In a lot of ways market research is a legacy tactic, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored by brands big and small. In fact, market research as come a long way from the focus groups of the past. While formal studies and surveys are still on the table, the host of potential market research channels now open to marketers has grown exponentially.
In a lot of ways market research is a legacy tactic, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored by brands big and small.
In fact, market research as come a long way from the focus groups of the past.
While formal studies and surveys are still on the table, the host of potential market research channels now open to marketers has grown exponentially.
Welcome, everyone. Welcome to this month's webinar from banknotes submitted by hashtag paid. My name is Ian Wesley. I'm editor in chief of banknotes and today I am joined by Rachel Swanson. Rachel is founder of method and mode method and mode helps brands connect the dots, excuse me connect the dots between business goals and consumer needs. They leverage customized approach marrying customer insights market research, intelligent analytics to drive business forward. So I wanted to talk to Rachel today, just as you know, we're in a crazy time crazy economy, DTC growth, ecommerce growth up and down retail up and down. And market research is more important than ever. So I want to talk to Rachel a little bit how she does what she does and why it's important to businesses big and small. So welcome, Rachel.
Thanks, Dan. Glad to be here. Awesome.
So yeah, tell us a little bit about method and mode and, and just how market research works. I think a lot of executives, you know, both for companies large and small, really don't understand market research.
Yeah. So you know, the way that I would really just distill down my approach to what market research is, is it's just getting a deeper understanding of the people that matter to your business. So that can be consumers, that can be your customers or clients. That could be internal audiences, even you know, some folks do internal research and market research before they roll out organizational initiatives. So it's understanding the people who matter to your business, what their needs are. And kind of dovetailing them into marketplace trends and economic factors, or what we sometimes call the realities of today, to really come up with a narrative and, and a direction that informs your strategy. So in a nutshell, like that's, that's how that's how I see it, it's just understanding people. And what we do at method and mode is work with companies, you know, across different sizes and industries, to really focus on insights that are rigorous in nature, in terms of how we go about developing studies and projects to really get the information we need, but with a business centric focus, so always having some business decision making hypotheses at the center, that guide our approach to, to going out into the field to get proprietary intelligence.
Awesome. Interesting. So are you finding that? You know, I think market research is almost like a legacy tactic to an extent it's like something that you it's like Mad Men, it's great of like having to understand going to these market these groups and these audiences and understand what they do. And then we've kind of confessed forward to like the wild, wild west. And we're like, people just throw brands out there and throw products out there. And it's just like, let's see if it sticks. Are you finding that? Wait, who's using market research? Now? Is there a cross section of like, smaller DTC brands all the way up to obviously, you know, your enterprise level? And is it something that's trending not trending? Like? What are what are you seeing with market research?
Yeah, so there's definitely ebbs and flows, you know, my background is, you know, is varied, but heavily media heavily digital, fair amount of fashion, beauty expertise, some CPG sprinkled in, and just what I've, what I've found is, you know, it's really company specific, and starts from the top, how much a culture of insights is really integrated into an organization. However, there are certain industries that tend to do more research than not, you know, CPG is a good example. There, there is an engine behind any product you see on the shelf. And oftentimes, do you see see brands and there's, there's, you know, the Muddy Waters now a lot of DTC and kind of white label brands and aquas bins. But, you know, brands that you see on the shelf at a mass market store have likely had a fair amount of product research, whether it's on the packaging, the formulation, the positioning, the advertising, I mean, there's so many different facets of where you can study your intended customer. So CPG is a pretty evergreen area. Travel right now is kind of capitalizing on post COVID trends in terms of understanding where people are at nowadays. Obviously digital products similar to any kind of CPG, you know, making sure the utility and usability of digital products has been, you know, something that continues to grow, you know, in, in my world, and then on the flip side, you have, you know, you have industries or sectors that tend to do less or more, more heavy Thought Leadership Research in kind of luxury goods, apparel tend to do less traditional market research, in my experience, but what, but the bigger trend that I've been seeing, aside from company size or industry is more, more reliance actually, on qualitative. And so it's interesting to hear you say, you know, market research is a legacy, a legacy tool, and it really is, in many ways, and people have, you know, in their mind, what market research is, whether that's like a call center, annoying you at dinner with a survey, whether that's, you know, the picture of madmen style kind of focus group room, which still exists, and they're, and they're much nicer and more, more modern nowadays, but, but people I think, have really been swinging towards qualitative, especially over the past couple of years. Because Analytics doesn't give you the why and doesn't connect you with the person. And you can know so much about a journey, you know, in your digital space and throughout your your touchpoints omni channel, but until you're face to face with someone, you don't have that you just don't have that humanity, and that gut understanding, which is so critical for executives and leaders to have. So I've seen a lot more qual, you know, zum, zum, one on ones focus groups and back to in person now, especially the past, you know, 12 months or so but but that's, that's a trend that I've been seeing is supplementing analytics with more qualitative.
I think that's super interesting. I mean, being coming from the DTC space for five years, and then going into the software as a service space. I've seen on the software side, a lot of that qualitative coming through as like Gone calls, right, like, sales reps or, or customer service reps are recording their calls, obviously been known to the customer, customer. And those are automatically getting pinged in Slack and tagged for, you know, positive negative sentiment, or, you know, if this platform was brought up, or this, you know, initiative or tool within the platform was brought up. And so I think that's really interesting. Is that, like, it's almost market research on the fly, right? It's not as as necessarily guest canonized as a process as it used. Yeah,
no, I mean, I think I think that's the thing is, I think there's kind of this idea that market research has to fit in a certain box and has to be done a certain way. But I think we all have points in our day and points in our, in our, you know, role and responsibilities, where we can use feedback we're getting and kind of put another, you know, two minutes more thought against it to figure out how it can be more systematized. So I think to your point, like sentiment analysis sitting in on sales calls, you know, even things like I recommend to clients sometimes, you know, sure everyone's like, Oh, go on Facebook, you know, depending on the maturity of a client, right? And how social they are, you know, go on Facebook, or go on Instagram to see what kind of discussion there is. But even things like discord and Reddit which are not necessarily thought of as more you know, as kind of the Go twos in everyone's mind of social and community. But you know, there are there are vibrant communities and there's conversations happening about about anything and everything, you know, Twitch I've been seeing more folks turn to So while it might be covered in in traditional social listening, and I'm sure there are some shops that that that Do you know, it's using whatever you can get a hold of in a systematic way to me is a great way to have a DIY approach to market research.
super interesting. I mean, it's a benefit of growing a community is to get that real time research. One thing I want to circle back to you brought up is COVID. And seeing some some verticals utilize market research, older more post COVID How much are you seeing now of brands or verticals that hadn't? Maybe use market research in the past or, or maybe thought one way of how their product was being utilized in realizing post COVID Things have totally changed like and they're having to go back to their audience and understand you know, where they fit in?
Yeah, um, you know, I've seen like, frankly, these past two years for me have been some of the busiest ever. So you know, everyone wants to know what shifts are happening and, and in some cases, there are real shifts and other cases they're more more more benign or behind the scenes right like especially in the earlier stages of the pandemic, when you weren't seeing as many people, people who you were seeing knew what was going on and where you were spending and what you were interested in people you weren't seeing, maybe didn't know. So there was kind of like, I think, what were how that presented in trend data was that there was a shift in priorities and a shift in spending. But I think really, it was more of just a transfer and a level of visibility more than actual spending. And now we're seeing with the current economic situation, we have true shifts in spending, I think, you know, there was there was a lot going on during to find out how things would change. I think things didn't change as drastically from a consumer perspective, as we thought and I think the bigger outcome, which I'm sure you and a lot of your, your partners have seen is that things that were, you know, introduced during these past couple of years are now here to stay like ordering online for in store pickup and, you know, things like that, where once the technology was built, doesn't matter if there's a pandemic or not, it's going to be and appealing to others. I'm not sure if that answers your your question.
Yeah, no, totally. Yeah, definitely. I mean, just the fact that when that you're saying you've been more, you've been busier than ever, that there's a lot of brands, a lot of articles that are having to reassess, reassess themselves reassess.
This past six months, it feels like, you know, especially kind of in, in our, you know, knowledge worker marketing, you know, urban focused environment. You know, it feels like we're much more in a back turn back to normal, where I, you know, definitely based on geography is is a big driver of how the viewers have felt, which, you know, you always have to remember, as a researcher, not everyone is, is where you are. But there's definitely been a more kind of appreciation for that we have kind of normalized in this stage of whatever this stage is. And now the the bigger driving force that I'm seeing clients interested in is economic outlook and financial picture more so then, you know, health, pandemic security, etc.
Yeah, super interesting. Yeah. I mean, it's everything is constantly changing. I mean, and this is tangential, but I mean, I've talked recently talked to CPG brand that is, to me very much marketing into like, we're not a healthy product. And so like, I think, you know, everything from the economic changes to societal kind of, we're tired of glossy, everything I need to be eating is healthy kind of narrative and moving in that direction. Just everything is constantly changing. So definitely, to have that ongoing research is critical to any brands toolkit.
Yeah, and sometimes, you know, I think, you know, there's been a lot of focus on all the various attributes and levers you can pull as a marketer of how to product. But ultimately, I think a lot of a lot of folks are just in the point now, where they want a good quality product that makes them feel good, and that their money was well spent. And I think a little bit of getting back to fundamentals, you know, and less worried on how, you know, the kind of myriad ways you can position something. And don't get me wrong, I love doing positioning research. But yeah, I think like the, the fundamentals, I think most brands can really benefit from kind of getting a little check in even even on a smaller scale with some real, some advocates, some people who've already interacted with your brand, and just just getting a check in to say like, Are we are we relevant? Are we delivering something useful, that's working, that's fits in your life, you know, that can be that can be an oversight, which is always, you know, a valid thing to go to go out and find,
yeah, just a couple of years ago, I was saying that if you're, if you're a product and your brand and come with the side of changing the world, then you know, everyone wanted to make you feel bad. Now, we seem to be like indexing back in the direction of like, just give me a good product. Like I don't need all the rest of there. But let's talk about just the process. I mean, I was I was a CMO for five years before that I was in higher ed now working on the soft side. And if you'd asked me, if you asked me to take on a market research project today, I would have no idea other than to call Rachel and met them. So so let's talk about the process. Like how does it change based on you know, whether you're a small b2c brand versus your mid tiered enterprise level brand, like just walk me through it a bit of that?
Sure. Um, so you know, essentially, where you want to start is always with your objectives and the goals and what you're hoping to find out or what your gaps are, right? A lot of times kind of one of my three questions when I kick off with a prospective client or a new client is, what do you want to be able to say, give me your wish list? Because once if we have a hypothesis or have, you know an end result in mind, we either need to validate it so that you can proceed with with the with executing against that strategy. Or we need to find, you know, the way that, you know, we need to know if it's going to be disproved and why it's being disproved. So we can pivot, right, so starting with the objectives, like who you want to who you want to speak to, you know, what you want to say what you want to find, and then who you want to speak to, really, that's the, the, you know, the biggest, the biggest piece that I like to focus on is kind of the study design and making sure that you're thinking about, who will give you the answers you need, you know, and how, how you're going to reach them? Where are those people? Right? And once you know what you're trying to do, like the answers you're trying to get who you think can give you those answers, then we move into, well, how are we going to do this? Is this going to be, you know, truly exploratory? Do we just need these people in a space and ask them some stuff and find out what they say? Or do we have some solid hypotheses that we are embedding? And how are we going to do that? Is it more important to have one on one or small group conversation where we can dive in and really get that emotional response and kind of be a fly on the wall with them in a qualitative, you know, ethnography or focus group or one on one? Or is this something where scale matters, and we actually need to get percentages. And, you know, understand from a market size perspective, if this is more in the realm of predictability, or, you know, a broader trend that we can, you know, infer about about a market? And what kind of goes part and parcel with the, you know, the methodology is actually who cares about the answers. And to me, this is, again, why I say we have method Mo, do business centric, you know, customer and consumer insights, because it all comes back to who actually needs this information? And is this going to the C suite? Is this going to put, you know, your development team? Is this going to someone in your organization who just needs to see a stat, because if that's the case, let's figure that out now, so when we come back, we are packaging the results for the person who cares about them in the right. So that's kind of part of my processes is which can, again, get overlooked? No, no one needs a 50 page deck with with bar charts anymore, like those days are long gone, I challenge I challenge the marketer to find someone who's going to read, you know, a report on the state of the state that's just, you know, chart after chart after chart, it doesn't happen, it's not useful. And so what you want to do is really figure out how you're going to, you know, have the end result in mind, and who cares about the end result and tailor that project to them. I've just found it makes things go a lot more smoothly. And so those are, those are kind of the the key steps. It's the objective set, objective setting and alignment, the audience or the sample design, you know, the the methodology, preference, and then really, the packaging, those are the four components, I really focus on with clients at the onset of a project to make sure you know, then everything falls into place, you just got to execute and, you know, do the analysis.
So where do you think the biggest Hiccup is? And those four steps? I mean, I know for me in the times that I've gone through the process, it's probably finding the audience and finding the segment and finding, and making sure that it's a good cross section of people who are going to give honest answers on either side, and not just necessarily my, my super consumers, or my super users who I know are going to just give going responses. Is that is that tend to be one of the hardest parts is finding. Yeah, the audience,
the audience is definitely a challenge. I think something that, that helps, you know, that can help kind of a framework that can help with that is really thinking back to the objectives, you know, where, what your end goal is, right? So, if you're doing product development, whether it's digital, you know, SAS product, whether it's, you know, website, whether it's content on your social feed, whether it's or whether it's a tangible, consumer, good, right? If you're talking about product and talking about enhancing your product, you want to talk to people who've experienced your product. No one knows, you know, it wouldn't be the right recommendation to say let's go to a national sample of household decision makers, because you don't know how you're going to find someone who's going to be able to weigh in on your product, right? And so kind of like really honing on that, that focus of like, who can give you product feedback. The most it would be people who have experience and then you know, coming out for there, right. So then if you want more perspective, market sizing, etc, like building out your sample from there. On the flip side, if you're doing something that's more about brand positioning, you know, creative testing, or just kind of, you know, thought leadership in a space category intelligence, you would want to start broad, and then identify within that broad sample, where you find some interesting themes, right. So if you're, you know, if you're kind of considering some positioning or some product market fit, and you're not sure how relevant it is to a particular audience, you would want to include a broad audience to then see, well, who's who's writing this on high appeal, who has strong positive sentiment, and then you wouldn't be able to kind of look at that data and say, This is who is really into it, you know, this is who we want to target this is and then build out your, your targeting and your kind of, you know, mental model around positioning that way. So, again, it's back to it all kind of interplays like the what, and the who, to drive the how, and, and ideally, you would really kind of just define those as best you can, with the teams that it makes sense to define them to set up a design that that'll yield success.
Yeah, and I love that you talked about almost, you know, starting with the, the ending first is just like, what, what is the actionable takeaway that you desire as a brand, because I'm sure there's nothing you hate more than doing all this work and just seeing it sit on the shelf, because it's not, you know, whatever the actual, the takeaway they needed, or just going to, okay, this doesn't do them that they're just not using the output. So just working with a friend to figure out okay, like, what do you need to take away from this?
client to right? Roi, right? I don't know, it's like, I've been around long enough to be from the days where market research for the sake of research was done, we don't do it that way anymore, right? Like, you, everyone is is pushed more and more to show return on an on marketing investment, return on adspend. And so it doesn't, it doesn't serve my clients, if they don't end up using what I do. So, you know, they want to just sit on it, that's fine with me. But it's, it's, um, yeah, it's, um, it's really, it's, it's unfortunate for them. And then it just colors moving forward, the, the perception of what market research can bring to the table for an organization. Yeah, but so critical to really just just level set and reverse engineer. And by the way, that's not necessarily everyone's, you know, that's the method and mode perspective. And that Sure, wants in perspective on how to execute, you know, successful research for for brands, you know, there are definitely perspectives where it's much more exploratory and less hypothesis driven. And those are valid as well. So it's really about, you know, finding when you're when you're working with research partners, especially, and don't necessarily have an in house insights capability. It's really about, you know, what's the right culture fit for your brand?
How much you know, you just want to be in house if that was my next question is how much of this tends to be in house? Is it? Is it diverse, even within like a larger organization and seek a larger company? Is some of it in house and some of our some of that they contracting out? What tends to be the case there? Yeah,
um, it's all all stripes. But the bigger the organizations are, and the more that they rely on research for product development, I think the more likely they are to have customer insights in house. Most customer insights in house teams are still working with partners to execute, you know, the amount of of research that needs to get done, whether that's because they have, you know, one off studies that are just too large of a capability given all the other responsibilities on on one's plate, or because they, you know, they they have specific expertise, where they, you know, they need to bring in more hands. Oftentimes, what is when working with in house teams, oftentimes, what someone like myself or, you know, organizations like, like mine will expect is that there are certain ways that survey questions get asked that there's a much more a higher likelihood that you're able to tap into customers, because they're already set up with infrastructure to do that. Oftentimes, they have customer engagement panels, so there's a little bit more of a templatized a templatized approach to how to execute. And so someone like that myself or a firm like Mark, method and mode will kind of help, you know, help advise and help carry through on a project. What often can happen as well is that there's just a breadth of work where it's too much for an insights team to handle. And over the years, they've increasingly become smaller has been what I've seen around the board. So sometimes there's a large initiative where they just need someone to be able to manage an end to end experience and not have to lean on the internal team. So I've worked in all kinds of capacities with those teams. But yeah, generally, the larger the organization, and the larger the business, the more likely they are to have internal insights. And the more the more likely that there is that there's a culture of expecting that research exists and that there are insights, whether or not it's utilized is another is it you know, to its fullest potentials? Another question. But if there's insights, people in house, you know, that at least that the senior management team and the executives know that they have the capabilities to tap their customers?
Sure, sure. Well, as we as we start to wind down, I just just would stick with it. We're working with a company that's in like the 30 to $45 million range, top line. I mean, if you were to, if they were to come to you and say, Hey, we're we're looking into research, market research options, alternatives, just as not necessarily trying to sign them as a client, but what would you tell them to look out for? Or what are the top tips as they did start to get through this process?
Yeah, I think, look, there's so many, there's so many ways you can you can, you can tackle research. At an organization, that level there are tons of self service tools, there are tons of small shops like myself, there's big firms that have a super productized approach to things. So I'd say really, the first step is thinking about thinking through what types of research would work for you, and kind of starting your approach there, I guess, the, you know, the, some some tips, I would say, you know, to I guess I have some, some avoiding is, yeah, don't don't budget $10,000. And think you can do everything in one study, it's not going to happen, no one's going to be happy. You know, I think don't something else I would try to avoid is signing on with a platform, or a partner without having someone dedicated to resource, you know, a dedicated resource who's going to manage that relationship and what it takes to leverage that platform. Right. So there, there are a number of great tools, you know, something like Suzy comes to mind. And they've done a great job kind of shaking up the the market research marketplace and getting their name out there as kind of a turn key, you know, effective solution that can be DIY that can get you scale that you can get you quick quant insights, they have qual capabilities as well. You still need someone who's going to do that work, though, right? It's not like you just sign on for the enterprise contract with a big partner, and then it just research happens. So don't don't invest in that don't make that investment unless you have resourcing to staff against that, that platform and actually make it useful. I think, you know, don't just throw up a Google form and think like, Oh, we did a survey, I've seen so many brands, and even even some really great brands, send out a survey in a Google Form to their list and, and like, it hasn't been spell checked, and the logic doesn't work. And the questions are not relevant to me. And, and it's just like it, look, it probably doesn't have a horrible detriment on eroding. Brand favourability. But but we can do better, right, like you better. So you know, there are great really cost effective solutions and ways to make sure it's, you know, that you're buttoned up if you if you're gonna go that route. And to also to that, to that end about contextual relevance. Talk to your CRM team or your database manager, however, that structured in your organization, see what you can actually pull in before you blast a list. If you know you're talking to people and you expect them to have a certain behavior or a certain profile, you know, a certain amount of, you know, a certain relationship with with you already. Make sure that your survey questions reflect that. And if you can, if you can target that email to make sure that's incorporated. You know, again, it's just it just helps make things make more sense for you when you analyze it and for your customers when they when they receive that.
Yeah, context is king for sure. Yeah. All the way through the pipeline. Well, this was awesome. Thank you so much for your time, and I think a lot of great insights, a lot of great learnings and yeah, Um we'll be posting this online and via podcast and just continue to tune into bank notes.co For more content and more announcements on future webinars Thank you Rachel Thanks Dan Okay bye