“My clients get paid for making successful decisions. My job is to provide the insights that increase the probabilities that they will make better decisions.” — Frank Pleticha
- Listen and probe for understanding before deciding anything.
Very often someone will say “we need to do research.” Use a conversation to get thoroughly grounded in the strategic context of the upcoming business decision. Good researchers need to live in the decision maker’s world. Find out what marketing decisions need to be made and why – before making any decisions about the type and extent of research required,
- Do the work to understand the cost of a wrong decision.
Think of marketing research as a risk management tool. What is the value of the “insurance” that is needed in the case at hand? If you’re working on a project that has a low risk, spending a lot on research to protect you is clearly a poor use of resources. On the other hand, if considering a major investment (new product launch, opening a new market, changing a distribution strategy), underinvesting in research increases your project risk and exposure.
- Answer the question: “What do we need to know?” (This is also known as a research objective.) When the subject of research comes up, people start piling on the questions they want to ask –undoubtedly you’ve experienced this – without really thinking through what they will do if they get an answer. Getting clear about what ‘we need to know’ is a critical way of pruning the questions and getting to the most essential research needs. This is where Frank says he plays back hypothetical results to the decision maker. For example, he might ask: “If we conducted this study and learned that 37% of your target audience wasn’t even aware of the problem that you’re trying to solve, how would you use that information?” How would the nature of your decision change? Quickly, a large list of “nice to know” survey questions gets whittled down to a small subset of essentials.
- Don’t do more research if you already have the answer. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But too often, people don’t do the basics of looking around to understand whether any of the “must know” questions have already been answered via secondary research or internal research that the company has already conducted.
- Finally, clearly specify whom you want to answer your questions.
Getting answers from anyone who will participate in your research is not helpful. A cursory pass at the characteristics can be a costly mistake. Creating a crystal clear profile of your needed research participants is as important as anything else you do.
Now that is great advice.
photo credit: Marc_Smith
I’d argue that there is at least one more requisite for effective research to produce actionable insights. Most customer value propositions, and the research conducted around them, examine only the tactical, rational and functional components. Considerably more important are the emotional and relationship components, which are frequently missed or superficially addressed: http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/blog/customer-centric-trust-based-relationships-humanity-emotion-profits