NOTES
DIY market research: your mileage may vary
Running your own online surveys or in-house workshops? It’s unlikely you’ll discover the game-changing brand insights you’re seeking.
by Joe Grossmann · 3.5 min read
illustrations by Matt Johnson
If you’re considering a shift in your brand strategy, you’ll need fresh insights about the various stakeholder groups involved with your brand as well as any target audiences you’re trying to engage. Where will those insights come from?
Your personal experience and gut instincts might be a launching pad for exploration, but they won’t be sufficient. You’ll need to look for ways to gather direct input from those groups.
Running an online survey or an in-house workshop can be quick and relatively painless. But it’s unlikely you’re going to stumble upon game-changing insights regarding your core constituencies using those methods.
Surveys: are you just checking off a box?
Online surveys are not inherently flawed as a research tool. I’ve used brief surveys to probe one or two specific topics, usually as a precursor to more in-depth research. But most surveys I encounter are not well designed or deployed for the right reasons.
Do you recall the last time you took an online survey? Chances are, there were too many questions covering too many topics, and you couldn’t wait to escape the forced march for which you had unwittingly volunteered. Maybe you even exited before reaching the end, overwhelmed by boredom or frustration.
Many surveys I receive are clearly designed to elicit favorable reviews. Some are developed as marketing tools, to promote new offerings under the guise of customer engagement. Others are sent primarily to signal a brand’s commitment to eliciting customer feedback, but they offer no clues as to how the feedback will be utilized.
I can’t recall the last time I participated in an online survey that was designed from a truly neutral point of view to discover what I need or what I think about a brand’s offerings or overall vibe. Instead, I often feel I’m being asked to make the organization feel better about itself—to validate its point of view or confirm my approval of its way of doing things. And where do all my multiple choice answers and satisfaction ratings go? To what purpose? Did the organization learn anything new, or did it simply check off some boxes for the marketing department?
All too often, poorly conceived surveys annoy stakeholders rather than engage them. That means you run the risk of alienating the people on which your brand depends, rather than hearing what they have to say.
Should you workshop it?
There are many flavors of brand workshops, but the most common kind brings team members together with some combination of whiteboards, giant notepads on easels, colorful markers, sticky notes, and card decks printed with adjectives, sentences, or questions.
The goal of these workshops is usually to encourage people to articulate their organization’s personality traits or core values (perhaps for the first time) and to compare their answers. Workshops like these can be fun icebreakers at the outset of a brand exploration, but what insights would you gain?
If the workshop participants are all employees of the organization, you might learn something about the participants themselves or the employee experience.
Many people describe their organization’s brand in the same way they describe themselves: “I’m quirky and innovative, and so is the organization I work for.” Other people may choose descriptors that align with their personal experience in the workplace: “My team works long hours to meet deadlines. Our brand is tenacious and driven.”
But it’s a rare employee who would choose descriptors representative of an external stakeholder such as a customer, a client, a partner, a patron, or a donor. Their perceptions may be very different indeed!
Introspection does not always result in insight
Introspection is always a fine place to begin an exploration. There’s never any harm done in grabbing a notepad and jotting down brand traits under the headings “We are” and “We are not.” You’ve at least begun establishing a baseline for your brand goals.
The trick is remembering that your self-perception may not reflect the fullness of reality. In fact, there is often a significant gap between how we see ourselves and how others see us. That’s why it’s so important to engage other people to conduct a reality check—to ask open-ended questions, without a hidden agenda, and to listen very closely to the answers.
It’s difficult, if not impossible, for either leaders or their team members to be completely neutral observers and objective reporters. Both employees and their managers are likely to shape conversations in their own favor or to the advantage of the brand—or simply to keep the customer happy. Conversely, customers may not feel comfortable telling a front line worker what they really think about your organization or your offerings. A customer might be happy to lodge a narrow complaint about a recent transaction, but that’s very different than discussing their general needs and expectations, their beliefs or value systems, or particulars of their lifestyle.
The best brand leaders understand that they cannot depend on themselves or their employees to “read the room,” as it were. Just as most of us recognize that we must periodically seek insights into our health from radiologists or other diagnosticians, wise leaders must occasionally employ qualitative researchers to monitor the pulse of key stakeholders.
If you’re wondering whether qualitative research is affordable or a good fit for your small- to medium-sized brand, see “Is qualitative research only for big brands?”.
