Taking the Pulse

They say that you are supposed to survey your customers to find out what they think about your organization.   You tell yourself, "My customers ARE NOT shy about sharing their complaints opinions, especially when they perceive something is wrong.  Why should I spend time and resources asking for more?"

They say that it is important to understand your customers' motivations, interests and feelings.  You think to yourself, "I know when they make a purchase.  Why do I care about anything else?"

They say they can tell you within one standard deviation how your customers will respond to your new product or ad campaign or store location.  You wonder to yourself, "What the heck is a standard deviation?"

Market research is often the most neglected tool in the marketing tool box.  There are many reasons for that.  First of all, many business people who understand a lot about marketing don't really understand the processes or the terminology of research.  Second, market research often seems to gum up the works and slow things down.  We just want to get started and research seems to delay things with no tangible payoff.  With research, not only do you have to take time for the survey, but you have to analyze the results and hope that the results don't indicate a change in plans.  It seems easier to avoid it.  Kind of like the dentist.

But ultimately, I think the primary reason that market research is so often skipped is that marketers don't see the value. They have a view of the world that they are comfortable with and they don't want to risk disrupting that view with research.  As Nate Silver says in his book The Signal and the Noise, "[w]e focus on the signals that tell a story about the world as we would like it to be, not how it really is.  We ignore the risks that are hardest to measure, even when they pose the greatest threats to our well-being.  We make approximations and assumptions about the world that are much cruder than we realize."  Well-crafted research can help refine those approximations and assumptions.

Marketing is primarily about building and nurturing relationships.  Those relationships are with customers, staff, suppliers, board members, media, the industry, the public, politicians, the local community, the international community, regulators and the competition.  The degree that you develop relationships with any group on that list depends in part on your industry, in part on your product or service and in part on your marketing strategy.

Regardless of your industry, product or strategy, understanding those whom you seek to market to gives you an advantage.  Understanding their views and feelings about your organization and your product can help you take shortcuts to providing a product or service that exceeds their demands and expectations.  A simple, well crafted survey of your customers, prospective customers, or staff can help you break through the myopia that Nate Silver was writing about and see the world, and your product, as your customer sees it.

Ultimately, you do market research because you need to know what "they" say: about your organization, about your product and about their needs.

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