If you have grand plans for your business, careful market research can make them happen. Take the time to get it right, and you could hit the nail on the head with your products or services, create cut-through content, and build a marketing strategy to help your brand stand out in all the right places.

If you get your research wrong, rush the process or skip it entirely, you could end up with a collection of poor data and false assumptions about your audience. In turn, this could tarnish your brand, sink your sales and leave investors and customers confused.

Wondering where to start? Knowing the difference between primary and secondary research can help you lay the groundwork for a successful strategy. In this guide, we’ll give you the lowdown on how they differ, as well as ways to apply, analyse and visualise your research with the help of Adobe Express.

What is primary market research?

Just like a journalist getting a quote, or a detective interviewing a witness, primary market research is all about going straight to the source. To do it, you’ll need to conduct unique research on topics that matter to your business – say through surveys, interviews or focus groups (more on these later).

Whatever the method, you’re probably shooting for the same goal: timely, highly specific and relevant insights that you can then put into actions.

However, asking the right questions and correctly interpreting the data isn’t always easy. So often, companies hire business analysts or market research agencies to do the hard work for them. This can provide you with more data, but it will impact your budget too – so you’ll need to work out if your research is worth the investment.

Some of the advantages of primary research include:

• Specificity. With primary research, you can drill down into the specific topics that affect you and ask the questions you want answers to.
• Timeliness. Primary research can give you the edge with the most up-to-date data in your industry. But you’ll need to act on it quickly.
• Originality. If you conduct the research yourself, you know that it isn’t available elsewhere. You might find your research has applications beyond its original purpose: you could use it to create industry-first thought leadership content or PR campaigns.

However, primary research comes with some disadvantages too. For example:

• Cost. It can be expensive to collect primary research data – especially if you hire a third-party agency or analyst.
• Difficulty. There’s a reason why businesses often hire market researchers to do the job for them. It’s not always easy to figure out the right questions and methods for your research. Then, you have to interpret the data afterwards. And that’s not to mention finding subjects for your research in the first place.
• Reliability. If you don’t conduct research correctly, your data might not be reliable. You might have too small a sample size, or your questions might inadvertently be vague or misleading.

What is secondary market research?

You could think of secondary research a bit like the work you might do for a university thesis or dissertation or literature review – where it pays to gather data and insights from a wide pool of different places to build a strong, coherent argument. Daunting as this may sound, by and large, secondary research is a bit easier to achieve than primary research.

It involves analysing and citing research that has been conducted by other organisations and published online. Think public sector statistics or paid-for primary research carried out by other businesses. Then, there’s newspaper and magazine articles, press releases and other media stories too, scholarly journals, or even public archives.

This data won’t be specific to your business. But by taking your pick from different sources, you might find you can tell a story of your own. Plus, as you only really need a laptop and an internet connection, it’s a lot easier to get started.

Some of the advantages of secondary research include:

• Cost. You’ll need far less time, budget and resource to conduct secondary research.
• Speed. If you’re keen to get started, it can be as simple as a quick Google search to conduct secondary research.
• Convenience. The internet is a treasure trove of free secondary research data. Once you know what you’re looking for, you can be deep diving in seconds. Plus, as the data is already analysed, you can draw conclusions straight away.

That’s not to say there are no disadvantages to secondary research. You might hit a few snags too:

• Non-specific. Even if you’re armed with a selection of authoritative and well-curated sources, there’s no escaping the simple fact that secondary research will not apply directly to your business. Only primary research can do that.
• Laborious. The internet can be overwhelming. To conduct a truly thorough secondary research review, you might find yourself drowning with data and facts.
• Hard to interpret. Without full knowledge of the metrics and questions used for the original research, you might interpret it incorrectly. This could be risky if you’re relying on it for important business decisions.
• Timelines. Sometimes, you might be relying on data that is two or three years old. It’s only going to get older. If you’re looking for cutting-edge, relevant data, you might need to conduct it yourself.

What is the main difference between primary and secondary market research?

Knowing whether primary or secondary market research is better for your business can be confusing. And largely, it comes down to your specific situation – including the topics you want to research and the resources and budget you have available.

Below, you’ll find an at-a-glance table to help you work out which is right for you.

You might find a combination of primary and secondary research is the best way forward – and often, the two are very complementary. Primary research can help you jump feet first into the specifics, and secondary research can add context and demonstrate an awareness of your wider industry.

Primary market research methods.

Primary research is all about getting information directly from the horse’s mouth. Here are a few common methods.

Surveys.

Surveys help you gather data from a large number of people. Many market research agencies used to conduct surveys on the street, on the doorstep or over the phone. Now, you’re more likely to see surveys online, conducted on social media or through platforms like SurveyMonkey.

Interviews.

Interviews are a more in-depth way to gather data. They allow for follow-up questions and a generally more detailed analysis of responses. You’ll need to think whether you want to create structured, unstructured or semi-structured lists of questions beforehand to get the best results.

Focus groups.

Focus groups are a way to gather data from a small group of people who are representative of your target audience. These are frequently used in politics as a litmus test for public opinion to base policies and messaging around. From a business perspective, you could use a focus group to get feedback on a specific product or gauge the success of an advertising tagline.

Behavioural observations.

Behavioural observations involve watching people in their natural environment to understand their behaviour. You could use these observations to understand reactions to certain products, or how people move around a shop floor.

Secondary market research examples.

Secondary research is all about the bigger picture. Here are a few common examples.

Analysing existing market research data.

You can access a wealth of market research data from a variety of sources, including market research firms, government agencies, and industry associations. You could use this data to understand the size and growth of a market, for example.

Accessing competitor data.

Digging into publicly available competitor data can be a great source of insight. You could find this on company websites, financial reports, and industry databases. A UK business could use this data to understand their competitors’ pricing strategies, for example.

Reviewing journals, reports and white papers.

Journals, reports and white papers can provide valuable insights into industry trends, consumer behaviour, and emerging technologies. You could use this info to stay ahead of the curve and identify new opportunities.

Content analysis.

Content analysis involves studying written, audio, or visual materials to understand their meaning and message. A UK business could use content analysis to understand the sentiment of their customers on social media, for example.

How can Adobe Express help with your primary and secondary market research?

Raw spreadsheet data is likely to make even the most avid statistics whizz feel a bit sleepy. So, if you’re really looking to impress with your primary and secondary research, or create collateral for interview sessions and focus groups, you need to make your research truly pop.

Here, Adobe Express is a game-changer. Expect user-friendly templates, straightforward design tools and everything else you need to make a spreadsheet into a slideshow and beyond.

Create product mock-ups and discussion slides for focus groups.

Put the pro in your product mock-ups and discussion slides for your focus groups. You’ll find a huge variety of templates and design elements to make your presentations stand out.

Test your ad visuals and campaign concepts.

Adobe Express is a great tool for testing out ad visuals and campaign concepts. And don’t forget – creativity is an iterative process. Why not try different versions of your ads and see how they perform with your target audience?

Translate your research with data visualisation tools.

Breathe life and meaning into complex research with data visualisation tools. You can create charts, concept maps, and infographics to help you understand and communicate your findings.

Use charts and graphs to summarise your primary research.

Complex data needs simple, concise and engaging presentation. With our free tools, you can make crunching the numbers from your interviews and surveys easy-breezy. Create pie charts, bar graphs and more in a few clicks.

Use the Presentation Maker to showcase your insights.

Showcase your market research using Adobe Express’ Presentation Maker. You can use a variety of templates and design elements to make your presentations stand out. Think video, animations and more.

Try Adobe Express for free now

Good to know.

What is an example of primary and secondary data?

Primary data is collected by a researcher for the first time, and therefore offers a unique insight. A good example would be an interview or focus group. Secondary research is gathering data that has been collected by others and interpreting it. A university literature review is an example of secondary research.

How should you differentiate primary and secondary sources?

You can differentiate primary and secondary sources by considering who gathered the data, how recent it is and whether or not the data is original. Primary sources are original and contemporary, while secondary sources are pre-existing and historical – even if they’ve been published relatively recently.

Is Adobe Express free?

Yes, our free plan offers many core features including thousands of templates, photo editing and effects, animation, and 5 GB of storage. See our pricing page for details and to compare plans.