You can “prove anything with statistics except the truth” according to British prime minister, George Canning, in the early 1800s. Now, a few things have changed since the dawn of the first industrial revolution. The invention around that time of the stethoscope, the locomotive and the typewriter comes to mind. But the perception that marketing insights and statistics are something to be wary of still holds true. Why is that?
There’s some nefarious marketers and salespeople out there who will grasp at anything to ply their trade.
Some might be tempted today to test the waters and use questionable marketing insights to support their claims. As has already been shared In Partnership With, authenticity is everything today. Consumers and businesses can verify information immediately and without cost with the phone in their pocket. Simply put, it’s not worth the risk to your reputation.
That’s where Elizabeth Hall, Managing Director at Research + Knowledge = Insights comes in. She’s the one who can sift through the noise, cut through the BS and actually make sense of the data. This article shares the challenges facing the profession based on 20+ years of experience plus what’s next for the future.
Garbage In & Garbage Out
There’s been significant change in the market insights space in the last two decades. The greatest challenge today is to see errors in data as a result of the availability of Survey Monkey-type interviewing. While broadly accessible, which can generally be a good thing, it can also be risky for an untrained user. It is easy to be blindsided by simple-to-make, hard-to-spot-errors.
Many who use free online marketing insights tools simply don’t know what they’re doing.
It’s the same way that you would use an engineer when deciding how much load could be on a beam in a home reno, instead of eyeballing it yourself. There is a real risk that uninformed research could end up costing you more money than you would have saved. The reason is you may get factually correct information (in that the free tools added the response tallies correctly… which they do). But you may be asking unintentionally biased questions, not ordering the questions logically or presenting the survey neutrally which will impact response rates and introduce bias in who actually finishes your survey. No one wins that game… but many try.
Marketing Insights Gone Bad
Elizabeth recalls an Australian bank brand research study that she read a few years ago. What she found was equally shocking and yet a simple mistake that anyone could make if they don’t know better. A bank was looking to quantify their superiority in the marketplace regarding competitive brands, customer service and opening hours. If a respondent didn’t answer all of the questions (or didn’t have an opinion on that particular bank), the answer was recorded as zero. But if the respondent rated the statement, their answer would go in on a one to five scale.
Bad research design will yield inaccurate and misleading results.
When the tabulator got the data, the zeros (which were actually “N/A”) dragged down all averages. These low scores were most often for competitive brands and in some cases, their averages were actually below one. Impossible since “one” would be the absolute lowest possible number only achieved if every respondent gave the lowest score. Anyone who read the methodology could see that there was something wrong with the results. Clearly, if you don’t have oversight with someone who understands what you’re getting in terms of the data, you can expose yourself and your brand. What’s the win? The company many have saved $20,000 by not hiring an actual researcher. But the risk? Potentially, for millions of dollars in defamation. That risk is simply not worth it.
Starting with the End Result in Mind
When working with clients on new projects, Elizabeth prefers to set expectations and goals for the research study. Often, she will give homework to have clients consider what the headline is that they would like to come out of the research with. It challenges them to consider their hypotheses and their intentions with the research outcomes.
Now, to be very clear, it makes no sense to get the results you want to get if they’re not correct. It’s not doing anyone a service to say “everyone’s going love this product so you launch it tomorrow” if there is limited interest. It’s about getting creative and asking “why don’t you like it?” to discover the background of the opinions and beliefs. That always helps with client management and also the legitimacy of the process to ensure you’re providing real, honest answers, and therefore value. Asking the right questions up-front can help to narrow the scope of the project and be laser-focused on delivering the answers your clients need, not necessarily the ones they want.
Be Respectful and Interesting for Respondents
When going into field, it’s critical to demonstrate respect for respondents. Better results are produced when the questions are interesting. This makes intuitive sense; it’s not rocket science. The challenge is to get respondents to be interested when you’re asking boring questions. If it makes it easier or more fun for a respondent to answer, Elizabeth will always take that route, even if it’s more difficult to tabulate on her side.
Another foundational aspect of her surveys are to limit the number of obvious or motherhood questions. For example, “have you’ve ever heard of Coca Cola?” is ridiculous. It may help to benchmark less well known brands but at least respondents don’t see a question that is insulting their intelligence. By the way, this makes them much more likely to click off of the research study and result in an incomplete response. And when you are dealing with elite survey respondents – chances are the ones that you least want to lose (most senior, largest companies, etc) – they will be the first to click off if they feel like their time is being wasted on irrelevant questions.
Facilitate Client Discussions with Vivid Reports
Anyone who has been in the marketing insights space knows that client presentations can be painful for everyone involved. There’s the 200 slides with the same bar charts slicing and dicing the information more and more granularly. It’s mind-numbing and often a waste of everyone’s time: to build the deck, to present the deck and to find a place to let the deck gather dust.
What’s needed now more than ever in marketing insights presentations is brevity. There’s no magic bullet.
It’s easy to say “keep it short” and tell the story. We know it’s harder to actually make it happen. The trouble is that most researchers are so geeky (and we mean that affectionately). They are tech, tools and numbers-focused and they fall in love with their own reports so they can’t get over themselves. As researchers, when the long, repetitive powerpoint is (inevitably) losing the attention of the room, the researcher’s go-to thought is “nobody’s listening to me so maybe I should add more slides.” Or “maybe I should show them just what it looks like in Quebec” for a particular target segment. This type of thinking is how market research gets marginalized.
Quality, accurate and rigorous marketing insights must be presented in a way that tell a story, are easy to understand and are actionable.
Impactful client presentations can be difficult but clarity comes from knowing your audience and what they need. For too many researchers, that’s not a core strength. The more you can facilitate a research presentation that’s more like a focus group where you talk less and your audience talks more… that’s amazing.
Making Magic Happen with Marketing Insights
Ideally, you would have an actual creative designer receive the marketing insights and charts to craft it into meaningful, visualized stories that help the clients see where they need to go next. Put another way, have a strategy person look at it to say, “I’m only taking these eight slides and the 97 remaining ones are in the appendix.” That’s where the real magic of the power of insights can start to shine through. It’s not about the data. It’s about what that data represents – when collected and analysed properly – to shape the business decisions that prompted the research in the first place:
What do we need to decide based on what we understand today? What’s the opportunity next for growth? How do we make the most of our investments going forward? Answer these questions for your clients and they’ll return to you every time.
In Partnership With
Elizabeth Hall is the Managing Director at Research + Knowledge = Insights. Over the last twenty years, she has developed highly creative solutions for leading brands, including Rogers Communications. Elizabeth speaks at a range of industry specific conferences covering topics from financial to pharmaceutical to market research. For many years, Elizabeth was on the board of directors the MRIA (Market Research and Intelligence Association), including chairing the QRC (Qualitative Research Council).
Tim Bishop, CM is a multi-disciplined executive with a proven record of optimizing strategic efforts to expand the influence of leading organizations, such as the Canadian Marketing Association, Cineplex Entertainment, Lavalife.com, IMI International and Northstar Research Partners. In Partnership With is his latest focus to curate Canadian marketing experts to celebrate the power of strategic partnerships in a perspective-based content series.