Don't avoid customer feedback

In her article 'Don't tell me what I'm thinking', Heather Lloyd-Martin refers to a couple of case histories - fictional and fact - which involve marketing teams ignoring the views of customers and making assumptions about their target audience.

And she observes, absolutely rightly, that rather than guessing or hoping something will work, the bright thing to do is to take time out to ask the customers themselves what they think - ie, conduct some qualitative research. This doesn't have to be limited to just talking to the customers; it extends to staff, suppliers, opinion formers, industry bodies - really anyone who 's going to have an opinion which is going to be of value in some respect.

All too often consumer research can be seen as a cost rather than an investment, but even a small amount of spend here can make a significant difference to the effectiveness of a marketing campaign (whatever the budget). Business owners or marketers who are very close to their products can inevitably get to the cloth-ears stage and it's very unusual that a bit of objective external input in the form of a few focus groups doesn't shake up the thinking a bit and tweak the direction along tighter lines.

I remember being taught early on that when you start to work on a new product/brand, immediately write down and file your spontaneous thoughts about it. Then ask 2 or 3 more people to do the same, and forget what everyone said for a while. Then when you're completely immersed in the whole thing, go back and look at those first impressions as a form of baseline - ie remind yourself that not everyone has the depth of knowledge and detailed perception that you have, and that that's probably where they'll be coming from when they see your message.

The exciting thing about qualitative research is that it doesn't just tell you what people think, but why they think it and therefore how this might affect their behaviour. A good researcher should guide you to that nugget of understanding, and it's this information that enables a campaign to develop into something that is really going to hit the mark.