24: Stop Guessing What Your Clients Want — A Real Look at Market Research for Service-Based Businesses
Every entrepreneur has been tempted to skip straight from idea to launch — but what happens when you build something nobody actually wants? In this episode of Partnerships on Purpose, Marie and Anne-Marie pull back the curtain on the market research project they just completed inside their own business, Powerful Online Partnerships. From survey design to competitive analysis to the emotional rollercoaster of watching real client data roll in, Marie and Anne-Marie walk through exactly why market research matters, how to do it without a five-figure agency price tag, and what they discovered when the results didn't go the way they hoped.
What You'll Learn
Why market research prevents entrepreneurs from building based on assumptions instead of evidence
How to define your ideal research audience instead of surveying your entire email list
The role of competitive analysis and SWOT analysis in a complete market research process
How Marie and Anne-Marie used AI tools, including Claude, to synthesize survey and interview data
What to do when your research doesn't validate the idea you were most excited about
Episode Highlights
Why market research matters: understanding what customers actually want and need, not what you assume they want
Building a complete research process: surveys, interviews, competitive analysis, and a SWOT analysis
Reviewing real survey data as it came in, spotting trends, and using AI to synthesize findings into a decision
The closing takeaway: market research helps you stop building from assumptions and start building from evidence
"Market research helps you stop building from assumptions and start building from evidence." — Anne-Marie Pasquino
Links Mentioned
Powerful Online Partnerships — powerfulonlinepartnerships.com
Episode link: Podcast Episode
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