You can tell a lot about a person by their attitude about research. There are those that think research is useless because depending on how you structure the search you can create the answers you’re searching for – they are the cynics. There are those that think research is an expensive tool that should be used sparingly – they are the optimists. Me, I’m an unabashed research geek that believes there is almost always something to be learned from research and it doesn’t have to be some massive, stilted study to get usable results – I’d like to think I’m the realist.
For those people I would categorize as cynics or optimists, I do understand their points of view but I think they come with one (mostly) incorrect assumption: that the researcher has a bias and therefore any results are what they made them. If you’re truly looking for answers to questions such as “what’s the key selling point,” or “is this something you would buy,” or “what would make this product more valuable to you,” or “what would you need to know in order to consider this” then to not do research is arrogant at worst and stupid at best.
Research doesn’t have to be hard, especially with new options created through the internet. (Think social networks, email chains, user groups, etc.) And it doesn’t have to be expensive. Years ago when I was working on a new business idea I hosted an informal focus group comprised of friends of friends and, for the price of a deli platter I got some good insight and was able to refine some ideas
That said, for research to be worth any time, effort and money (even if it is only a deli platter) there are three mandatory steps that must be followed: clarity regarding the information you’re seeking to learn, screening for the correct audience(s) and an open mind when listening to the results.
Far too often research is launched with a laundry list of topics to cover ranging from price point to packaging. In almost every case when you try to do it all with one study the results are too watered down to find any meaningful data. That’s not to say that focus groups that cover general impressions and reactions to a few specific concepts are worthless, not at all. But if your one true goal is to find out at what price point your product will sell best, then focus on that question so you get the best answer. If you’re clear about what you want/need to learn, you will get the best results.
Additionally, it may sound obvious but audience is key. I’ve done a great deal of work in the high tech world and if there is one consistent marketing error I run into it’s the assumption that the audience for their product(s) is them. The logic goes “I use a computer at work and at home. The people I want to sell to use a computer at work and at home. Therefore, I am the audience.” I’ve got a million stories about confronting this mindset, but probably the best example is from my work at a computer company. I worked in the web group and the men and women there were very smart and talented programmers who created and maintained the consumer website. One day a research company presented a website usability study to the group where they asked people to find particular information on the site. In multiple cases the people sat dumbfounded; unable to find the information requested. My co-workers yelled “scroll down” at the video of these people being confused – only to learn from the researcher that their audience, the very beginning computer user, didn’t know to scroll. In this case, the researchers got their audience right and the learning was great. But had the researchers assumed that audience was who their clients told them, they never would have learned how ineffective their site was or how to improve it. And that mindset is not just in high-tech, it’s everywhere.
Listening. It’s human nature to want to be right or be validated, and as marketers and advertisers we’re no different. (Possibly worse.) But if doing research is only about validating our assumptions, we miss the real potential for learning that could improve our results. Years ago I worked on a product in development that attached to a TV and allowed users to both play games and go out to the internet. (The product was made by a computer company and at that time the installed base for computers in the US was approximately 33%.) Our goal in doing research was to determine a positioning for the product and exactly who the audience would be. We did focus groups with three distinct audiences: confident computer users, beginning computer users and gamers – our thinking was that the product would make for a good/cheap second computer; a cheap/easy first computer, or a game system with internet capabilities. The early returns were not good: it wasn’t right for any of them. As part of the focus groups, we subdivided the participants and had them come up with their own positionings; and for the most part they gave back what we gave them. But there was one group who positioned it as a TV device not a computer, and suddenly I saw the light. Because it was made by a computer company, we (the client, the agency, me) had all unintentionally biased our research into only considering a computer-centric positioning – thus greatly limiting our potential. This group had unwittingly come up with a positioning that both opened up our market to the 99+% of Americans with TVs and made it a progressive add-on product verses a pared down version of an existing product. Everyone I was sitting with behind the glass said “they don’t get it,” when in fact it was dawning on me that we were the ones that didn’t get it. I spent the next several months trying to convince people that we needed to pursue this new positioning, but my pleas fell on deaf ears and the product ultimately got OEMed into kiosks and other similar technologies. And I remain convince to this day that had we listened and really heard what was being said, that product could have had at least partial success.
Okay, so I’ve gone on perhaps too long, about the potential of research. Forgive me but as I said above, I really am a geek about research because I believe there is so much to learn and it is so important to selling to understand who we’re selling to and what they think. I’d love to hear any thoughts, opinions, stories you may have – pro or con. Just consider it my mini focus group.
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