Market research that tells you what your customers actually think
Most marketing fails before it starts, because it’s built on assumptions about who the customer is and what they want. We replace the assumptions with answers. Made Right Media is a market research consultant for small and mid-sized businesses in Boise and across Idaho — the research is sized to your business, and it ends in decisions, not a binder.
Here’s the pattern we see over and over. A business owner knows their product cold. They’ve talked to hundreds of customers. So when it’s time to market, they skip the research — they already know what people want, right?
Then the website says the wrong thing. The ads reach the wrong people. The pricing is off by 30% in one direction or the other. Not because anyone was careless, but because the people closest to a business are often the last to see how a stranger sees it.
Market research fixes that. Not the six-figure, six-month kind. The kind that asks the right twenty questions of the right fifty people, looks hard at who else is competing for your customer, and comes back with a short list of things you now know for sure.
Part of the Made Right Model for Growth
Market Research is a Clarity phase service. In the Made Right Model, Clarity comes first for a reason: every dollar you spend in the Confidence phase — on your website, your brand, your search presence, your ads — is only as good as what you knew going in. Research is how you know.
Learn how the Made Right Model for Growth worksResearch sized for a real business
We don’t run focus groups in a room with a two-way mirror. We do the small business market research that a business owner can afford, understand, and act on — and we do it before we recommend a single tactic.
Customer research
Interviews and surveys with your actual customers, your lost customers, and the people who chose someone else. We find out why they bought, why they didn’t, what they’d tell a friend, and what almost stopped them. This is where the language for your marketing comes from — their words, not ours.
Competitive analysis
Who else is competing for your customer, what they’re saying, where they’re showing up, and what they charge. We look at competitors’ websites, search visibility, reviews, and positioning, and we show you where the gaps are — the things nobody in your market is saying that you could own.
Audience development & personas
Not the cartoon kind (“Marketing Mary, 42, likes yoga”). Working personas built from research: who the decision-maker is, what triggers them to look for you, what they need to believe before they’ll buy, and where they go to find out. These drive everything downstream, from your site architecture to your ad targeting.
Search & demand analysis
What people in your market are actually searching for, how often, and how hard it is to show up for it. We use real search data to size the opportunity and find the demand that’s already there, waiting for someone to answer it.
Customer value modeling
What is a customer worth to you over the whole relationship, and what should it cost to get one? We calculate your Customer Lifetime Value and a target acquisition cost from your real numbers. These two figures become the yardstick for every marketing decision that follows.
The findings
You get a short, readable report with what we learned, what it means, and what we’d do about it. Then we walk through it together. If you continue into Strategic Planning, this becomes the foundation. If you don’t, you still walk away knowing your market better than your competitors know theirs.
Research that changed the plan
We’ve done this work for language schools, healthcare practices, real estate brokers, professional services firms, and public agencies across Idaho. In almost every case, the research overturned at least one thing the client was sure about — and that one thing was usually where the money was.
We’ve done this work for:
- Education and private schools
- Healthcare and wellness practices
- Professional services and B2B
- Real estate and property
- Retail and e-commerce
- Nonprofits and public agencies
See our work
Research shows up in the finished product — in a website that says the right thing to the right person, in a brand that stands apart from the competition. Browse selected client work to see where it led.
View selected workWant to understand your market before you spend on it?
Most small businesses skip market research and pay for it later. Our guide to knowing your market covers what research looks like at the small business level, how to understand your customers and competitors without a big budget, and how to turn what you learn into a strategy that works.
Read: Knowing Your MarketLet’s find out what’s actually true
If you’re about to invest in a website, a rebrand, or a campaign and you’re working from a hunch, let’s talk first. We’ll tell you what research would be worth doing, what wouldn’t, and what it would take.
Start a ConversationNot sure where to start? Take the Made Right Assessment.