A lot of companies, especially small ones, often face a lack of financial and human resources. Research budgets are often the first to get hammered by the need to cut expenses. However, today the lack of money and competence is no longer an excuse for poor market research. DIY market research tools have become more widespread and easily accessible. It means that even small companies can now conduct research independently. Everything from survey templates to visual data reports are automated and available online. Let’s take a closer look at pros and cons of do-it-yourself market research.

DIY Advantages

1. It’s faster

There’s no need to hire research companies, pay money and then wait several months for results. With online research platforms, all tools are at your fingertips. All you need is patience and time to master them and create your own research. Furthermore, you will be the only one responsible for the results and therefore will have full control over the quality and timeframe of the research.

2. It’s easy

Ready-made templates, automated reporting, preselected panels of respondents – such platforms as CoolTool provide you all of this at once. Furthermore, we continue developing new technologies and solutions as well as permanently working on the improvement of the platform’s interface in order to make it more simple and user-friendly.

3. It’s cheaper

On the one hand, limited budgets constrain the company’s development. On the other hand, it makes teams search for more creative solutions. DIY market research provides plenty of space for creativity at a low price. So, just go for DIY research and the quality of your results might really impress you.

4. It provides more opportunities

You already know your business, its needs and its priorities better than any outside research company. By engaging in DIY research you can test any approach and play with all available instruments and techs – apply biometric technologies (such as eye tracking, EEG, emotion measurement), implicit tests, etc. By learning how to use the DIY research platform for obtaining in-depth and valuable insights from customers, even a small startup not only builds its capacity and competence but also identifies new ways of development.

DIY disadvantages

Disadvantages of DIY research depend on the number of factors and as a rule, are individual for every company. With that in mind, the most common issues are:

1. Lack of knowledge and experience

Research companies have years of experience and know all the stumbling blocks one can encounter during the course of the research. They have skills and competence and thus already know how to do the majority of things you are only planning to learn about.

2. Timeliness and relevance of results

Due to the absence of necessary experience, at the beginning you could have to spend more time for conducting research and thus the results you obtain may become irrelevant, or no more serve the initial goal of the project.

3. Lack of tools and resources

Sometimes the quality of DIY research can be compromised by the lack of time and other resources. At the initial stages, a company indulging in DIY market research will always spend more time and efforts as well as making more mistakes.

Should you be willing to learn and spend some extra hours practicing new and exciting things which will benefit your business, then DIY market research is for you. If you are passionate about new technology, plan to diversify your tools for testing websites and design layouts, or you have the ambition to create your own research department then DIY neuromarketing research will serve that purpose. Of course, it’s completely up to you to decide, but if you ask us, we would definitely tell you that DIY research it's worth the effort. For our part, we’ll ensure that your debut into the neuromarketing world will be both smooth and interesting.

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