You are a marketer. Your challenge is to convince your client (or your boss) that your proposed marketing strategy will achieve your client’s marketing objectives. You wonder, how can marketing research help me?
What if you could answer these questions?
- Who are my Client’s ideal customers? Do we have valid customer profiles or buyer personas?
If you need to generate effective content, it is important to know who to create it for. We can ask questions, using online and in-person methods, to gather insights into your Client’s target markets.
- Are customers aware of the Client’s brand?
We (that means you and me) can find out fast with an online brand awareness study. We can ask customers to think of all the brands in the Client’s category and find out how the Client’s brand stacks up.
- Have customers ever used the Client’s brand? How often?
Let’s add some usage questions.
- What do customers think about the Client’s brand? (love it? hate it?)
We can add some attitude statements to your survey. We can also talk to some customers in-person, either face-to-face or on the phone, to dig deep into their thoughts and feelings.
- How loyal are customers to the Client’s brand?
We will want to understand how the customer defines loyalty. We would also want to compare what they say to their actual behavior.
- How will customers like the Client’s new product/service?
We can show them photos or videos or give them product to take home and test for a while. Then we can call them to talk about their experiences. If you want to watch it unfold, old-fashioned focus groups can do the job. If you are coming to Portland, we partner with local focus group facilities.
- Are customers aware of the Client’s advertising efforts?
We can add some advertising awareness questions to a survey.
- Are customers aware of the Client in the news? (Any bad press we should find out about?)
- What adjectives do customers use to describe the Client’s brand?
We can provide respondents with a list of words and phrases or ask them to type or speak from the top of their mind.
- What attitudes and beliefs do customers have about the Client’s brand?
We can ask respondents to choose from a list or fill in boxes, or we can meet them in person and talk in depth.
- How likely is the customer to purchase the Client’s brand in the next 30 days? Six months?
We can ask, but we would want to correlate this measure with other indicators. People will sometimes say what they think you want to hear.
- If some customers like the brand, but others do not, how are the groups different? Do you need a different marketing strategy to reach different groups?
We find this out through data analysis.
Imagine how confident you will feel going into your Client meeting armed with solid facts to support your proposal.
That’s how marketing research can help.
Contact me to find out more.
