Even – especially – the big guys just don’t ‘get’ it

I was doing some market esearch yesterday and surfing around Plunkett. I came across customer focused research and how that is changing. It seems that now, instead of marketers showing concepts to individuals sitting around a table in a focus group, they can reach even more indiiduals if they show the concepts online.

Excuse me. How is that customer-focused?
The fact is it’s not. The concepts still come from the agency, or the client. And respondents are still asked to react to someone else’s idea of what might get them to shell out money. The only thing different is the delivery system.

In true customer-focused market research and marketing, the customer (respondent) solves the problem by coming up with the ideas. This allows the customer a total free range of thought and ideation. They tell you how they want to be “told and sold”. They come up with the concept, ad ideas, new product ideas, even strategies for reaching them!

In short they tell you exactly how to help them want to buy your product.
Your ROI soars when you give the customer exactly what they want. I have the statistics to prove it. Statistically significant statistics…like increasing a $500 million dollar company’s new product sales by 10-fold, or helping a start-up company attract a larger company in order to do a successful exit, or help a sole proprietor’s bookings increase by 60% six months after putting up a customer-focused website.

And it can all happen is a period of days.

There. Now isn’t that better?

Sandra Holtzman teaches CEO 035: Licensing.
She is the author of Lies Startups Tell Themselves to Avoid Marketing.