For decades, psychologists, therapists and behaviorists labored under the mistaken impression that the brain was separated into two hemispheres, and each had a different set of executive functions. The continuation of the myth in marketing terms has lead to a field of study and application called “Right-Brain Research”. More modern and sophisticated studies have debunked the myth, and it’s been accepted that both hemispheres control a variety of functions and that cross-over between the two is significant and intricate. So where does that leave marketers?
Right where they started, trying to find the emotional triggers that with prompt an action, a response to advertising, images, video, messaging and other inputs, that drive purchasing behavior. But all is not lost . . .
Good primary customer insight research, when well-designed and executed, can generate reams of relevant and useful data that can be studied, parsed and dissected to derive insights into the customers of your particular brand, product or service.
Listeners will discover:
How to get inside the head of their customer and use the information to spur action
How to set up and analyze the resulting conversational qual data
How to use the results to make decisions on media, message, and imagery
Learn the secrets hidden in your customer’s heads, and how to use them to attract more buyers and boost your brand, in less than 30 minutes!
The Value of Primary Marketing Research in the Planning of Marketing Outreach Campaigns.
Ever wonder how product or service companies figure out what to offer, what products should look like, be called, feel like, or how much they should cost? Ever wonder how they know what you want in a product or service, or how they knew you’d appreciate a particular product or feature?
Primary research is the best way to get inside the head of the customer and find out their preferences, needs, wants, likes and dislikes. By gathering information and data directly from customers, potential customers, ex-customers, and other direct stakeholders, marketers can determine buying behavior, product features, and more, and turn them into best-selling products and services.
You’ll learn:
What methods of primary research work best?
How to analyze and present data that doesn’t yield numbers or graphs
How big a sample do I need to gather significant data I can use
How to use the insights uncovered to convert them into something I can use to improve my marketing
The fastest thirty minutes of insight available, The Marketing Doctor will answer your questions about primary research and how to use it to set your marketing program on fire!
The Marketing Doctor Podcast, Season 1, Episode 1 – Pilot
The Value of Primary Marketing Research in the Planning of Marketing Outreach Campaigns.
Ever wonder how product or service companies figure out what to offer, what products should look like, be called, feel like, or how much they should cost? Ever wonder how they know what you want in a product or service, or how they knew you’d appreciate a particular product or feature?
Primary research is the best way to get inside the head of the customer and find out their preferences, needs, wants, likes and dislikes. By gathering information and data directly from customers, potential customers, ex-customers, and other direct stakeholders, marketers can determine buying behavior, product features, and more, and turn them into best-selling products and services.
You’ll learn:
What methods of primary research work best?
How to analyze and present data that doesn’t yield numbers or graphs
How big a sample do I need to gather significant data I can use
How to use the insights uncovered to convert them into something I can use to improve my marketing
The fastest thirty minutes of insight available, The Marketing Doctor will answer your questions about primary research and how to use it to set your marketing program on fire!
You worked hard on your visual identity, your brand has been time tested and focus grouped to death, but do you know why it works (or doesn’t) in some formats or in some contexts? The answer is likely involved with Neuromarketing Science.
How the brand appears, how it’s used in advertising in print on television, or online, affects buyer perception of the product the company and the brand. It’s one of the reasons brand standards and usage guides evolved, to help maintain consistency of presentation from usage to usage, to give to structure and control flexibility of the various uses and appearances of the brand. That usage manual, in a perfect world, was also backed up by Neuormarketing science, the science of perception with regard to persuasion.
[pullquote align=”left or right”]That usage manual, in a perfect world, was also backed up by Neuormarketing science, the science of perception with regard to persuasion.[/pullquote]
Perception can be shifted based on a number of characteristics of the product the packaging and the brand usage. How the brand appears, where it appears, it’s placement in-situ for packaging, advertising and other outlets, and other factors. Here’s four ways you can make your brand more powerful using this brilliant perception science.
Give It Weight – positioning of the brand on packaging and in advertising can affect the perception of the weight (both literal and figurative) of the product. Studies have shown that product logos positioned at the bottom of the page or the lowest part of the package are perceived as heavier than those where the logo or product squib is placed near the top of the package or the page. If you want to be taken seriously, let the weight do some work for you (if weight is a positive attribute for your product), and put your product logo toward the bottom.
Let Color Work For You – Weight and credibility can also be inferred, and therefore manipulated, through the use of color. This one is more specific to product advertising, but many brands can take advantage of this attribute. Studies have shown that a lighter color can indicate a perception of lighter weight. How many times have you seen a product logo appear in one color for the “standard” product, and a lighter version of that same color appears on their “light” version (low sugar, low fat, low calorie, low density, low carb, low gluten, take advantage of this perception). Studies showed however that this only works on versions of the same color – putting your product in a black box won’t be perceived as any heavier than in a white one, but light red or pink is perceived as lighter than dark red or scarlet.
Pay It Forward – The brand’s place on the perceived time continuum can be positioned for the purpose of creating a specific impression. English speakers and Romance language users perceive time as moving from left to right, while other languages and their users perceive time in the opposite direction (Hebrew, for example). If you want it to appear that your brand is older and more established, place the brand or product depiction on the left, and it will read as more traditional, nostalgic, or time-tested. Place the brand on the right side of the page, the closer to the right edge the better, and it will be perceived as fresh, modern, forward-thinking, high-tech. This effect can also be embodied in the brand itself. Logos that show motion or direct the eye to the right tend to be perceived as more progressive, skew younger and more active, more advanced. The NIKE swoosh moves to the right showing speed, advancement, direction, purpose, forward motion.
Avoid Dissonance and Negativity – Sensory inputs should work in harmony for the best results, both in use of the brand, and in where it appears – context matters. Color, sound, small, ambient lighting, all play a part in the perception of the product, and these elements need to work together to get maximum impact from the brand. A bright colored package, with an astringent or citric aroma, with fast blaring music, will all work to create the perception of youth, vigor, action, engagement, high-energy. A pastel colored package viewed under diminished lighting, with soothing music and the scent of lavender will evoke relaxation, solidity, kindness and positivity. Mixing the elements creates dissonance in the mind of the buyer, and generates insecurity and indecision.
Additionally, negativity in imagery or brand context can drive down sales behavior. Studies have shown that uncomfortable situations or depiction of negativity or sadness, however brief, can cause an overall negative perception of the brand, enough to depress buying behavior. Keeping a fully positive outlook, use of positive and uplifting imagery has the opposite effect, engendering a sense of trust and wellbeing, and driving buying behavior upward.
Is your brand being used in its most powerful context to build the right perception? Test these four elements, and see if you’re sending the right message . . .
Most businesses we encounter in our practice appear from the outside to be “doing fine”, and its only after a few pointed key questions of the senior management do the challenges and problems surface. Most business owners feel that they “know their customers” and understand them sufficiently to serve them and sell to them. Yet, when we initiate some customer insight research, we inevitably find that there are many facets to their customer base, some of whom are being served well (the Core), some of whom are being served peripherally (the Fringe), and some of whom are being completely ignored, if not disenfranchised (the Outliers). If our research is structured correctly, we can uncover areas of growth potential in all three groups, providing tremendous opportunities for most businesses to significantly move the needle on sales and revenue. These are five ways our results can be directed toward growth:
Tighten the focus on the Core. While these folks are generally repeat customers, long-terms clients and loyal to a fault, they can always increase their numbers, frequency and volume, often by tightening and focusing messaging, narrowing media choices to those that are most effective, and “clipping the menu” of benefits, product offerings and services to those that they frequently enjoy.
Uncover Opportunity Within The Fringe. Infrequent customers, on and off clients, low-volume buyers, those with a high browse-to-buy ratio, are where the greatest opportunities often lie. There is the largest potential for growth among this group, to bring them up to the level of the Core group and beyond, by tailoring the product, packaging, messaging, media selection, and benefit focus to their needs. Now you have to uncover those real needs and cater to them to beef up the volume and frequency of their behavior.
Learn About Off-Label Uses From the Fringe. Occasionally, our research will uncover a related, but not fully realized, use for a product or service, one that the product wasn’t designed for, but that customers saw as a functional substitute for something else. Sometimes this warrants a small product or packaging change to accommodate and expand upon before offering it to customers. Sometimes this reveals co-packaging, or co-marketing opportunities previously not realized, which lead to whole new revenue streams. These can also present opportunities to bring the Outliers in closer and boost their volume using the new product usage as a lever.
Call In The Outliers. Discovering the resistance points and friction points in doing business with you or buying your products often presents itself most readily when speaking with the Outliers. These folks bought from you or worked with you for one or a couple of several real reasons: you were the only game in town at the time; you were the least expensive; you were the most convenient to their current circumstances; they were pressed for time and didn’t want to make a conscious choice. These are targets of opportunity, but they will show up where your customer interface is weak, where there are barriers to convenience, obstacles to purchase, price sensitivity, weaknesses in package focus, product size, and a host of small deficiencies that these casual buyers won’t surmount to buy from you. Something as simple as a slightly smaller size for sale at convenience outlets, or a reduced service package for smaller customers, can boost sales noticeably at minimal cost, and keep margins intact.
Find A New Sector. Within each of the other sector targets there will be clues as to a new customer sector that’s out there being ignored or forgotten, and they will reveal themselves through the conversations with both Outliers and Fringe customers. They answer questions about current behaviors beginning with “Well, I used to do ____, but now . . .” They refer to a previous reason to buy that may or may not currently exist with the current product or service, or that existed with another brand they bought before switching, and that’s where the opportunity lies. Ferret out those differences, those “old” reasons and see if they still exist, you might have turned off a whole sector of customers and didn’t know it by making a change earlier that you can now revisit and capture them back.
The name of the game is knowing your customer base better, segmenting your offering appropriately, and hunting for clues of things that turn them on and off and using that knowledge to your advantage in the marketplace to approach each group as efficiently and effectively as possible.
If you think your business can benefit from knowing your customers better for any of the above reasons, or something entirely different, you owe it to yourself to investigate further. The costs are far outweighed by the benefits in both the short- and long-term.
Size matters, right? In some things, that’s certainly true. In the start-up phase of a business, its more like “Scale Matters,” as the mantra driving pixel-based and other start-ups is “Does it scale, and how well?” This avoids the trap of essentially creating a job for the founder, instead of a business primed for success and growth. If the founder is a limiting factor, because he can only be in so many places at once, that’s a problem with scale. It’s a structural issue, one that needs to be addressed at the earliest stages, so the business can pivot around it and grow.
Agility is the biggest single advantage small business has over their larger industry-mates, and to give that up with layers of bureaucracy, rigid policies, staunch and robust process guidelines with little room for innovation seems counterintuitive. However, there is one area where acting like a bigger company can pay much bigger dividends – Marketing.
Most small companies suffer from a couple of similar ills when it comes to marketing themselves:
Small companies typically focus on sales rather than marketing anyway, laboring under the misapprehension that if they can just sell enough widgets, software licenses, land enough accounts, find enough clients, the marketing will take care of itself. As a consequence, most underspend, in some cases drastically, on outreach marketing activities. Oddly, these are the exact type of investments and activities that will position them for the growth they so strongly desire. Most founders are so fearful of waste, or of appearing to make a mistake, that they play everything close to the vest, making only incremental advances, taking the safe route and only repeating the actions they “think” worked the previous year. This leads to small, defensive thinking and limits growth like a vice squeezing the business until it’s frozen in place.
Spending on the “wrong” things. The old saw still holds that ”half of our advertising works, we’re just not sure which half.” In today’s data-rich, public-sharing society, there’s almost no excuse for not knowing which half of any activity drives revenue, some types of activities are just harder to connect directly to sales growth than others. With that said, businesses who have never advertised or done any real organized, planned outreach activity almost universally find a significant uptick in sales revenue when they decide to start. But that glow is short-lived, as they try different things on an ad hoc basis without a plan, and spend themselves out of all the revenue gains they made at the beginning.
Now What?
What to do? Modern marketing is about agile, “spend, fail, learn, repeat” cycles. You’re not going to hit the target on every activity the first time out, and there’s a learning curve for every business, regardless of how many consultants or agencies you engage. You’re going to fail at some point, better to accept it, get used to it, use it in a positive way and get past it. One now-famous CMO of a large consumer products company had a philosophy about how to “do” agile with a variety of marketing ideas – if you throw ten ideas at the wall, and 6 of them stick, you’ve broken even and paid for the bad ones. If you hit 7 or more, you’re up for the year. Take the education from the 4 failures and commit those resources to the other six, and double down. This creates a culture of upwardly-spiraling innovation, one that rewards success while negating the suppression and stigma of failure. Failing fast and cheap works in your favor over making big bets on untested ideas and misplacing resources at a loss.
Where small business can think like a bigger business is in their attitude toward spending on marketing activity. Small-minded miserliness is self-defeating. Do a quick cost-benefit analysis, allow founders to have the courage of their own convictions, and take a calculated risk on some outreach activity that’s informed by solid, hard-won research.
4-Step Process To Improvement
Get to know who your customer really is, spend the time and money on research.
Find the company’s “why” early on and use it like a weapon against your competitors.
Differentiate the small business from their market-mates, and exploit the difference
Designate a real, realistic portion of your sales revenue for marketing activity.
Once you reach that spending level, you’re done for the year, limiting your losses by putting a stop order on funding ideas that haven’t borne fruit. Now you have a system for testing ideas, limiting downside of investing in ideas that don’t generate revenue, and have a back-stop for using the education to apply toward the ideas that do work and drive revenue upward. This kind of test, fail, learn, repeat cycle is innovation-friendly, and can spawn all sorts of new ideas, new products, new angles, new customer segments, all of which lead to the type of rapid growth start-ups are known for.
You’ll be surprised at the benefits that the courage to innovate can generate in the long- and short-term, and the gains that can be had by simply thinking and acting bigger than you are as a company. Size does matter, most importantly, in the realm of perception.
Many thanks to the Insight Association for putting this together – we’ve been using this same logic to explain the value of research to our clients for years, but this is so clean and well-written I had to share it with you . . .April 15, 2015
In a competitive market, for-profit ventures are only successful when they are efficient and make the wisest use of their assets. Due to this simple economic truth, every activity and decision an organization makes hinges on return-on-investment (ROI). For corporate researchers, marketing research (MR) is a means to an end and does not generate revenue unto itself. Therefore, research professionals in these organizations face an important dilemma in measuring their ROI.
Why Calculate ROI?
On top of justifying marketing research as a critical investment, measuring return-on-investment can help organizations in other ways. ROI allows managers to:
Understand the optimal scope and size of MR activities
Develop and defend budget proposals
Measure, track and improve performance
Explain the tangible value in MR to stakeholders
It is difficult to judge whether time, money and resources should be devoted to an activity if there is no objective evidence to support the contributions of that activity to the organization. Further, it is difficult to budget if there is no understanding of how changes to the funding of MR activities will ultimately affect the company as a whole[1].
Difficulties in Measuring ROI
Despite the importance of measuring ROI, the marketing research profession has no gold standard approach to the dilemma. This is in large part due to the difficulty in quantifying the value of what MR provides. Dr. Chuck Chakrapani, President of Leger Marketing and Visiting Professor at Ryerson College, offers the 4 reasons, cited below:
1. “Marketing Research Can Produce a Return Only If Someone Acts On It”
It’s necessary to know (1) whether the MR resulted in an action and (2) the costs and revenue of that action in order to calculate ROI. Further, MR may result in a decision to take no action.
2. “The Same Marketing Research May Lead to Different Actions”
MR is subject to the action of decision-makers. Given the same research findings, different decision-makers may take different actions with different revenue results.
3. “In Some Instances, the ROI Is Not Worth Calculating”
It is difficult to assign ROI to MR in certain cases. For example, how should ROI be assigned in cases where decision-makers are simply using MR to confirm something that is fairly obvious?
4. “Marketing Research May Be Used As an Input to Many Decisions”
MR findings may be used by many departments, to different degrees, over a long period of time. It is difficult to unpack the ROI MR provided in each of these cases over time. [2]
Marketing research is often a critical part of business actions. However, there are many factors that contribute to success or failure, including context (e.g., confirmation of an obvious fact or business-saving insight), alternative courses of action, management deliberations and cost of inputs (e.g., advertising, sales). Despite this difficulty, numerous researchers and professionals have developed metrics in order to provide at least a reflection of the value that MR brings to an organization. Popular ROI metrics are summarized below.
[1] Chakrapani, Chuck. “the basics of marketing research roi.” Vue September 2006:12-14
We’ve been using In-Depth or Personal Interview techniques to uncover customer insights and consumer behavior triggers for years with great success, using the outcomes to inform creative executions and boost effectiveness of marketing efforts – the big agencies have some catching up to do . . .
Trump’s win spurs concerns that ad agencies are out of touch with consumers
By
Alexandra Bruell and
Suzanne Vranica
Advertisers are grappling with a stark realization: After spending years courting U.S. consumers with aspirational images of upscale urban living, they may have misjudged the yearnings of much of their audience.
In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president with a wave of support from middle American voters, advertisers are reflecting on whether they are out of touch with the same people—rural, economically frustrated, elite-distrusting, anti-globalization voters—who propelled the businessman into the White House. Mr. Trump’s rise has them rethinking the way they collect data about consumers, recruit staff and pitch products.
A few days after the Nov. 8 election, the chief executive of the ad agency giant McCann Worldgroup summoned top executives to discuss what the company could learn from the surprising outcome. One takeaway for him and his staff was that too much advertising falsely assumes that all U.S. consumers desire to be like coastal elites.
“Every so often you have to reset what is the aspirational goal the public has with regard to the products we sell,” said Harris Diamond, McCann’s CEO. “So many marketing programs are oriented toward metro elite imagery.” Marketing needs to reflect less of New York and Los Angeles culture, he said, and more of “Des Moines and Scranton.”
Some marketers, concerned that data isn’t telling them everything they need to know, are considering increasing their use of personal interviews in research. Meanwhile, some ad agencies are looking to hire more people from rural areas as they rethink the popular use of aspirational messaging showcasing a ritzy life on the two metropolitan coasts. One company is also weighing whether to open more local offices around the world, where the people who create ads are closer to the people who see them.
“This election is a seminal moment for marketers to step back and understand what is in people’s heads and what actually drives consumer choice,” said Joe Tripodi, chief marketing officer of the Subway sandwich chain.
Even as many ad agencies try to improve their gender and racial diversity, industry executives say they also need to ensure their U.S. employees come from varied socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds.
A diversity hire “can be a farm girl from Indiana as much as a Cuban immigrant who lives in Pensacola,” said John Boiler, chief executive of the agency 72andSunny, whose clients include General Mills Inc. and Coors Light. The agency plans to expand its university recruitment programs to include rural areas.
‘[A diversity hire] can be a farm girl from Indiana as much as a Cuban immigrant who lives in Pensacola.’
—John Boiler, chief executive of the agency 72andSunny
Given how polling underestimated Mr. Trump’s support, the election underscores the limitations of “research methodologies that even in the era of big data are subject to human bias,” said Antonio Lucio, the chief marketing officer of HP Inc.
As a result HP, the personal computer and printer arm of the former Hewlett-Packard Co., is re-evaluating its reliance on research techniques like online polls and seeing if it needs to increase its use of personal interviews and ethnography, which is when researchers try to understand how people live by visiting them in their homes or work environments.
David Sable, global chief executive of Y&R, a creative agency owned by WPP PLC, said the election is a lesson for marketers and agencies that have become too infatuated with big data. Mr. Sable said that Y&R will “double down” on its eXploring program, which involves spending time with consumers in their own habitats. For example, the agency has in the past done laundry with families in London as part of its research for a packaged-goods company.
“If you want to understand how a lion hunts you don’t go to the zoo, you go to the jungle,” he said.
David Droga, creative chairman and founder of Droga5, whose clients include Yum Brands Inc.’s Pizza Hut and J.P. Morgan Chase, said the election validated its immersive approach. The shop this year sent employees to Johnsonville headquarters in Wisconsin to interview many of the sausage company’s employees for an ad campaign. “We really want to make sure we not just understand our demo, but the mind-set of our demo right now,” Mr. Droga said. (Droga5 also did work for Hillary Clinton, including a TV spot that depicts her fighting for children throughout her public life.)
A scene from Droga5’s Johnsonville ad campaign. Droga5 sent employees to Johnsonville headquarters in Wisconsin to interview many of the sausage company’s employees for the campaign. Photo: Droga5
Advertising executives also said the surprising outcome to the election would likely hamper advertising spending next year, as marketers try to figure out what implications the new administration’s decisions will have on businesses.
“I believe there will be a slowdown” in the first quarter as marketers take a “wait and see” approach to Mr. Trump’s policies, said Maurice Lévy, chief executive officer of Publicis Groupe SA.
WPP’s GroupM, the largest ad buying firm in the world, had been anticipating U.S. ad spending would grow 3% to $183.9 billion next year. Kelly Clark, global CEO of GroupM, now said he anticipates ad spending growth in the U.S. will likely decline a few percentage points over the next six months. “We do believe that investment decisions will be delayed,” said Mr. Clark.
If agencies internalize the societal changes the election reflected, the content or tone of advertising could change, some ad executives predicted.
“The election will have spooked the liberal elite away from high concept, ‘make the world a better place’” advertising to “a more down-to-earth ‘tell me what you will do for me’ approach” said Robert Senior, worldwide chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi, a creative firm owned by Publicis Groupe.
Mr. Senior said the change will likely manifest itself in less use of fantastical imagery and escapism and more real world and real people in ads.
Mr. Tripodi of Subway says marketers are too focused on aggregating people into broader groups and painting them with the same brush. He said global marketers such as Subway should try to do more local marketing and advertising that can better reflect the concerns of specific communities.
Mr. Diamond of McCann says the ad industry’s move to have regional hubs servicing large patches of the world is now out of sync with movements in many countries—the U.S., U.K., and China, for example—where citizens seem frustrated with aspirational globalism. He said McCann, which has offices in about 90 countries, had been moving toward more regional hubs. It now wants to beef up its local creative teams.
In a world “demanding local distinctiveness, you have to have creative that reflects that,” Mr. Diamond said.
Some advertisers weren’t caught off guard. Susan Credle, global creative chief of ad agency FCB, relayed a conversation she had before the election with a marketer who felt that an aspirational message would hurt its business.
“If we were having that conversation today, it would be an even stronger point,” she said.
Mitch Vandiver (at mitch@strategiescorp.net.) and The Strategies, Inc. Team put this together, and I thought it was perfect for my readers – it’s all about asking the right questions . . .
Michael J. Marquardt, author of Leading with Questions: How Leaders Find the Right Solutions by Knowing What to Ask says, “You don’t have to have the answer to ask a great question. A great question will ultimately get an answer.”
A school teacher shared this story. One day, as the children played at recess, a usually very calm, good-natured little boy hit a little girl, who was his best friend. The playground monitors rushed over as the little girl stood crying. One monitor immediately reprimanded the boy in an angry voice, “You can’t hit other people. That’s wrong! What were you thinking?! And, boys don’t hit girls!”
Now, both children stood sobbing. The other playground monitor sat down with the children and asked only one question of the little boy, “Why did you hit her?” Through tears, he explained, “There was a bee on her and I didn’t want my friend to get stung.” The monitor glanced down and, indeed, laying on the ground by the little girl, was a bee.
What a difference a great question can make! This true story is a brilliant metaphor for the times we should have asked more questions and didn’t.
Effective and empowering questions serve several proposes:
1. They create clarity – What did you learn about the little boy through one question?
2. They construct better relationships – How did your opinion of the little boy shift when you understood his reason?
3. They inspire people to reflect and see things in fresh, unpredictable ways and encourage breakthrough thinking – What would you ask the little boy to help him find other solutions to protecting his friend from bees?
4. They challenge assumptions – What assumptions did the first playground monitor make? How did those change with one question?
Open-ended questions do not seek specific answers. They allow curiosity and exploration. Good opened-ended questions can start with what, how, when, where, who, tell me, or I wonder.
Great questions benefit organizations, teams, and employees by minimizing miscommunication from making assumptions, changing points of view, stimulating creativity, engaging critical thinking, developing ownership of issues, and encouraging problem solving ability.
What great questions will you ask of others today?
By Dave Poulos, Chief Consultant, Granite Partners, LLC
Big Data – There, I said it, now the bots can find this article and show it to the millions of eyeballs watching the internet for articles on big data and Big Brother. We are all contributing daily to this giant cache of data, every move we make, from buying groceries, to pumping gas, to using a toll road, to making a phone call or sending a text, to posting on social media, we’re adding to the huge pool of information called big data. But here’s the problem – data isn’t knowledge, and knowledge isn’t wisdom. Just because we collect facts, aggregate them, sift them, analyze them, order and rank them, connect the dots between them – doesn’t mean we really KNOW those individuals who originated the data. We can only make educated guesses, informed by history, not intent.
It has been said that trying to harness that massive stream of data and use it to make decisions is like trying to drink from a fully-charged municipal fire hose – the power can literally blow your head off! The real trick to using data to make, or at least inform decisions, is to select the bits that get you closer to the truth of the motivation you’re trying to trigger. From a marketing standpoint, finding what to measure is at least as big a challenge as how tomeasure it, and how you use the answers to guide marketing outreach activity. Once you’ve made some determination as to what data you need, you can nearly always find a way to extract and aggregate it to use to your advantage. But how do you decide what you’re looking for?
One of the best sources of solid, reliable, workable data we’ve discovered in actual practice is primary research with a split pool of the target audience. We use both digital survey and long-form, In-Depth Interview (IDI) methodology to glean primary customer insight data from a split pool of logical likely customers and actual purchasers. The phone interviews are structured like a conversation, the questions asked in a seemingly logical order, although not always in the same order from call to call. Each call is recorded, and transcripts made of each. This is what assures the research staff that they have “covered all the bases” and that each call is consistent with the goal of the study. The responses are analyzed to glean insights as to satisfaction or awareness, or preference, or attitude toward, or dislike of a product, service or brand. There are many uses for this methodology, but the results are almost always enlightening and revealing. Unfortunately for the enterprise IT specialist, this is one methodology you can’t throw more hardware and software at to scale up or solve a problem – the only compatible hard drive available is in each person’s head, and the software is custom made and varies by individual’s emotional and intellectual make-up.
Once the IDI data has been analyzed, some consistent issues will invariably present themselves among the target audience – they will all or almost all mention one or two specific likes, dislikes, preferences, or peeves, about the product or service. Now the challenge is to see how wide and how deep the problem with these elements runs, and if it affects the buying decision to a significant degree. Survey research is now employed to drill down and discover the depth of the problem. The ins and outs of survey marketing are myriad, and best practices are easily found elsewhere. Suffice to say here that by overlaying the survey data upon the IDI inputs, a very accurate, true picture of the customer’s viewpoint can be created.
This data, when analyzed, can give you invaluable insights in to all sorts of different emotional triggers, life-stage triggers, off-label uses, alternative audiences, and a host of intelligence regarding the product with respect to the intended target audience. For companies wishing to be or become customer-centric in their approach, these insights are vital to the effort, as they form the platform from which you build an engaging customer experience. If you know what the audience wants, you can deliver it, preferably in a way that resonates with that audience, is economically feasible to produce and buy, at the time when it is most advantageous to both.
The best part of using primary insights to guide your creation of marketing outreach is that not only do you know you’re correct – the customer said so – but that it will hold up over time. Customer insights are not dependent on past activity, on a transaction that has been made at some point in the past. If you study how consumers make buying decisions, you’ll discover that there are a host of factors involved in making that decision, many of which are situational. In other words, if that same products were presented to the consumer under different circumstances, it may not be as preferable as it was when the transaction occurred. The time of day, the financial situation of the purchaser, the proximity to other destinations or products, the lighting in the aisle, the breath or cologne of the sales person, a huge number of variables you have no access to have to align in order to drive that transaction forward.
Transactional data will never really reveal those variables, and while some can be controlled for using predictive software algorithms, the technology is imperfect and incomplete – humans are regrettably inconsistent. When you’re betting tens of millions of dollars on a marketing campaign, it may not be a good idea to rely solely on past purchase history and algorithms, and ground your decisions in data that considers the present, the future, and the emotional triggers of the purchase, not just the variables you can’t control.
Removal of those variables, or at least controlling for them, can provide you with insights far beyond the current strategy or campaign plan, and lead you down roads to revenue you never even considered. An ongoing program of gathering and analyzing customer insights only strengthens and broadens the value of the insight data, and the richer that data, the more on-target you can be. Those additional streams of revenue from off-label usages, new markets, affinity and co-branded products, follow-on services and upsell strategies that actually work can add up to millions of dollars in the positive column for an enterprise-scale firm. The upfront investment in a customer insight program may appear steep at the outset, but when balanced against the potential upside and the lack of waste or loss due to misinterpretation or contaminated data, it looks like a bargain in the long run, one most enterprises would be smart to leverage.
