Market Intelligence at Market Speed

A few years ago one of my clients said he was pleased to see what he jokingly referred to as my "five pound" research report. He felt he was getting his money's worth simply by the heft of the report. Such a report took weeks to develop, more weeks to field, time to analyze, more weeks to report, and many hours to print, all told more than three months. Things have changed.

About four weeks ago, one of our clients in the field of veterinary journal publishing, came to us and asked us if we could deliver a survey of their multimedia base audience inside of five working days, from design, development, deployment to reporting the results. They needed to make some company-wide decisions. We delivered.

About two weeks ago on a Tuesday morning one of my other clients called up and wasn't joking when he asked if we could do a 30 question survey -- design, develop, field and report the results -- by Thursday. I asked, "Thursday next week?" He said, "No, you would make us ecstatic if you could get this to us by Thursday, this week, in 48 hours!!

A few points to be made here:

• We still do "five pound" reports, but today these same surveys are more likely to be conducted inside of two to three weeks instead of two to three months and are most often delivered electronically, with interactive tables of content for report navigation.
• We introduced our veterinary client to a whole new way of using data intelligence at the CEO level in strategizing as to where to place their investment dollar, in print, online, or what combination works best with specific audiences.
• We did complete the "48 hour" survey inside of the two day requirement, making our client ecstatic. Our report gave the client information that realigned their priorities from one development project to another development project, a change in the company's product investment strategy.

Examples like these illustrate the need for managers and businesses to start thinking of "market intelligence at market speed."

Market speed is accelerating. Markets are changing at unprecedented rates. Six month old reports in certain computer and electronics fields are like ancient history and bear little on what is happening today. MySpace arises, Facebook takes over, Twitter challenges. iPhone, iTouch interfaces dramatically change user interface principles. To take 2-3 months on a survey is no longer acceptable in a preponderance of cases.

How can a startup (taking one or two years to develop their proprietary product) or a small, medium or global company deal with this kind of rapid market change and the need for information in order to place investment bets in more productive outcomes, products and services?

Fortunately market research tools have changed and market research thinking is shifting. Necessity is the mother of invention. And this could not be more true than in the current market times.

"...companies are trying to react to forces that are threatening to overtake them. But most companies are not aware of tools and thinking that are currently available to help them..."

The case examples above show that companies are trying to react to forces that are threatening to overtake them. But most companies are not aware of tools and thinking that are currently available to help them not just react, but to anticipate what the next market shift is going to be.

If a company is not tuned into the social media today, they are at the mercy of rumors and comments that are traveling around the Internet at fiber optic speed. Witness the disgruntled guitar player whose guitar was smashed by baggage handlers at United Airlines and who sang the song "United Breaks Guitars" to a viral YouTube audience of 200,000 people. Had United been in touch with their audience, they might have had a system in place that addressed customer complaints in a much more effective fashion, and avoided such an embarrassing -- and who knows how costly -- episode.

So how do you keep tuned all the time? And is it even possible to do so? Today there are systems and ways of maintaining awareness of your audience that allow for constant 24/7 watchfulness -- ALL the time.

"CEOs and management need to be attuned to making all their decisions with fresh data that is not weeks and months old, but that is hours old."

Most crucially, constant audience contact is a requirement if managers are going to grow their business and compete in their market niche. CEOs and management need to be attuned to making all their decisions with fresh data that is not weeks and months old, but that is hours old.

Many companies offer solutions to this problem, but few of them have systems that are ongoing providing new fresh data every day. Most are geared around conducting research once every year, or every 6 months, or some such. The criteria are changing.

To work in today's rapid fire environments an executive or middle manager or entrepreneur must have...

• Market intelligence integrated into everyday thoughts and actions
• Data that is up to date and being replenished daily.
• Access to this data all the time, that is, when you need it, at any hour.
• Easy, user-friendly access to this data.
• Interactive access that allows managers to ask questions of the data.
• Access that allows managers to compare and correlate market groups.
• Textual data that ties into numerical data to provide reality checks.

If this type of thinking isn't currently being taught in MBA curricula, Marketing Research courses, nor Marketing 101 classes in colleges and universities, it soon will be.

Market intelligence integrated into everyday thoughts and actions

Most managers think of managing people and products, with some thought to budgeting and using financial data to think about profit and loss. They often do not think of the power of using objective verifiable third-party audience intelligence data...

• To support their decisions about how to improve profit and loss
• To bring new products to market, or update current products
• To motivate people who report to them with a deeper understanding of the true needs of their audience
• To keep up with the changes and thinking inside their own companies
• To order priorities of product enhancements based on customer needs
• To support the customer by attending to and fixing problems

If managers have conducted research, it is likely addressing one part of their overall responsibility, either a product, or a special audience. And this research is from some time period past, so the data is old.

Managers must rethink what information and data they need to effectively improve products, make customers happier, bring in new customers, and improve profits. Market intelligence is one of the least costly and most effective ways to stay on course, yet managers think of it as a luxury, rather than a necessity, perhaps because their image of market research is stuck in the past, like "five pound reports" and "shelf-sitters".

"So for starters, it is a grand change in thinking that is needed among many of the people who are acting on the enterprise's frontlines."

So for starters, it is a grand change in thinking that is needed among many of the people who are acting on the enterprise's frontlines. Managers need to learn that audience understanding is not a matter of statistics and once a year research nor seat-of-the-pants guesswork. It is a matter of immersing oneself in the details and data of why people like this or that, why they have problem with such and such, why they will pay for this characteristic and not pay for this other feature, how they learn about products and services, where they go to find out about what they need -- in short how their customers think, act, and feel. And they should not be guessing about these things.

In short, this is a continual daily endeavor, and there is no substitute for relentlessly pursuing audience information all the time. With this information foundation ALL management decisions get infused with a customer care and concern that audiences notice.

Data that is up to date and being replenished daily.

How do you keep data fresh? Your customers are walking in the door of your enterprise everyday, and so too are your prospective-customers, those who haven't bought, but are visiting you for some reason. These people are called "Site Visitors".

Today it is easy and it is totally cost effective to gather data from your site visitors. They want to tell you about your products, and they are willing to do so. Just ask them.

You say: "We already collect site diagnostics and analytics and know all about these customers and visitors?" Oh really? Do you know...

• Why they came to your site?
• What they were looking for?
• Whether they found it?
• What they like and dislike about your site?
• What they dislike about your products?
• What features they most want in your products?
• What products they most want next?
• What their experience was in visiting the site?
• What they think of your company as a whole?

Site analytics do not provide this information. But you do need this information to determine how effective your site is and what your customers are looking for in the future, and to inform your decisions.

And to think -- these people are coming to YOU. You do not have to go THEM. You do not have to pay for email campaigns, or lists, or other costs involved in finding people who are interested in your services.

It is easy to start gathering this information today and to keep this information flowing everyday for the next year and even two years and on. In a short while, audience data starts accumulating and you have longitudinal historical data that you can trend or tap into for all your decisions. It is possible to accumulate 100, 500, 2,000 or even 5,000 respondents in a short time period. One of our customers has in three years gathered over 13,000 respondents.

Easy, user-friendly access to this data; Interactive access that allows managers to ask questions of the data; Access that allows managers to compare and correlate market groups.

"The system is automated, robotic. Almost like a perpetual motion machine, it never stops until you tell it to."

Now that you have a system in place that is rolling along gathering information from your current customers and your prospective customers, you are now constantly in touch with you key audiences: customers and prospective customers. The system is automated, robotic. Almost like a perpetual motion machine, it never stops until you tell it to. No more investment, no more tinkering for a very long time.

What you do need is easy, comfortable, daily, interactive access to this data.

Many database query systems exist, but they require experts to use effectively. Some are costly. Some more friendly systems also exist that you can use to see the preset results of the data you want to access. These solutions are not acceptable for you to be able use in your everyday thinking and decision making.

Fortunately a very small number of data reporting systems do exist that allow you to get into the report, online, all the time, comfortably and interact with the data. Some are easier to use than others. Some require more personal time involvement than others. Only a few allow all that is needed for you to access the data in the way you need to on a daily basis and compare current data with past data, compare users of this product with users of that product, correlate these types of customers with those types of customers.

Our reporting system, ExecStats, was designed with these requirements in mind, but a few other systems also exist. You can check them out online. Each has its ups and downs. Some are do-it-yourself, requiring a lot of your time and a learning curve. Others, like ExecStats, are built on an Application Service Provider model, where audience research experts set up the entire system for you, monitor it and put you in the driver's seat behind the data dashboard. You spend little or no time setting it up, get third party expert help, and enjoy the fruits of having the data roll in on a daily basis.

Bottom Line

Frankly, not all managers will want to engage in decisions in this manner. It is not surprising that for any ten managers who are given the same set of audience research data...

• Two will not use the information at all, or at best ineffectively.
• Three will use the information in limited ways.
• Three will use the information in fairly productive ways.
• Two will use the information to achieve spectacular results.

So if a manager does not see how objective audience understanding is the basis upon which almost all enterprise decisions should be made, the data will not make her decisions more responsive to market needs, and those decisions will start to wander off course from the enterprise's central purpose -- to meet customer needs over the long run in order to grow the enterprise's sales and profits.

So here I have tried to outline the type of system, the type of management thinking, and the type of market intelligence that is required to face down competition in fierce and changing markets. In this system the expert market researcher no longer stands between the data coming in and the manager who needs to use the data, but stands in the background to insure the integrity of data and the scientific methods used. Managers using these types of systems are now in the foreground directly in front of and actively engaged with the fresh data they need in order to make customer-sensitive everyday decisions. These are the managers who will win for their companies in tomorrow's markets.

For further discussion of this type of market intelligence system, you can email Larry Wilson at larry@wilsonresearch.com, or call directly 1-650-591-3227.