.  Maybe it is because some people are just plain rude.

The issue is simple: Sending a generic request to connect on LinkedIn.

Continue reading “An Open Letter To All 200+ Million LinkedIn Users: Correctly Invite Someone To Your Network” »

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Your Mission, If You Choose To Accept It: Never Stop Learning

January 24, 2013 J. Nolfo Business

Adult StudentsAlbert Einstein once said, “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”  I could not agree more.

Over the past three weeks, I have been taking an online class associated with Coursera.  If you are not familiar with Coursera, it is a social entrepreneurship company that has partnered with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free.  They envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions.  Their technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students.

The class I am taking is Computing for Data Analysis, taught by a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  The class focuses on the “R” statistical language.  Now I will have to admit I am not a programmer.  Nor have I really had any class in programming in any language (well a BASIC class in high school does not really count).  But, I will have to admit the class is kicking my butt.

So who would I intentionally put myself through this torture?

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Understanding Accrual Accounting

January 17, 2013 J. Nolfo Business, Small Business
cash accrual accounting

Credit: Dreamstime

You all get a treat today, a guest blog by financial executive, Charles Seeman.  He wrote a great case study previously on this blog that get a lot of attention.  So, without further ado…

When I was a young junior staff accountant for a large regional CPA firm I, like all other junior staff people, were assigned to do “write up” work for some of our clients. Some of the older business people would play a game with junior staff accountants like me where they would tell us that they can guess the final net income number and be within a couple of thousand dollars of what is calculated by accrual accounting. At their skill at this amazed me, but after a while, I understood completely how this was done.

The purpose of this blog entry is to help young entrepreneurs understand and thus be able to predict how their business is doing. I want to help young entrepreneurs avoid the trials and tribulations that those older business owners endured to learn the skills necessary to be able to truly understand their business and how revenues and costs work. Continue reading “Understanding Accrual Accounting” »

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Have You Laid Out Your Market Research Plans For The Year?

January 14, 2013 J. Nolfo Business, Market Research

Market ResearchThe first month of the year is almost half over.  Have you laid out your market research plans for the year yet?

In a blog post I wrote about a month ago, I stated that then was the best time to plan for the research projects for the new year.  Now should be the time to implement these.

 

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What Will The 2013 Economy Be?

January 7, 2013 J. Nolfo Business, Economic Market, Homebuilding & Residential Development, Retail, Small Business

Note: This is part 2 of a 2 part series looking back at the economics of 2012 and projecting the economics of 2013. Part 1 can be found here.  Also, look forward to the Triangle predictions coming up on Thursday.

With the year ending and all the talk about the “fiscal cliff”, there has been a lot of talk of what will happen during the next 12 months.  I feel like everyone can agree that the economy has seen better days and there seems to be indications that things are getting better.  Here is what I think the economy will be doing over the next 12 months.  Now as I stated last year, I am not by any mean the Oracle at Delphi, but this is my opinion based on a lot of reading and research by experts in their areas of expertise. Here are some areas of interest, including some not specifically discussed in Part 1 of this blog.

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What Was The 2012 Economy?

January 3, 2013 J. Nolfo Business, Economic Market, Homebuilding & Residential Development, Retail, Small Business

Happy New Year 2012

Note: This is part 1 of a 2 part series looking back at the economics of 2012 and looking projecting the economics of 2013. Part 2 will be released on Monday.

Last year I wrote two blogs about what happened in 2011 and provided some projections for 2012.  I got a fair amount of feedback from those post so I figured I do it again this year.  I started last year’s blog with Sir Winston Churchill’s quoted of  ”Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  I continue to believe that this is true in every facet of life, including business.  This information is based on factual information.  There are no politics, no opinions.  It is what it is.  The purpose is to understand what happen in 2012 to set the stage for 2013. Continue reading “What Was The 2012 Economy?” »

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A New Year and A New Blog Title

December 31, 2012 J. Nolfo Uncategorized

blogYep…believe it or not.

This blog did have a title “Pensare…Understanding Market Research in Business”.  Thought the name was a good idea.  But the word “pensare”, which is Italian for “think”, has nothing to do with anything else on this site or what I do.

So as we anticipate new and big things for 2013 we needed a new big name.  And the new name is…. Continue reading “A New Year and A New Blog Title” »

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What If Market Research Says “No”?

December 10, 2012 J. Nolfo Business, Market Research

NoBeing a numbers guy, I look at the analytics and data of my website and blog on a fairly regular basis.  One of the things I always look at is the “search engine terms” section on my site stats to see how people are organically getting to the site and blog.  One day last week, I saw the phrase “if market research says no” as one of the search terms.  After doing a few moments of digging, the original person who searched these terms on my blog went to this posting.  However, I am sure, it has little to do with what I think they were looking for.

When I meet with someone for the first time to talk about market research, I talk about the possibility of what happens when the research comes back to tell them that “their baby is ugly” and that they should not proceed with the opportunity that they are pursuing.

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