Marketing Researcher: Get over yourself
October 29, 2015From one marketing researcher to others: it’s time to “get over yourselves.” With fierce commitment to statistical validity and complex analyses, marketing researchers have become their own worst enemies. Long after the answers to marketing questions have been revealed, researchers persist in developing complex statistical variations presented in lengthy reports. The result:
- Research projects take on lives of their own, becoming costly and taking time from implementation;
- Clients cannot help but believe that resulting recommendations or creative solutions are market proof and infallible;
- “Selling” future research becomes more difficult when clients feel the research was not connected to tangible outcomes; and
- Colleagues lose sense of the value of research and find more efficient routes to the answers they need to do their work.
We all know the arguments for the importance of sound research through the course of a market project. How else can a young ad writer appreciate the passion of the cleaning enthusiast? How else can a website designer understand that customers are not visiting your client’s site daily? How else can a client recognize the part their product or service plays in their customers’ lives? How else a client truly understand what they are really selling?
We’re also well familiar with how quickly the research line falls to the floor when a project budget has to be cut. From this researcher’s perspective, one wonders if we don’t do this to ourselves.
After working alongside marketing researchers on both the client and the agency side, I recently became the lead researcher for a mid-sized, integrated marketing agency. Our commitment to the value of research in developing intelligent strategic and creative solutions to client needs is one of our guiding principles. My colleagues and I diligently present well-considered research options to our clients. Yet, we often find ourselves agreeing with clients that the proposed research program would be nice but that doing less is often sufficient.
In the end, we avoid complicating the process of developing good, workable solutions for the sake of validity, reliability, and research methodology. We avoid the urge to stand by commitments to sample sizes and quotas or to spend approved time and resources needed to complete a study long after the answer to our questions has become clear.
Competent curiosity and competent wisdom
Think of research as the 50 percent solution. Research findings bring marketers half-way to identifying the solution. Discovering that 80 percent of a target population would be interested in buying a new product or service is different from determining whether to offer the product. Hearing acceptance of an advertising concept is not a mandate to adopt that advertising campaign. In both cases, the findings contribute valuable intelligence upon which to develop insights and, in turn, make decisions.
Disciplined researchers best aid their clients in limiting the scope of their curiosity to the areas of inquiry that will inform decision making. Capable marketing researchers collaborate with their colleagues in the analysis and interpretation of findings to offer wisdom and intelligence to solving client problems. With good research, the remaining 50 percent becomes a reasoned, supported decision that combines intelligence with instinct, experience and sound judgment. As David Oglivy said, “I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamppost for support rather than illumination.”
Marketing research should never be an end in itself
As a client, I remember clearly the first time I received long-overdue findings from a research study. Just as I recall the first time I sat behind the glass observing focus groups. It was thrilling to actually have information about our customers, to have heard directly from users about their perceptions and mis-perceptions about products and services with which I was no longer objective. My colleagues and I immersed ourselves in the data with frequent cries of “can you believe that?” and “that’s really interesting.” Of course, because we had not connected the research to specific pending decisions or problems to be solved, it wasn’t long before the reports found their places on our bookshelves.
There is nothing more frustrating to a marketing researcher than a report that does little more than sit on a bookshelf. Research conducted with purpose in response to clear objectives should be a living reference tool. The results should find their way into marketing plans. They should be referenced by the creative team in preparing and responding to the brief and making the creative presentation.
It’s not about the data—it’s about what you do with it. The simple formula of research + judgment = intelligence and insight, leading to smart decision making should define the research agenda. Research doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It should be conducted when it will be respected for the contribution the findings will make to create a sound product.
Research should not make the decision, as in: “We asked members of our target market what we should name our product and they said . . .” But research results should provide guidance and direction in making a decision. “Research participants were really intrigued by the salty flavor of our new snack product. We should explore names that evoke ‘salty-ness.’”
Devil is indeed in the detail
In the case of marketing research, the details may drive us to over think the methodology, over analyze the data, and become overly dependent on the outcomes. Perhaps in the name of keeping some mystic in the research process, we run the risk of making the simple too complex.
As a good partner in the marketing process, researchers can assist by seeing the forest for the trees, by interjecting perspective about the bigger picture when account people are focused on the details of a product feature, when creative team members are stuck on making an idea work and when clients are stuck on “what they like.” Grounded by the voice of the market, researchers serve the team by keeping a focus on objectives of the project, informed criteria for success, and the motivations and interests of the target audience.
What research will do
In the context of strategic decision making, research serves a valuable role in galvanizing opinions. It replaces personal preference with objective data to bring a team together around shared ideas, understandings and experiences.
A company that launches its good idea—a new product or service—without a test of potential user perspectives, biases or reactions certainly does so at its own peril. Similarly, declaring an identity, market position or vision without understanding their resonance in the marketplace risks valuable time and resources.
Research and a capable marketing researcher play critical roles on an integrated marketing team. Managing a project without understanding key information such as the competitive landscape, consumer perceptions and behaviors, users likes and dislikes, or brand resonance is like working with your eyes closed. Research provides a strategic context to the marketing conversation, taking decision making beyond the “sample of one” to address clear problems and generate solutions to those problems.
Getting over ourselves
At best, research results provide direction for decision makers; they do not make decisions for them. Results bring intelligence to the discussion with insights on who the audience is and what they think of a product or idea today. Research findings may spark insights and ideas but they will not substitute for judgment.
The temptation is to use research as a crutch to substitute for vision. Data can easily be seen as truth. Researchers must carefully walk the line between representing that truth as absolute and contributing perspective to a larger conversation. After all, research works best when researchers recognize that it’s not about the research.