What B2B market research methodologies have maximum impact?

You know what you want to find out about your existing clients, prospects, new markets, and competitors. You know what key pieces of information will take your next business-critical decisions to the next level.

But knowing how to get the right B2B market research data is a whole other thing altogether.

We’re going to explore the four key market research methodologies – quantitative, qualitative, primary, and secondary – highlighting their key characteristics, pros, cons, and best use cases for B2B businesses. This will put you in the position to choose the best combination of methodologies to get the answers you need.

Quantitative research: what do people think and how many people think the same thing?

Quantitative research is designed to measure the ‘quantity’ of something. (Yes, that’s how to remember the difference!) You collect numerical data that gleans business insights through statistical analysis. It’s the perfect way to gather reliable data about your target audience’s behaviours, preferences, and attitudes – and your industry’s wider market trends.

In the context of B2B industries, quantitative market research focuses on collecting structured data from businesses, industry professionals, or decision-makers to answer the specific questions of individual market research projects.

Your objective might be related to market dynamics, purchasing behaviour, product effectiveness, or competitive positioning. The results of this research often inform strategic decisions such as pricing, market entry, and sales strategies.

Key characteristics of quantitative B2B market research

Structured data collection: Use tools such as surveys, questionnaires, or analytics platforms to gather consistent and comparable data.
Large sample sizes: Ensure data is statistically significant and representative of the target business audience.
Objective insights: Quantitative methods for eliminating subjective interpretation, relying instead on metrics and numbers.

This all sounds great! But how do you actually use quantitative B2B market research to boost your business?

Here are some of the most common applications of this research methodology in B2B industries:

Market sizing: Estimate the total demand for a product or service within an industry.
Customer satisfaction metrics: Measure net promoter scores (NPS), customer satisfaction levels, and customer loyalty levels.
Usage patterns: Understand how often businesses use certain tools, services, or products.
Segmentation analysis: Group businesses by factors such as revenue size, geographic location, or industry sector.
Pricing studies: Test price sensitivity to launch a new product into the market at the right price and to optimise profitability.

To get actionable quantitative market research insights, you need to ask your participants tightly focused questions. The most useful question types for quantitative research are closed questions with binary answers, and those with answers on a numbered scale.

This might look like:

On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with our product/service?
How likely are you to recommend our company to a colleague or peer? (Net promoter score)
What percentage of your annual budget is allocated to [specific product/service category]?
Which of the following features is most important to you when choosing a supplier? (Ranked options)
How frequently do you purchase [specific product/service]? (E.g. weekly, monthly, quarterly)
Which new feature would you be most likely to use? (X or Y)

Quantitative market research can really help B2B businesses see the wood for the trees. You’re operating in complex markets, with high financial stakes, and multiple purchase decision-makers to satisfy. Asking the right people clear questions and being able to see the numbers, trends, and patterns is invaluable when making business-critical decisions.

Pros of quantitative B2B market research methodology

Larger scale surveys at smaller cost
No interviewer bias, as there’s no direct interaction with participants
Concrete data

Cons of quantitative B2B market research methodology

No nuance to the answers – they’re bare numbers with no shades of grey
Less incentive for participants to complete the surveys, as there’s little context

Qualitative research: let’s get into the why

Qualitative B2B market research is where you get granular with the whole gamut of human motivations, attitudes, perceptions, emotions, and behaviours. How does your audience really think and feel, and why? Qualitative insights aren’t easily summarised by definitive numbers – but they do get you right to the heart of your target audience.

In B2B industries, qualitative market research tackles the nuances of your complex decision-making process. You can uncover the ‘whys’ that drive the preferences, pain points, needs, and aspirations of each member of your buying team, industry professionals, and the holders of the purse strings. These personal responses give you a rich layer of understanding to complement your quantitative data.

Key characteristics of qualitative B2B market research

Open-ended exploration: Open-ended questions to explore participants’ thoughts and feelings in detail.
Smaller sample sizes: Focus on depth over breadth and typically involves fewer participants, such as key stakeholders, to gain detailed insights.
Contextual understanding: The context and factors influencing business decisions, such as industry challenges or organisational priorities.

Your organisation can use the insights from qualitative methodology to inform decisions across key areas. For example:

Product development: Find unmet needs or specific pain points you can solve first!
Customer journey mapping: Understand how you can be in the right place, at the right time, with the right information for every member of your buying team. Become the compass that makes navigating purchase decisions clear and simple.
Competitive analysis: Explore your competitors’ perceptions, your industry in general, and identify opportunities for differentiation.
Messaging and branding: Refine your communication strategies to forge real connections with your target audience.

Qualitative methodology requires a very different style of questioning and context. Businesses tend to use similar tried-and-tested methods such as:

In-depth interviews: One-on-one conversations with key people of interest. These are pre-planned, structured discussions which include room for going off track but still gather key information. It’s a tricky balance to strike: you want your interviewees to feel they can explore their challenges, preferences, and decision-making processes, but you will, of course, have a time frame and a business-driven objective.

Focus groups: You lead a small group of stakeholders to gather their diverse perspectives on products, services, and industry trends.

Case studies or ethnographic research: You’re trusted to observe a business ‘up close and personal’. By spending time in your target audience’s natural setting, you can deepen your understanding of their workflows, challenges, and product usage.

Open-ended surveys: Respondents are given open-ended questions, which gives them space to answer in their own words rather than pre-defined options.

Qualitative research is particularly valuable in the B2B context due to the complexity of business ecosystems. Actually speaking to the key decision-makers in your target niche is a feat in itself! This kind of human-to-human research can unearth golden nuggets of information that can really put you ahead of the game – especially in B2B industries.

Pros of qualitative B2B market research methodology

It’s great for researching a small, complex pool of people – which is often the very definition of a B2B target audience.
You get closer to the participants with a personalised experience and individual answers.

Cons of qualitative B2B market research methodology

Time-consuming to coordinate calendars, allow for 10 hour-long 1:1 interviews, and collate and analyse the results.
Results are harder to make comparable, because they’re individual.
Interviewer bias is unavoidable, because they’re a real human (though this can be mitigated by awareness and transparency).
Focus groups can be especially difficult to arrange when different time zones are in play.

Primary research methodology: straight from the horse’s mouth

Primary research is data you collect yourself to meet your research objective. You might be targeting your audience, ideal prospects, industry experts, professional organisations, or even competitors. Primary research powers actionable intelligence from firsthand data that’s tailored to your strategic business needs.

Key characteristics of primary B2B market research methodology

Original data: The research is often collected through direct interaction with businesses, clients, and industry professionals.
Tailored to your research objectives: Primary research allows you to collect highly specific tailored data that addresses the questions or problems you’re trying to solve.
Variety of data collection methods: You choose the method(s) that best suit your target audience and what you’re trying to find out – surveys, questionnaires, 1:1 interviews, focus groups, observations, and case studies.
Sharpness of your data: Watch out – don’t cut yourself on the specificity and accuracy of your primary research data! Primary research is typically more accurate and relevant to the context or business problem at hand.

You’re already thinking about how you can put this to good use, aren’t you? There are several common uses of primary research in a B2B context, including:

Market analysis: Understand the dynamics of a specific market or industry by gathering firsthand data from industry leaders or competitors.

Product/service development: Do they love it? Hate it? Meh? Learn directly from your clients and prospects about their challenges, unmet needs, and preferences to inform your product/service design or improvement.

Customer satisfaction and feedback: Measure how well a product or service meets the expectations and needs of your target market and identify areas for improvement. Build this into your feedback loop and you’ll never get rid of them!

Brand perception: Find out what people say about you when you’re not there! Hear exactly how your brand or service is perceived.

Competitor research: Discover where you sit in the market and find out your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and market position from the people who matter.

Pros of primary B2B market research methodology

Get information straight from the horse’s mouth! This will be reliable, because you’ll design it, run it, and analyse it.
You own it. You can publish your primary research findings however you prefer, which will enhance your status as a key person of influence in your industry.
Give yourself the competitive advantage – since the data is exclusive to your primary research, you have the edge. You now understand unique aspects of your market your competitors may have overlooked.

Cons of primary B2B market research methodology

You need to invest substantial time and money to get the right participants, do the actual research, and analyse the data you collect.
Getting access to the right people and convincing them to participate can be quite a challenge, especially in highly competitive and niche industries.
Bias can be an issue in primary research, because you’re dealing with multi-faceted human beings. Data collected from interviews or surveys may be influenced by the researcher’s questions, the participants’ perspectives, or sample size issues, which can skew results.

Primary research is a powerful B2B research methodology that allows businesses to collect firsthand data tailored to their strategic needs. Although it can be resource-intensive, its insights provide valuable, actionable intelligence that can support critical business decisions, product innovations, market strategies, and more.

Secondary research methodology: what’s going on outside your organisation?

Secondary research gets you a 360 degree perspective by looking at data that’s been collected and published by outside sources. The main difference between secondary and primary research is that you don’t collect the data yourself. Secondary research uses second-hand information that’s already available.

Different types of B2B secondary research:

Industry reports and market research studies: These give you detailed data on industry trends, forecasts, market size, and competitive landscape and are published by market research firms.

Government and public data: Government agencies in most countries publish collated data about demographics, economic indicators, and market data for different agencies.

Company annual reports: Publicly traded companies are obliged to publish annual reports, which reveal their financial performance, strategies, and market position.

Trade publications and news articles: Get the latest in regulatory changes, innovations, and trends in your industry.

Industry associations and trade groups: These reports, studies, and surveys give in-depth data about best practice, market dynamics, and benchmarks for businesses in their specific sector.

Academic research: Academic journals and universities publish papers and studies that dig into specifics.

Key characteristics of secondary B2B market research methodology

With a whole world wide web’s worth of information, defining the key features of useful secondary B2B market research is absolutely crucial. Otherwise, you’ll disappear into that internet hole and never be seen again!

Data already exists: Secondary market research leverages information that’s already been collected by someone else. You won’t spend time or resources gathering it yourself.

Broad scope: This is your ‘zoom out’ view of your industry, market, or trend. You can include historical data, global perspectives, and general industry knowledge, which are all useful for strategic B2B decisions.

Needs less time and money: Your market researchers will be working at a different level, analysing data without the initial collection stage.

Good jumping-off point: Secondary research is often used as a starting point for deeper investigation. Find out if your answers are already out there before you invest in expensive primary research. It also helps refine your primary research objectives by identifying trends, key issues, and gaps in knowledge that your subsequent research can fill!

You can use B2B secondary market research to inform decisions across your organisation.

Market entry strategies: If you’re looking to expand into a new region or market, secondary research can help you assess market size, demand, competition, and the regulatory environment.

Competitive analysis: Using the data published by your competitors, you can understand their position and discover gaps in the market.

Product development: See unmet needs, market demands, and consumer trends from a different viewpoint and refine your products to hit the market with the perfect product–market fit!

Industry trends: Find important changes in your industry that will help you anticipate market needs ahead of your competitors.

Customer knowledge: Get indirect insights into your customers’ needs and pain points from market surveys, customer satisfaction reports, and consumer behaviour studies.

Pros of secondary B2B market research methodology

Save time and money: Eliminate the substantial investment in collecting firsthand data. Secondary research is a quick, efficient way to gather a lot of data.

Wide range of data: Multiple sources of different types of data give you a bird’s-eye view of your industry and of your audience experience.

Industry trends: Understand which industry trends are relevant to your niche, like regulatory changes and technological advancements.

Benchmarking: By understanding your competitors, you can see where you sit in relation to them and identify your edge.

Market assessment: Find out how something’s going to be received by your customers, prospects, and the wider market before you launch. Use secondary market research to map the current market landscape.

Cons of secondary B2B market research methodology

Relevance of the data: Is the information current and actually useful for answering your business questions?

Quality and accuracy: You need to double- and triple-check your secondary sources for bias, inaccuracy, and publication date. Statistics from 1990 are unlikely to be helpful! Critical evaluation of all secondary sources is crucial.

Lack of control: You didn’t collect the data. Questions about what information was gathered, what was included/excluded, and how it was collected are out of your hands. So you can’t expect the insights to be as specific or as deep as you’d like.

Fragmentation of data: Secondary research often requires combing through multiple sources, which is as time-consuming as it sounds. Finding consistent data across different sources can also be challenging, and you may be reconciling conflicting findings on the same objective.

Surface level: You can get valuable insights from secondary sources, but they may lack the granular level of detail for answering your specific business questions.

Which B2B market research methodology will answer my questions most effectively?

As you can see, each methodology serves a purpose. For comprehensive answers to your market research questions, you need to find the right combination of the four B2B market research methodologies.

Qualitative research explores attitudes, opinions, and motivations, which gives you a deeper understanding of customer behaviours. Quantitative research gives you the measurable data and statistical validation for informed decision-making.

Primary research reveals the real-time thoughts, feelings, and opinions of your clients, your prospects, and industry professionals. Secondary research gives you valuable context by using outside data.

By integrating all four methodologies you can minimise bias and capture the full spectrum of insights for a more accurate understanding of your B2B landscape.

How ScoreApp helps you find the right combination for your B2B market research

You need to inform your business strategy with answers to the right questions, within your timeline and your resource budget. But, like a ‘choose your own selection box contents’ moment, the options can be somewhat overwhelming.

ScoreApp helps you find and execute the right combination of market research methodologies by streamlining the whole process. The platform’s designed to integrate multiple research methodologies seamlessly, with capabilities for:

Personalisation: Of everything – your brand and your audience
Segmentation: Automatic quiz results segmentation
Integration: With your tech stack and with methodologies
Analytics: No statistic is safe from ScoreApp’s metrics analysis!
Insights: Immediately actionable, for your participants and for your business decisions
Shareability: Professional, clear visual presentation of your findings makes sharing insights across your organisation (and on your socials!) straightforward

With ScoreApp as your market research tool, your life will be so much easier. ScoreApp powers your business decisions with comprehensive insights for driving successful strategic thinking.

Get your B2B market research off to a flying start with ScoreApp, for free!