Market Research and Strategic Marketing Unite!

Market researchers can provide the insights necessary to develop strategic marketing plans but, as I explore the world of marketing professionals more and more, I find most marketing plans lack the basics. First, you must know your customer. Not just where they live, how much money they make, and how much they have paid attention to your products and services in the past, but how they really think. You have to know how they talk about your products, how they use them, and how you can find others that speak and think in a similar way. Most marketing plans I have seen consist of customer demographics, and the best I have seen pinpoint persons in various markets that fit the same basic profile. It's just not enough, it doesn't hit on the key reason a person might open their wallet, the WHY.

I've been wondering about this seemingly obvious disconnect for some time and I'm beginning to think that there is a gap between market researchers who really understand how to get and mine appropriate data, and marketers who create the collateral, the messaging, and the visuals that are used to expose customers to the product. There has to be a joke in here somewhere about three guys walking into a bar, if it hits me later, I'll be sure to put it in the comments section of the blog. What we have here is a case of left brain people and right brain people not communicating well... as the Warden might say "what we have here, is a failure to communicate." How do number crunchers like me talk about the results, and how do the more artistic types utilize them. Sometimes the number crunchers are one trick ponies (I'm a number cruncher so bear with me) and don't know to look at the materials their counterpart marketing professionals are doing enough to know what research they need to do next, they just crunch what they're told. For example, I recently saw a case where the marketing department created a very nice magazine for their customers but had no idea that they could make a lot more advertising money if they would only cross match their customers with other products like energy efficient appliances and cars. And the market researchers were fixated on finding out if the customers liked the content of the articles in the magazine..big missed opportunity. And it happens all the time.

The solution is a little "touchy feely" perhaps, but I think it could work, they have to find a way to build relationships with each other. They have to find some common ground, or a person who can help them find common ground (a shameless plug for BlackSand Research consulting services available at reasonable prices). The kind of communication that takes place when the groups get together and start talking about what comes next, the next level I hear about all the time that so often goes undefined. Ideas like "what if we find out what language our customers use when they talk about our products" may seem simple but is so often ignored in favor of the marketing people thinking they know, and the number crunchers really not caring about the qualitative crap. Uh oh, not crap if it's properly coded.

It's time to move beyond the simple demographics of the markets we sell into. Time to really understand the people in those markets and deliver messages that match the sometime idiosyncratic styles of customers and potential customers in those markets, specifically. If a message can sell a product because a customer gets it, then it makes a lot of sense to do the research on what will help them along in their understanding. We need both sides of our brain to make sense of this crazy world, and we need both to reach customers. Put them together and get them communicating!