You eagerly open the cost proposal from your prospective marketing communications agency hoping you’ve finally found your match, only to find a hefty line item (both in budget and in timeline) for research and planning or “discovery.” You immediately think, “We don’t have time for that,” “we don’t have budget for that,” “we know this stuff already and can share it with you,” “we just want to get started.” Or any combination of those.
No, I say. You cannot skip it. and here is why.
That overused expression: having a deep understanding of your audience. There is something to it. You want to be “pathologically empathic” as Ann Handley puts it in her book Everybody Writes and to do that, requires a level of understanding you can’t have when you operate purely from the comfort of your own vacuum-based decisions.
If you want to quickly impress upon a prospect what you do, or how you help, you have to understand implicitly the problems and issues they face. When you get this, you speak to them in a way that connects, that evokes a reaction of “this is what I need.”
Having access and conducting interviews with customers who love and hate you, who are ambivalent to you, who chose not do business with you, and to your stakeholders, gets you there.
When you are asked about your ideal buyer, you will then be able to say much more than, for example, “orthopaedic surgeons in North America,” “trail and marathon runners,” and “moms with kids between 18 months and three years.” This data merely scratches the surface.
Numbers on a spreadsheet become real personalities anyone working on your marketing communications can now visualize and speak to more effectively. We learn what they love, and challenges and struggles they deal with on a day to day basis and we use that data to communicate to others like them how your brand solves those challenges.
Why The Marketing Research Phase Matters
Here are just a few of the many things that come out of research and planning:
Fix the communication gap
You know what they say, your brand is not what you think – it’s what your fans think of you. Sometimes you and your fans don’t see eye to eye but your customer might be right. You might think your database is the most valuable feature you offer, meanwhile, your fans love you because of your simplicity. That has some pretty big implications in how you communicate your value, doesn’t it?
Learn where they are
All that time you’ve been toiling in futility on Twitter to build your fanbase and grow your sales might not be because you suck at Twitter. It could be because your buyers simply aren’t there. Instead of guessing, let’s see where your fans are going for entertainment, for problem solving, for their preferred social network. It takes much less work to go where they already are.
Uncover themes and surprises
Always be learning, and open to new ideas. In a recent research process, we looked at our raw data and noticed a common denominator. Many of our client’s fans were using terms not associated with their business, like “journey,” and “embarked on the adventure with…” We realized our client is a guide in a process, not the provider of a product or service. These subtleties drive the messaging and create huge epiphanies.
As we progress in our engagement, and get more granular in tactics, we use the findings to add helpful content to the website, share and curate data via social channels, host or attend in-person events, and develop email marketing campaigns for segments of the audience to solve specific problems.
We know you want to get started and see results. We want to also, but as much we’d like to trust your gut, and our gut, we want to make evidence-based decisions. We don’t like heading out into the woods without a plan, let alone spending your money on campaigns without one.
I’d love to hear from other marketers – what surprises have you discovered during thorough research?
Interested in elevating your organization’s positioning with effective storytelling?
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[ssba]
At one time, GM Marketing did a comprehensive market survey to find out what minivan owners wanted in their vehicles. Turned out that they wanted safety, convenience, reliability.
Oddly, they didn’t want “cheap.”
The vehicle line exec completely ignored the customer “pull” discovered in the survey. Despite defining vehicle content traceable directly to the voice of the customer, the new minivan was developed to take $800 out of its chassis, another $800 out of interior fitments; and the entire development was to make a vehicle that could compete on price.
The chassis cost cuts meant: inferior brakes, no active stability system –even as an option, no tire pressure monitoring, no dynamic brake proportioning (uses the rear brakes harder when the van is heavily loaded –and there is more weight on the rear wheels).
The interior cost cuts meant that map pockets and storage bins were in short supply, there was no rear compartment A/C, the seats were crap, and hard to fold away.
GM was able to sticker price their minivan about $2,000 below the Honda (and the Toyota), but had to rebate the minivan another $2,000 in order to get people to buy it.
Meantime, the Honda was pulling in $2,500 dealer price premiums because it was attractive to the minivan buyers.
So, GM lost market share, lost around $6,500 per vehicle –against their $1,600 cost-to-build savings. They lost market share and about $4,900 per vehicle.
That product failure caused GM to abandon the mini-van market and place their faith in cross-over vehicles (minivans that look like SUVs and don’t have the sliding doors).
SIGH
Wow – I did not know this. Amazing.
And as I read it, I was thinking Steve Jobs would argue customers don’t know what they want. So he more than likely wouldn’t agree with either of us!
There was a Japanese scholar named Kano who recognized that product features came in two ‘flavors.’ A Kano “exciter” brought the customer something new, attractive and very useful. Another “flavor” is “required.”
I believe that Apple frequently introduced “exciters” into their products. When my colleague showed up with a first generation Macintosh, I got excited (and immediately bought one of my own.
At GM there was a lot of talk about Kano Exciters, but we never developed one. Instead, the MBA crew stuck to the belief that pioneers never make any money from their innovations, that the “fast followers,” relieved of the burden of invention and development reap the big profits –so GM became a corporation of “slow followers.” (No speed.)
Kano Exciters are difficult to create. They come from “genius insight” and from careful market research. An example of the latter: Konica’s development of their AutoReflex T camera. They talked to run of the mill camera users and found a list of “disatisfiers.” Among those: out-of-focus pictures, poorly exposed pictures, difficulty in loading film, processed film that contained no exposures. The AutoReflex T eliminated all of those with an automatic film loading mechanism, autofocus, autoexposure. I had an AutoReflex T because it gave me better results than my extensive kit of Spotmatic stuff.
I stumbled across you as I was adding links to my website. I’m a little embarrassed about the direction I’m taking so far with my new venture. A bit of a “shotgun” approach with the muzzle set on “scatter”.
HI Kevin! I totally hear you. Hard when you’re an entrepreneur with lot of ideas, trying to do everything! Hope this was somewhat helpful. – Lisa