A*se about face?

I was talking to a marketing manager the other day. They’d recently made changes in a client newsletter and I asked what had informed those changes. Was it from customer feedback or had they relied on their own judgement?

You can guess the answer. Yep. Own judgement.

Fair cop to them, it was an improvement from my perspective. But. I was not their customer. So what I think has little relevance.

They agreed it would be good to get some customer feedback on it. So, of course, I offered to help them divine some feedback with my amazingly insightful and objective approach.

Again they agreed this could be a worthy exercise, but with budgets as they were, they needed to be a little more financial before they invested in customer research.

Hmmm. That’s kinda like an athlete saying they’ll get a coach once they start winning!

We all laud those clever marketers who leverage a unique insight to springboard their business to success. Yet I don’t see a common thirst to uncover new insights and find those leverage points.

We lament about our low productivity. Yet employing the vast amount of brain power and experience residing within our customer base seems like a luxury. Or not necessary due to the common assumption ‘We know our customers well’.

I have yet to talk to a qualitative researcher who has not managed to uncover information their client was unaware of in their research projects.

There’s gold in them there hills. You just have to get out and mine it.

If you want to find your fortune, talk to the customers you’ve never talked to before. Regularly. Make it a habit.

If you want help forming this habit, I’m happy to chat.