I’ve often marveled at the number of clients who initially present as research-resistant but ultimately turn a page when they see the impact it delivers. This isn’t to impugn valued clients in any way. I understand that research affects budgets and doesn’t always deliver gold. But I also know that many marketers tend to trust their years of category experience and gut instincts over research, and that’s where I take exception.
I’m reminded of the Greek philosopher Epictetus, who said, “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
For years I kept three images on my office wall. They were planispheres. One was Ptolemy’s model. One was the Copernican system. And the last was Tycho Brahe’s. Together, they served as an ongoing reminder of the importance of research. Allow me to explain.
In 150 AD, Claudius Ptolemaeus (known as Ptolemy) believed the Earth was the center of the universe based on his observation of the stars revolving around us.
Over a millennium later, in 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published his heliocentric model, having realized that the Earth actually revolves around the Sun and not the other way around. He concluded that the Sun, therefore, must be the center of the universe.
Just 66 years later, Tycho Brahe, working with mathematician Johannes Kepler, developed a geo-heliocentric planetary model that gave us a far larger and more accurate view of our solar system and the universe.
Each scholar, remarkably intelligent and ahead of their time, based their conclusions on the best data available to them at the time.
I kept those images on my wall to remind myself that any time I’m completely convinced I understand something with absolute clarity, new information can always come to light with the power to dramatically change my point of view. And that’s precisely what a good research practice does for you.
What’s True Today May Not Be True Tomorrow
Whether we acknowledge it or not, everything is constantly undergoing change. Attitudes change. Markets change. People change. And whether we work in B2C or B2B, research helps us build strategy by giving us a deeper, and current, understanding of our buyers and their motivations. Research can also predict campaign effectiveness before we commit budget, as well as measure impact after deployment.
In the end, research doesn’t just make us smarter marketers, it makes us safer marketers by mitigating risk.
Four Key Research Practices Every Brand Should Consider
With smarter marketing in mind, there are four key research practices that every brand should consider:
- Customer Satisfaction
- Competitive Analysis (Open Market Studies)
- Campaign Concept Testing
- Campaign Effectiveness (Attribution Benchmarking)
Let’s take a closer look at each.
1. Customer Satisfaction
This one is a no-brainer. Every business should deploy annual customer satisfaction studies (if not more frequently), and there are several reasons why. Customer satisfaction studies:
- Reveal how good of a job you’re doing
- Surface unseen problems and potential customer churn
- Inform smarter product/service decisions
- Demonstrate to customers that you genuinely care
At The Motion Agency, we run a best-practices study, including NPS benchmarking, that we can deploy and report on for virtually any brand within a month.
2. Competitive Analysis (Open Market Studies)
Although customer satisfaction studies are valuable in telling us how our customers feel about us, they don’t tell us how non-customers feel about the competitors they’re buying from. Customer studies stop at telling us why people buy/prefer/trust us, but to complete the picture, we also need to know why people are buying from our competitors.
A good competitive analysis study will shed light on how we measure up against the competition and identify soft spots where we can conquest and win share (and from whom we will take it).
Much like our customer research work, at Motion we follow a proven formula to turn such competitive insights into actionable strategies.
3. Campaign Concept Testing
In a recent discussion, a colleague of mine said that many clients don’t want to pre-test advertising because they believe we’re supposed to already know which creative will work best. I found the remark both astute and a little troubling.
Digitally, we can A/B/C/D test all we want, but in any other medium, that option is less available to us. And even in digital, finding a winner doesn’t necessarily tell us why it won. That’s the difference between information and knowledge. Knowing the answer without knowing why limits our ability to extend that message effectively elsewhere.
By testing concepts with consumers (which can be done quickly and inexpensively), we can glean important insights that will help us make more informed decisions before ever going to market. Oftentimes these pre-test consumer insights will help us make the work we’re producing work harder. Although the impact of such research may not be easy to quantify, intuitively it’s an investment worth making.
4. Campaign Effectiveness (Attribution Benchmarking)
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) digital advertising is wonderful for marketers because it offers true attribution. Knowing your COCA, ACOS, CAC, ROAS and LTV, along with your CTR and CR, takes some of the guesswork out of advertising. But if you’re using other media, it’s a different story.
That’s why we deploy awareness and attribution studies. They tell us whether people saw our advertising, whether they liked it, where they saw it, and whether it impelled them to take action. That last one is the very reason brands and businesses are investing in advertising in the first place. Aren’t we curious in the least how well our campaign efforts are performing?
