How to Get the Most Out of Market Research
Posted on 07. Dec, 2011 by marcrubinassociates in branding, Featured, marketing
Market research is an important and crucial part to many business initiatives. For many, it’s not only a way to test a proposed solution for something new, but a way to get insights into what makes you tick. Some strategies my be more affective or efficient than another (focus groups vs. one-on-one interviews, ethnography vs. consumer data), but our projects start before we get this information.
We start by listening.
We listen and engage in deep dialogue to try and get the clearest sense of the vision of the company. We try to get to the core of what we represent. It typically requires digging beyond the typical mission statement and often requires speaking to the owner or CEO of the company, because they have the clearest vision for not only who the company is, but where it’s going. It’s from this conversation that we can start the design process.
Communicating the core of the company is an essential part of every single initiative.
After understanding the objectives of the specific project and the core vision of the company, ideas begin to manifest that we have to react to. Reacting intuitively and viscerally to conversations have consistently resulted in solutions that connect with customers in an emotional level. When you react to your intuition, you allow the audience to use theirs as well and bring them in. That’s something that data just can’t do.
Once we’ve reached a point where we feel represents those core values of the company, we then will bring in the market research to compare against our current solution. From the insights of understanding the customer better, we can see if what we’ve already done is in line with the customers’ views. If we need to, we’ll adjust what we’ve developed in order to both communicate the core message, but also connect with the consumer insights. Therefore, we can get the best of both worlds.
