I'm convinced that some marketers have gone out and spent $250,000 on marketing research when all they really needed to do was pick up the phone and "call mom".
It's not that spending lots of money to watch what people say & do behind 1-way mirrors isn't interesting, it's just that the entire process of conducting research can take forever - and is often overkill given your business objective.
This is where your mother comes into play. Or your father for that matter. Or your friends. Second cousins. Your garage attendant. And the guy who you buy flowers from at the corner.
The truth is that you're surrounded by people who can provide you with a wealth of input regarding the products & services that you manage, market and develop. Not utilizing these incredibly valuable resources would be a profound & deeply limiting oversight.
Now I'm hardly suggesting that you bank the global commercialization of a new product on a five-minute conversation you had with your dog walker. But I am suggesting you utilize the people around you to gather quick, "real", no-cost feedback & insights about consumer needs, your products, your company, competitors, etc.
You can also gain great insights by simply paying attention to what people around you are talking about. Take your mom, for example. What's top of mind for her these days? What appear to be her biggest 'stressors'? Are there any themes you can tease out? How about your neighbor with the newborn? How have the tone and content of your conversations changed since he became a dad?
When the need arises, I want you to turn your day-to-day interactions into one giant marketing research lab. Put on your research goggles and engage the folks within your world. They have so much to give and are often more than happy to provide you easy access to their thoughts & opinions.
Just ask your mom!.. and save all those marketing research dollars
Marketers and the "us vs. them" illusion
As marketers there seems to exist a cognitive split between our work brains and our non-work brains, which I refer to as the "us vs. them illusion".
Our work brains view customers as "other"; an assemblage of abstract people whom we often glob together in our minds and try to "do things to" in order to influence their behaviors in ways that are beneficial for them as well as for the company. Under this mindset, which I have found to be a pervasive one among marketers, we forget that "we", in many ways are "them".
As a result of our inability to see ourselves in our customers, we often do not ask some of the most basic questions about the products & services that we market. For example, "would I buy my product? If so, why? When? If not, why not? What would have to happen, or how would the product have to be different for me to consider buying it?"
While it's very dangerous to project our answers to such questions onto our customers or prospects, and assume their answers are our answers, it's even more dangerous to not ask these questions at all.
As marketers, we need mechanisms & tools to help us comfortably "walk in our customers shoes", and minimize the cognitive divide that exists between our work brains and our non-work brains.
One such tool that I like to use is what I call the purchase journal. The journal helps me become more conscious and cognizant of why I purchase what I purchase; how I go about making these decisions, even the most subtle ones, such as the purchasing of a cup of coffee at Joe's deli instead of La Petite deli.
With the journal I am able to reflect on all of the nuanced and almost invisible, tiny forces that act on me and pave the way for a myriad of different purchase decisions that I make - the small ones and the big ones. I like to think of the approach as the consumer equivalent of getting in touch with your "inner consumer voice".
So what exactly is the purchase journal?
While I consider the purchase journal one of my many "trade secrets", in brief, it is essentially a log of the purchases you make over a period of time, including--most importantly--the reasons behind your purchase decisions.
As you build your purchase journal, you'll begin to tap into your "inner consumer voice", and in the process become a more mindful consumer. Buddhist analogies aside, as you cultivate this mindfulness, you'll significantly enhance your ability to move closer to "the truth" about how consumer decisions are made with a rich appreciation for the subtleties of many of these decisions.
Ultimately, this process will help you develop the skills for identifying insights about the consumers of your products - the types of insights that lead to more sustainable competitive advantage; the types of deep insights that can only be gleaned by becoming the Indiana Jones of your own consumer mind.
To learn more about the Purchase Journal - what it is and how to use it within your business, please feel free to contact me via email.
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