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Guerrilla Marketing Research

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Guerrila Marketing Research

 

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Robert J. Kaden

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Market research is not intended to be a substitute for inspiration, though it can often foster breakthrough thinking. It is intended as a connection with your customers or prospects that, if used fully, will get you where you want to go faster and more profitably.

 

At the very heart of market research is the keen belief that listening to the opinions of the consumers is important. That when asked the right questions consumers will tell you what to do to make your business more profitable. That by listening to consumers you will do the smart thing far more often than if you just decide to go alone.

 

......

...Listening to the customer starts with listening to yourself. It means suspending your ego and setting your stubbornness aside.  Ask yourself these questions the next time you're likely to go it alone:

1. If I'm wrong, how much will it cost me?

2. How long can I afford to be wrong before I run out of money?

3. Would input from customers of prospects that have not stake in whether I succeed or fail help me make better decisions?

4. Do I know with certainty why prospects go to a competitor rather than me?

5. Have I asked customers and prospects what they need and want from me and my business?

6. Do I know if my customers think I'm giving them what they need and want?

7. Do I know what else I can provide customers so that they'll pay me more--and be happier about it?

8. Do customers and prospects know the benefits of buying from me?

9. Do I feel that I can't afford market research?

10. Can I accept the possibility that my customers might be smart than I am in helping my business grow?

 

It never really made sense to me, but I have encountered many business types who don't use research because they think customers will lie to them. Or that customers and prospects will be unjustly critical. In my 35 years in market research conducting over 4,000 focus groups and 1,500 surveys, I have never run into a respondent in a focus group or analyzed data from a survey where it was evident that customers or prospects were lying or were overly critical just out of spite.

 

Knowing What Questions to Ask

Often findings from research fail to result in clearly defined opportunities. This is usually because the right questions weren't asked in the first place. In such instances, the information generated did little more than point to the questions that you should have really been asking.

 

This is not necessarily bad and may even be unavoidable. The best-planned research will generate answers but will almost always beget new questions. The operative word in research is "search." Coming up short in one search can pinpoint where to start the next.

 

That is to say, getting answers is simple. Asking the right questions in the first place can be difficult. ...

Experienced researchers never take consumers' initial responses at face value. The real truth is usually buried, and it takes skill, thoughtfulness and patience to test it out.

 

And so it goes. The more you learn about your customer motivations, the more insightful and meaningful are the questions that you can ask. Reconciling what consumers think with how they behave is usually the key to asking the right questions.

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In Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson talks about free market research…commonly called secondary source research.  The kind that you do at the library, on the Internet or by studying your competitor’s marketing activities.  Or even the kind that might include a seat-of-the-pants survey.  It is good to do free research and I encourage it.

It never

 

But this book is not about getting research for free.  It’s about conducting custom-designed primary research the way it’s done by professionals.   

 

This book is about conducting focus groups and surveys that allow Guerrillas to know with surety the key motivations and messages that will cause prospects to become customers and customers to buy more.  The kind of research many entrepreneurs, small and mid-sized businesses think they can’t afford.

 

When you finish this book, you will understand why doing primary research the right way is important to growing your business.  And you will know how to get it done for far less than you think.   If that intrigues you, please buy this book.

 

 
Guerrilla Marketing Research Foreword
Jay Conrad Levinson

Orlando, Florida

 
What you don't know about research can hurt you.  What you don't know can cause lost sales and missed opportunities that would hurt you to the core if you knew the details. 
 

In this book are the details, not only of the grief that awaits you if you fail to do proper research, but also of the giddy joy you'll experience when you review your profit and loss statement and see the payoff of knowing what you're supposed to know.

 

I remember thinking that research sounded boring.  The way it is treated in these pages gives it the allure and wonder of rocket science.  It truly does take you into a different world--a world that exists only to those who know the ways to it.  Upcoming are the ways to it.

 

You'll be embarking upon them for the sake of earning honest and substantial profits.  Throughout your journey deeper into your customers' heads, you'll become familiar with the guerrilla marketing weapons of primary research, focus groups, surveys, sampling and brainstorming. 

 

The information that you have gleaned with your past research may answer questions that needn't have been asked. There's no sense bogging yourself down in old data when it's only current information that you seek

 

You'll get that information when you see how the behemoths get theirs.  You'll also realize that you can do what they do for a fraction of the cost. Such is the power of the right kind of research.

 

In my Guerrilla Marketing books, I counsel small businesses to create questionnaires so as to learn more about their customers.  This Guerrilla Marketing book gets down and dirty about those questionnaires.  Once you have all the information you hoped to collect, how are you supposed to organize it?   How do you go about analyzing it?  How can you transform its findings into profits? 

 

In these pages are the answers to those questions along with the answers to many questions you wouldn't have thought of asking.  If there are any fingerprints on the pages, blame them on Bob Kaden, who spent so many years in the deep trenches of market research that his fingers are stained green—from the profits he has mined for his clients.

 

The maps of centuries past do not guide successful ventures in the present.  Research the way you used to do it belongs to a bygone era.  Many business owners speak of taking their business to the next level.  The next level is the one you are holding in your hands.  This book is your step up to it—to the quantum advance represented by Guerrilla Marketing Research.   

 

Table of Contents

                                                                                                                                                                                                

Chapter   1.  Customer Attitudes—Should You Care?                               

Chapter   2.  Asking the Right Questions                                   

Chapter 3.  How the Big Guys Do It—Large Company Research                                                    

Chapter 4.  How to Get Started                                                      

Chapter   5.  How Much Does Research Cost?                                            

Chapter   6.  Using Research Professionals                                

Chapter   7.  How Much Research Should You Do?                    

Chapter   8.  The Research Plan                                                 

Chapter   9.  Focus Groups                                                         

Chapter 10. Brainstorming and Other Ideation Processes                                                               

Chapter   11.  Surveys                                                               

Chapter 12.  Writing Questionnaires                                       

Chapter   13.  Sampling                                                            

 Chapter 14. How to Conduct Surveys 

 Chapter 15. Organizing Data                                                 

 Chapter 16. Statistical Techniques                                        

Chapter  17. Telling the Story—Analyzing Survey Results                                            

 Chapter 18. Putting Results into Action                                  

 
Robert J. Kaden
 
 

What Research Needs Is a Process!

By Robert J. Kaden

 

Toni Louw’s recent article in Advertising Age, “A Core Research Competence Must Ground Leadership” is on the mark for identifying a problem but falls short of putting forth fresh solutions.  Marketing Research fails to be integral to strategic planning because the process of planning research and then actualizing new strategies once the research is completed is woefully inept. 

 

Untold hours can be spent in identifying creative and media strategies before a dime is spent putting decisions to work. But when it comes to expensive marketing research studies, marketers are prone to whipping out research objectives, collecting data and waiting for the results.

 

Marketing Research will never be the strong force Louw is seeking until marketers spend the time necessary figuring out the pivotal questions that they should be asking. Questions that provide answers that will, in fact, lead to the strategic direction the marketer is willing and able to execute.

 

This suggests that research planning should be front-end loaded. It could be brainstorming potential action plans, developing “if the data says this, then I could do that” scenarios or locking decision makers in a room until they fully explore the strategic implications that will surface from the questions that they are asking.

 

Whatever the process, research will continue to be a step-child to the privileged few or the hidden agendas until the, “I don’t know what I’ll do with the results until I see them,” mentality is purged from our approach to using research data.

 

Discovering Needs: The First Challenge for Research

by: Robert J. Kaden

 

There is clear continuum that consumer research must address in order to be effective.  Consumers buy products because they need them, e.g., an inexpensive Chevy simply to go back and forth. Because they want them, e.g., a Ford Mini-Van for the space it gives the family. Because they wish for them, e.g., a Porsche which they consider a symbol of automobile perfection. Because they desire them, e.g., a Mercedes-Benz that makes a strong statement about success. Because of emotion, a PT Cruiser that harkens to the youthfulness associated with just cruising around.

 

What marketers must first address in order for their research to have meaning is how they perform in the area of needs. By not performing in an acceptable manner on the basics of their business, it’s a waste of money to make promises in the other areas.

 

Ask yourself if your products or services satisfy the needs of quality, variety, service and the prices you change versus the value that you give ? If you don’t know or aren’t sure, don’t blast ahead making statements in areas of wants, wishes, desires and emotions. While you might initially attract business, you would quickly lose that business because you aren’t performing well at the basics.

 

Unless you like losing money, there is no point spending on getting customers if you can't keep them? And clearly, if you aren't keeping the customers you're getting beyond one purchase, you're probably not focusing enough on satisfying the basics of the business that you're in.

 

Conduct research that uncovers the essential needs customers expect when doing business with you and then measure how you perform. If you can measure yourself against competition, all the better. Once you’re at acceptable levels, we can talk wants, wishes, desires and emotions that attract incremental business and keep it.

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