Market Research
Are you talking to the right audience?
Remember the days before Google, when marketers relied mostly on mailing lists and used direct mail to target lists of prospects in a bid to find a small percentage of people on those lists who may be in need of their offer? Like TV and radio, direct mail advertising disrupted hundreds of people opening their mail or watching TV, to get their message in front of the few, if at all, interested in what they were peddling.
Then, along came Google’s search engine, turning marketing as we knew it on its head. All of a sudden, it was consumers who could enter their problem into a query field and have a list of merchants peddling solutions in front of them…it’s the consumer that chooses who they interrupt from a list of prospects. Only, these prospects want to be disrupted, they’re in business and businesses want people who have problems they can solve, to disrupt them.
Have simplified web technologies led to information overload?
Advancing, and ever simplifying web technology led to an abundance of information also. There was more information published last year than in our history to date. Consumers not only have lists of suppliers at their fingertips, we also have an abundance of information to research before making choices. With the sheer volume of information and choice, combined with heightened social connectedness through new media platforms, we’re finding that there is no better way to validate a potential purchase than peers, or authorities in our trusted social networks, people who know more than we do on a given topic. Trusted, independent authorities endorsing products and/or services are now just a click away.
Likewise, all of the major shopping technologies come with inbuilt commenting, testimonials and review functionality that a new wave of technology-savvy retailers use to deliver a completely transparent online shopping experience for those of us smart enough to be buying online.
What’s all this got to do with market research?
Plenty. All online social networking, searching, researching, rating, reviewing, collaborating, inquiring and buying leaves a data footprint. All of this data is syndicated through RSS (Real Simple Syndication) across the web… from shopping sites, to social networks, blogs and forums. You name it, consumer interaction is consumer-generated content; it is content that comes with social proof that consumers are buying… and most modern shopping technologies allow merchants to push it as far as they can across the web.
If, as marketers, we’re able to pull this information to us, into one data capture point, we can literally eavesdrop an entire industry’s conversation between merchants, consumers and their trusted social networks.
Doing this provides us all the market research we could ever use. Research that’s used to only ever be available to corporations able to pay research and focus groups, but it’s even better. Research and focus groups are not a natural situation. Real people communicating throughout a process of researching before they shop online, in real time, is as good as it gets. It tells us:
- If we are, in fact, listening to the right audience.
- If not, we can change our solution to suit the audience we’re hearing or keep looking for another audience that better fits our solution.
- What is the general consumer sentiment towards your solution.
- What message would be most effective to this audience, current consumer sentiment considered.
- How could that message be best tailored, what are some merchants doing that’s working better than others.
- Who’s influencing the market and how can we best align solutions with them and what they’re doing.
- Where is most internet traffic into a solution coming from.
- How can we effectively tap into it, at what cost and for what likely return on investment.
- What’s the right traffic approach.
- What’s the right sales approach. When is the right time to sell. Through what sales process or funnel should prospects be led.
- Who’s the right sales person to use when positioning our sales message and what’s the best angle for them to take.