Vertical creation market research

Qualitative market research is a great tool for creating business verticals, as it allows us to co-create with the different segmented audiences and adapt our services or products, as well as the verticals that group them together, to the different needs and benefits that each of the consumer groups are looking for. Therefore, this type of market research is very useful to fine-tune our verticals against our competition.

First of all, what are business verticals?

Business verticals are a marketing strategy within the channel. Verticals can group industries, products or services.

The idea is to group certain products together in order to segment and personalise the target audience according to each buyer persona.

The benefits of verticals

When we offer specialisation in our business, we tend to get more engaged customers thanks to the sense of personalisation they get from our brand.

Verticals allow for a more efficient organisation of the sales network, as clear objectives can be assigned to each sales area.

Furthermore, working with segmentation allows us to identify which groups are most profitable for our business and focus our communication efforts on them.

Disadvantages of verticals

If you focus all your efforts on one vertical, you may need to be very aware of market threats, as any sudden change can reduce sales. It is therefore important to have well-diversified business verticals to avoid any sudden onslaught.

On the other hand, we must be aware that by segmenting and specialising our verticals, some customers will not find their needs met in them, so we must be willing to sacrifice the concept of “pleasing everyone”.

We will have to focus on the most profitable verticals and this may result in losing some potential customers, but it is also true that as a company, brand or organisation we can create multiple verticals if we believe we have enough critical mass to include those we have left out.

Specialising in verticals requires the sales funnel to specialise as well, and will therefore become narrower.

Importance of market research in co-creating verticals

In most cases, since we can identify the different profiles through market research, this will allow us to create almost ad hoc verticals with a high level of personalisation for the customer, making us more competitive by connecting with the core target.

Furthermore, this type of research also allows us to identify who and how those are who are dissatisfied with the proposed verticals and how to create new ones that can meet their expectations.

In this way, we can diversify our verticals and prevent any threats from market movements. These qualitative rsearch opens up a creative space where the company’s proposals or ideas are presented and the spontaneous suggestions of consumers are listened to, feeding the structures that the company may have had in mind.

The details are then tested and refined to obtain the best possible verticals and real and actionable recommendations that strengthen the new business.