If you want to get inside your customers' minds, you need to do qualitative research. Face-to-face interviews and focus groups can provide valuable insights into your products, your market and your customers' opinions and motivations
Why do qualitative market research?
Research is an important first step before you undertake many key marketing tasks including preparing a marketing plan, doing SWOT analysis, product development, branding and pricing.
And market research should also inform your online marketing strategy - everything from the design of your website to email newsletters, SEO and social networking.
Market research can also help you develop your products and services and make sure they meet the needs of your target audience. For instance, if you run a restaurant and you want to introduce a new menu, you could invite local people to come and give you feedback on your dishes, service and proposed pricing.
This kind of exercise would not cost you much, but it could provide you with important feedback and increase your chances of success.
The value of data
In a highly competitive marketplace, the only result that matters is the revenue generated as a result of your marketing efforts. According to the data analyst experts at Pansensic Ltd, "The best way to ensure a marketing team can deliver this is through data-driven marketing. Yes, marketing teams could make general guesses, but without the data to back up their presumptions, marketing takes on a considerable risk of failure."
This is where the analysis of qualitative data, over quantitative research, can support and enhance your marketing. It is now possible to gain detailed insights into your target audience instead of relying on generalized, or outdated assumptions. Using these data insights ensures your marketing makes its mark and achieves successful results.
Qualitative research methods
Qualitative research is about finding out not just what people think, but why they think it. It's about getting people to talk about their opinions so you can understand their motivations and feelings.
Face-to-face interviews and group discussions are the best way to get this kind of in-depth feedback. With focus groups, you work with small samples of your target market, typically with four to eight people. Or you could conduct one-on-one interviews.
Qualitative market research can be valuable when you are developing new products or coming up with new marketing initiatives and you want to test reactions and refine your approach.
Qualitative research before a new product launch
Before you go into production with a new line, it's vital to get your product into the hands of some members of your target market: Ask them:
- Is it easy to use?
- Does it do what it's supposed to?
- Is the design appealing?
- Does it look as if it will stand out next to competing products in-store?
- Is the packaging working?
- Is the price right?
This type of customer research almost always reveals one or two important issues that can then be ironed out before you launch your product.
Building customer relationships
The advantages of qualitative data-driven marketing are plentiful. You can precisely target your marketing based on real-time insights into your market or customer opinion of the brand, products or services.
Additionally, the qualitative data gives your team a single, aligned view of both your audience type and individual consumers - ensuring the consistency and personalisation of the customer journey, from discovery to purchase.
And with more and more businesses highlighting client loyalty as one of their primary marketing goals, establishing a long-term relationship with customers is becoming key - an objective which is simply not possible without the help of effective and comprehensive qualitative data analysis.
Qualitative research and group discussions
Getting clear results from qualitative research can be difficult. You need a planned approach to your research to ensure you get valuable insights. Some people may be positive just to be polite, while others may dominate the discussion.
Choosing the right person to interview people or to moderate a group discussion is vital. Business owner/managers shouldn't run the sessions themselves.
It's vital to find an independent person to do the job, such as a professional market researcher - that way, they'll remain unbiased and the interviewees will feel they can speak honestly.
A good moderator will run the session in an unstructured way. Answers should be probed and proceedings should be recorded for analysing later. Body language and non-verbal responses should be noted - video is useful here.
Calling in the experts
Data has a huge bearing on the success of marketing efforts. Many businesses lack the resource to properly analyse their data, or they are not confident in doing so - so their marketing planning is unjustified, unreliable and fails to achieve its .
Marketers, therefore, need access to the right marketing communications tools and resources in order to implement qualitative data-driven strategies that propel the brand forward.
This is where the help of data analysis experts can help. If you want to take your marketing to the next level, you need to work alongside professionals who have worked with other organisations on similar projects. The only consideration is selecting the right agency to help you shape the future of your business.
You may be sitting on a wealth of knowledge, but have no idea what to do with it or how to extract information from it. A data agencies will be able to summarise your data and provide a real depth of insight that is more granular, more accurate and more actionable.
What can qualitative research tell you?
Qualitative research is useful for answering questions such as:
- what customers or prospects think and feel about your product or service;
- how they choose between different products or suppliers;
- how branding, design and packaging influence them;
- what sort of marketing messages have the most impact, and what turns them off;
- how price affects decision-making;
- whether there is demand for a new product or service.
Qualitative research is about getting people to expand on their answers so that you can get more insight into their attitudes and behaviour. It's all about getting underneath people's responses to find out what is driving their decisions.
With thanks to Pansensic Ltd, UK-based data analyst experts