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Category: Customer Insights

When Good Enough is Good Enough: Seeking Balance in Product & Pricing Research

The difference between good market research and great market research can be significant.

But sometimes the incremental time, cost and sweat of that extra effort simply doesn’t make sense. Sometimes, “good” is just perfect.

I was reminded of this last week at the Launch Camp conference in Cambridge. The event, for entrepreneurs seeking social media wisdom, had some interesting speakers, though the one from whom I learned the most was Dharmesh Shah, Chief Technology Officer and Founder of HubSpot (on Twitter as @Darmesh).

How to Avoid Customer Feedback Fraud

If you allow employees to invite customers to take customer satisfaction feedback surveys, make sure they aren’t saying things like, “The highest score is a 10. I hope I earned a 10!” You have probably experienced this yourself, perhaps at an auto dealership or retail chain. Upon completion of your transaction, the clerk give you the feedback survey instructions (perhaps advising of a phone call you will receive, or giving you a URL to use), and then says something like, “I’m hoping you rate me as “extremely helpful.”

What Peter Shankman Said About Market Research Today

It’s great to hear a social media authority praise—even promote—the benefit of asking customers’ about their views. In this case, Peter was making the excellent point that companies need to ask customers how they want their information delivered. In today’s presentation in downtown Boston, Peter specifically advised the business folks in attendance to take the time to ask their audiences (clients, prospects, whatever) how they want to receive information. He points to the fact that the way information is delivered these days is extremely fragmented. Nobody can afford to simply guess how their audience wants to get information.

Online Communities for Market Research: Let’s Not Oversell Them

Yes, online research communities have their place. I ardently believe that there are many organizations that can benefit from structured online communities (MROCs or ORCs, as many now call them), or even just well-run, online customer advisory boards (link). In fact, there are some markets for which I think online communities can be one of the best ways of getting honest, objective customer insights. But let’s not oversell it; if we do, we’ll only cause a lot of heartache (and wasted research dollars).

So, please, some reality checks: …

In-house Market Research Manager: It’s a Tough Job

Managing in-house market research is tough work. And your internal clients don’t make it easy, do they?

Your internal clients say they want powerful, fresh, objective customer insights. But too often, their behavior shows that they just want you to confirm their personal views.

Does Your Audience Hunger for Data?

A tricky part of successfully delivering client insight data is knowing how much data your audience really wants. So, be honest with yourself: do you understand your colleagues’ or clients’ data appetite?

Data Pointillism: Are You Too Close To Your Customer Data?

You may have collected thousands of data points. You savor them for a time (I know I do!), and that’s fine. But then it’s time to step back, and take it all in…unless something blocks you. It may even be that you have colleagues who are so hung up on examining the little dots up close, that you get stuck too.

Be bold. Break away from the crowd. Step back.

Bringing Market Research In-House: Watch for this Gotcha

Are you bringing more market research in-house? Relying less on outside market research agencies? That can be a perfectly reasonable choice—for many reasons. But before you …

What’s Your Market Research Hammer?

Seth Godin’s blog post yesterday was about a topic I have been thinking about a lot lately. It’s inspired by the aphorism, “…to a person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

Some of the pain that market research is going through right now is precisely because of this. In the field of market research, we have hammers we are very comfortable with…

Sugging or Mugging: Neither Are Good

While at the Marketing Research Association’s First Outlook conference this past week, I listened to some interesting stories from people using their online communities as both research and marketing vehicles. This dual-purpose approach leaves me feeling, quite frankly, conflicted. And a little ignorant; apparently this is a widespread practice. Until now, I had thought most communities were primarily focused on listening to customers to uncover…