Marketing Research 2.0

In today’s chaotic marketing environment marketers need less statistics and numbers and more actionable insights.  Measurement and tracking is important, but it seems we are bombarded with numbers and statistics from customer surveys, website reports, marketing dashboards, and sales prospect data that many times don’t give us the true insights we need.  Market research firms are hired to pick up the slack, but the utility of market research is often minimal.  Many times the data is worthless even before the survey hits the field due to quickly changing business conditions, and consumers are over surveyed and fatigued by the constant bombardment of surveys online or elsewhere.  Furthermore, when you have focus groups being conducted on TV in my opinion it just spoils the quality and mystery that made them effective tools 10 or 20 years ago (don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place for focus groups, but less so).  Ethnographic research is still and will continue to be a valuable qualitative technique and I find it more effective than just an interview or focus group.  It allows that deep-dive without the bias from other individuals in a group.

Consumer fragmentation is making it harder to find and understand market segments.  Traditional research methodologies were designed for a different culture than today and researchers need to evolve.  Researchers need methods:  video blogs, online portals, customer forums, emotional measurement, and analysis of online comments need to take a more prominent role in marketing research.   Traditional research only captures a moment in time, while utilizing social media techniques like creating online customer forums can help marketers take an active and continuous listening approach.  Their insights will be timelier and therefore more relevant.