Against the Grain: Research

Today’s fast-paced, give-it-to-me-now, speed-of-thought business climate pushes us to be both brilliant and fast. Speed wins and brilliant speed dominates. That’s certainly the case for marketing professionals. These times call for us to solve marketing problems faster than we ever have before. Often to the point of recognizing a problem, defining a strategy, executing on an idea and seeing the results all in a single day. Heck, in a single hour. It’s fly-by-the-seat-your-pants marketing at its very best. And its very worst.

That sort of business and marketing climate often leads us marketers — and we’re all guilty of it from time to time — to skip past vital steps in order to solve problems and get to market quicker. The most common mistake we see in this accelerated business culture is jumping straight to tactics and execution without considering strategy. It’s do first, think later, and it leads to misguided marketing and missed opportunities.

Here are the three steps we should all go through when working on any particular marketing problem. Nothing new, of course, but it’s amazing how often we spend little or no time on the first two steps.

1. Define the problem.
The most common mistake marketers make is trying to solve the wrong problem. They try to generate leads when what they really need is better sales support. Or they try to maintain their market share by finding new business when what they really need to do is increase customer retention. Define the real problem and you’re well on your way.

2. Determine a strategic approach.
There are usually a number of approaches to solving a marketing problem. Need more retail foot traffic? You could have a sale, redecorate the interior to make it more customer-friendly, move to a new location, change up your product mix, expand your advertising reach, etc.

3. Execute on the strategy.
Once you’re set on a strategy, it’s time to determine tactics and then set to executing your ad campaign, referral program, direct marketing blast or new Web portal.

Why is strategy so important? Take a moment to consider a scenario where you were forced to choose between a brilliant strategy executed in a lackluster way or a lackluster strategy executed beautifully. If you were forced to choose with your eyes, as most of us are prone to do, your initial reaction would be to choose the clever, creative, beautiful execution of a poor idea rather than the opposite. But a brilliant strategy with lackluster execution has at least some chance of moving the needle — you might only get 30% of what you’d get with great strategy and great execution, but an off-target strategy featuring award-winning writing and design won’t fare nearly as well. Great strategy will always win the day.

And you’ll actually solve the problem faster and more efficiently too. Speed wins.

With the beginning of a new year, many organizations may be looking into kicking off a marketing campaign in the near future. This can be a fun and exciting time, but can also bring anxiety to those involved in the budgeting process.

If done correctly, your campaign can be a huge success. If you haven’t taken the time to do your research, it can be a flop. To make sure yours isn’t the latter, take the time to determine if research is necessary, as well as what kind and how much.

Research is the foundation of all sound strategic marketing decisions. It eliminates guess work by helping marketers sketch the broad strokes of a strategic idea and then fill in some of the nitty gritty details as well.

As you probably know, there are two main types of research: Quantitative and qualitative. Qualitative research involves gathering in-depth information. It can involve one-on-one or one-on-two interviews, or focus groups.

Interviews can take a lot of time but are especially useful if you want to get the opinions of those who fit your ideal target audience. That narrows down your audience so that you can spend the time with those individuals.

Focus groups allow for a little more room to include additional people in the discussion. A typical focus group includes about 10 participants and a moderator. Participants often feed off of one another once the conversation gets going and you will often see different points of views come together.

Qualitative research is especially valuable in building messaging strategies and guiding creative decisions. You’ll often hear a customer utter some brilliant little nugget that a copywriter will craft into a catchy headline or jingle.

If what you’re searching for is in-depth and well-balanced information, qualitative research may be the way to go. However, if you’re looking for quick information on the opinions of many people, quantitative research may be your best option.

Quantitative research, as you might assume, is all about counting. Counting responses to survey questions, foot traffic through a store, expert rankings and any number of other things.

Surveys done by phone, online, mail, or on-site are examples of quantitative research. Many organizations will use quantitative research to determine the public’s perception of them. In order to ensure a better response rate, an incentive is often offered. Since quantitative research typically includes 100 or more people, it is too expensive to offer everyone an incentive. A better idea is to hold a random drawing from the people who responded.

After the research is done and tallied, quantitative researchers use sophisticated statistics like margin of error and confidence level to determine how accurately their research projects to the population as a whole.

Trilix Marketing Group has used research in many campaign launches and has seen tremendous success. It gives you a direction to start from and many great ideas are developed from research. Taking the time to do research for your campaign will cost you up front, but may end up saving you more in the long run.

I am constantly amazed at the number of businesses that operate without a marketing plan. They end up becoming reactive marketers and make business decisions on the fly. They haven’t clearly defined who their customers are and have the mindset that if someone is looking for their goods or services they will come to them.

Unfortunately, not developing a marketing plan is like being lost in the middle of the ocean with no idea of which direction you should go or how far to land. A marketing plan will keep you on course and assist you with making the right decisions to positively impact your business. It also helps keep you within budget and identifies areas of opportunities as well as barriers to success.

A solid marketing plan examines the following areas and does not have to be a 500-page document or take months to complete.

1) Understand your competition and your market
To get a good understanding of your market, you need to look at:
• Your competition. Who are they? What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? Can you capitalize on their weaknesses?
• Your market. Are there segments of your market currently being underserved? Is the market large enough for your product/service for you to make money? How much of the market do you need to break even?

2) Know your customer
If you do not know who your customer is, what they want and what motivates them to buy, then you can’t prepare an effective marketing plan. Consumers don’t always buy what they need but they will always buy what they want. To get a good understanding of your customers, you need to answer questions such as:
• How does your potential customer buy similar products/services? Do they shop in a store, online, referrals, etc?
• What does your customer look like? Are they male or female? What age group and income level are they in?
• What type of habits does your customer have? Where do they get their information?
• What are their motivations to buy?

3) Develop your niche
Not every consumer is your target audience, so don’t target everyone. Carve out your own niche and dominate. Identify what you can provide that is different than your competition.

4) Develop your marketing message
Your marketing message not only tells your prospective customers what you do, it persuades them to become your customer. To make your message compelling and persuasive, you need to convey and understand:
• Your prospective customer’s problem
• Why you are the only one that can solve their problem
• Benefits your customers receive from using you
• Examples and testimonials from customers who have been helped by your goods or services

5) Determine your message channel
Your message channel is the communication vehicle to deliver your message. You want to choose the channel(s) that delivers your message to the most niche prospects at the lowest possible cost. Don’t get stuck inside the box…think outside it! The most creative ideas are typically the most effective because they get noticed and are remembered. Creating an element of surprise is something that we as marketers are always looking to do. No one was expecting a gecko to discuss insurance but it was effective and raised Geico’s national awareness and ultimately sales.

Think about how your prospective customers want to be communicated to? Success comes when you correctly match the message to the market using the right medium. Here are some non-traditional ideas you may want to explore:
• Newsletter
• Movie ads
• Web site
• Public speakin
• Public relations
• Sponsorships
• Events
• Word of mouth
• Networking
• Charity events
• Hosting a seminar
• Text messaging
• Sports marketing whether high school, collegiate or professional

6) Set sales and marketing goals
When setting your goals make sure they are SMART – Sensible, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time specific. In addition to the sales revenue and profit numbers, you need to include non-financial numbers (contracts signed, customers acquired, etc). Once you define your goals, be sure to share with your team members so everyone is working for the same results.

7) Develop a budget
When you reach this stage you will be able to determine the areas that will have a key impact and allocate your funding appropriately. To begin with you might start off with a rough number and then once you have some data to support it, you can apply more specifics. When you are to the point where you can determine your customer acquisition cost, then you will know what you will need to invest to meet your sales goals for the next year.

Be sure to leave a small budget for those unexpected opportunities. Even though they are not planned, it will be easier to determine if they are a fit and support your other efforts by lining the opportunity up against your marketing plan.

Simple and powerful… having a marketing plan puts your organization on track to succeed. It’s simple, necessary and gives you an actionable structure from which to move forward and grow your business.