Market Research

We recently received a grant to expand our market research services. The grant funds have been used to purchase databases for business intelligence research. This is going to be very useful as we help start-ups and growing businesses.


Let me give you some examples of how these services could benefit a small business.


Business to Business (B2B)
A local manufacturing facility would like to find new customers and scope out the current competition. We can now search companies by industry, employee size, annual sales, geographic location or about 25 other criteria. We can customize a list for the local manufacturing company to be used for direct marketing such as direct mail, personal visits, phone calls or competitive intelligence.


Another service available, thanks to the Stratton Taylor Library here on campus, is First Research. This database allows users to search for industry data. I can pull together reports in First Research to show me the industry’s latest news and trends - this is invaluable to any business from retail to manufacturing to everything in between. The database will also help if I want to become familiar with the business landscape in a given state. I can learn about the housing market in Vermont or the livestock market in Montana. That's great info to know when considering growing your business in a new state.


Business to Consumer (B2C)
Perhaps you're marketing business to consumer, instead of business to business as the example above discusses. For example, you are starting a lawn care service in northeast Oklahoma. You want to target homeowners in a certain geographic area (south Tulsa). You also want to only service homes valued over $250,000. One of our databases will pull a list together of all the homeowners you wish to target - based on your search criteria. This list would be helpful in a direct mail campaign.


So whatever your business research need, we either have the solution or know where to find it - thanks to funding for cool new resources.


Here's a picture of Dr. Brown accepting the grant funds from RCB Bank on behalf of FHL Bank in Topeka. We received the grant through an economic development initiative called the JOBS program.