Transcription:

Mark Mathis (Host): Hey welcome everyone. I'm Mark Mathis.

Bryan Earnest (Host): I'm Bryan Earnest.

Mark: And we are so excited today, Bryan, because we have our first guest. I know it's only our second podcast, but we have our first guest podcast. So, I'd like to introduce Erin Bishop, who's our Director of Research. And the reason she's on this podcast is because our topic today is marketing research and who better to speak on that than our research director.

So, Erin, I know that market research can really help in putting market strategy together and provide insights, information for businesses, but why do you think market research is so important as a part of a marketing process?

Erin Bishop (Guest): Thanks Mark. Well, I'll start with all of organizations, including our own, know what we think we know. But a lot of times we don't actually know what we know. Because we don't have data and insights to back it up. So, a lot of times we make business decisions and marketing decisions, relying on some uninformed assumptions instead of real hard data that can then guide those business decisions and guide where we're investing our dollars and where we're placing our media and how we're growing our team. Market research affects all of those things. And having that good sound data, really saves you money down the line. It's an investment generally, market research is, but when you look downstream, it can save you thousands of dollars.

Mark: Bryan, when you think about market research I know you propose that to a lot of people and you think it's important as well, but why do you think people are hesitant about making it part of their branding process?

Bryan: Yeah, that's a great question, Mark. I think that Erin really touched on it. I think a couple of things. One, a lot of organizations feel like they already know. They're in it every day. They're so close to it. It's a little bit like they're so close to the trees that they really forget to look at the forest. So, they're so immersed in their industry, in their business. But they don't always see their organization like everyone else sees their organization.

I think the other thing is what Erin was touching on, was the investment. And so often organizations are driven by deadlines that they feel like they just need to jump in and get right to tactics. We need a new website. We need that thing built right now. Oh, we need a campaign out there. We need that campaign out there right now.

We need to start raising money. Let's do it right now. Where taking one extra step to gain some insights, whether that's a set of focus groups, whether that's doing some branding research, whether it's some competitive research, digital research, feasibility studies, whatever it might be is just that opportunity to stop for a minute, validate, verify, and then move forward.

Mark: I think that's a great point, Bryan and we had a client not too long ago, Erin that paused their process and then moved forward. Can you speak about that? I know we don't want to talk about the specific client, but at least in generalities about kind of how that process went on a website.

Erin: Absolutely. And I'll actually start from the very beginning, when we were working with the client on the proposal process and before the client and we really got kicked off with a project, we had research included in the proposal and the client at that point decided, no, we don't need to do that for all of the reasons Bryan just said one, time. Let's just jump in and go. And two, it's an investment. So they wanted to save on the investment of their website and invest or a website in and of itself is a hefty investment. Well, what happened is they got about halfway through the process and they were having a lot of internal disagreements about what should and shouldn't happen and what information should and shouldn't be on there, how the website should and shouldn't look.

And their marketing director, to her great credit called a timeout and said, we're really making decisions based on our own preferences and what we think. But we aren't the target market. So, let's take a time out, do some research and figure out what our target market actually wants and then make these decisions based on that.

So, what we actually did is we went into an online survey and tested multiple designs. And as a result of that, we were able to chart a clear direction on where they should go with design messaging and everything else with their website structure, instead of just doing what their internal team thought they should do or what they preferred.

Bryan: That's a great example. One that comes to mind for me, maybe you can talk about it a little bit. I think a lot of times organizations think they know what all of their competitors are doing and they make a lot of assumptions. What are some of the things organizations can do to look at their competitors in a marketplace and see what they're up to?

Erin: Sure and competitive research. This is a great example of being so close to it. Because a lot of times not for all of our clients, but for many clients, the competitors are in their backyard or they're coming up against them all of the time. So, they think they know what they're doing. But once you really start to dig in, and do your research, stuff always comes to light that they didn't know, or when they see it all compiled and put together, clients can be like, oh crap, we better do something. There's a lot of ways to do competitive research. Some of the obvious ways are take the time to go look at their website. What are they saying? What blogs are they posting? What videos are they putting on YouTube? What do those video views look like? Go through their social media channels. What are they saying? What sort of content are they pushing out there? Those are all things that people can do on their own. A lot of times clients will hire us to do them because it is time consuming to do that. But it's certainly stuff that you can do on your own.

There are also some things that we can do that Amperage can do with the tools that we have to really look under the hood of their advertising specifically. So we can take a look at an organic search. So, we can take a look at how many dollars are they spending on digital advertising? What sort of ads are they posting? What are they saying in their ads? What do those ads look like? What content are they pushing out? What are they ranking for as far as SEO? What's their strategy look like as far as what keywords they're going after and what keywords they're ranking for? All of that additional information really gives you the information you need before you launch into a campaign. Or if you're looking at rebranding.

If you're looking at how to position yourself in the marketplace. That sort of data is key in, well, maybe we better stay away from these words because competitor one over here is really going after those hard. So, we need to differentiate ourselves. But it's hard to differentiate yourself if you don't know what they're saying.

Mark: Bryan, we have a lot of different research products that I want you to talk about in just a second, but first I think we need to have Erin explain the difference between qualitative and quantitative research. You hear that a lot in our industry. What are the differences? How do people know about these methodologies, which one to select, or which one to ask us about?

Erin: So, qualitative research is it really allows you to walk in the shoes of your target audience. We're going beyond just statistics or multiple choice questions or things like that. This is where we're really digging in. So, this is focus groups. It's in-depth interviews. It's where we're really asking them open-ended questions. And we're having a conversation with them. Whether that's individually or in a group setting like a focus group. Typically clients want to employ these methodologies when they're at the beginning stages of something, if they're really trying to brainstorm ideas, if they're really trying to dig deep into what are the thoughts, behaviors, and feelings of my target audience or my internal stakeholders, sometimes your internal stakeholders are your target audience.

But what qualitative research really allows you to do is dig in. Now, because you're digging in and you might be having an hour and a half focus group, or a 60 minute interview, or even a 30 minute interview, you aren't talking to as many people, so you're digging deeper, but you're talking to less people.

Quantitative on the other hand, this would be like your online surveys, probably one of the best examples of quantitative, this is where you're really getting into the stats. And you want the volume of responses. So, where qualitative research you might be talking to 30 to 50 people, quantitative research, you're talking to hundreds. And that's where you're asking them typically close ended questions. Like those multiple choice questions that I mentioned before.

But you want to know what a big broad population is saying. So, then you can make decisions based on within a reasonable margin of error, what your entire population would think or do. Typically, these sorts of surveys are done brand perception surveys are a great example of a more quantitative research. Customer satisfaction or client satisfaction surveys are quantitative research. Those are probably the two types of quantitative research that we do the most. But we also certainly do website testing as a more quantitative research where we're going out and asking a big broad audience. Hey, what do you think about this? So, then that can guide decisions moving forward.

Mark: So, Bryan, you want to talk about some of the different products that we do have in the research box.

Bryan: Sure just piggybacking on a lot of what Erin just talked about. And think when you look at solutions that we provide. All of our research solutions are really kind of a means to an end. So, a means to either rebranding an organization or developing their website or developing a campaign. There are lots and lots and lots of vendors out there that provide all different types of research. But for us, I think our bread and butter, certainly there's a lot of digital research that we can do in preparation for digital marketing or website development. Erin mentioned a couple of them, certainly focus groups are great way to get insight. Also we do something called a brand alignment survey, is really a series of stakeholder interviews that really allow us to dig deeper. Similarly, in our fundraising area, we do a feasibility studies. Which really look at an organization's readiness to do a fundraising campaign. Erin mentioned online surveys. Those are really a quick way to get insight. We use those quite effectively and they're an efficient way to gain insight from a variety of different individuals. And we can cut that data a variety of different ways to really gain some insights. A lot of people talk about UX, these days, user experience testing, and there's lots of different ways to do it. Eye test, eye tracking is really a research methodology to look at where is an eye traveling on a website design? What assets within that website are they looking at and where does the eye flow and things like that, that helps us really look at how to best design and organize the content and one that I'm really intrigued by, and it can be done at variety of different scales. And what I'd love Erin to talk about it a little bit more is journey mapping. What is it? And when is it appropriate to take a look at an organization's either a patient journey or a customer journey, maybe a student journey. I know we've done a variety of those Erin. You want to talk about those a little bit?

Erin: Sure. Well journey maps are literally what they sound like. It's a map of your customer's journey. Now that journey has to be fairly specific. It's nearly impossible to map your customer's journey throughout your entire organization and any touch point they could ever have because organizations are too complex to do that. But where it really comes in helpful is if you want to map a specific journey within your organization to really find out where are those effective touch points? Where are the ineffective touch points? Where are the gaps in what our customer needs and what we're delivering?

Where are their friction points? What can we do to address those friction points? What are we doing well that we can really build upon and expand? And a lot of times, same with all other research organizations, one, they're too close to it, that it's too hard to see those friction points as well as those effective touch points and the other thing is, they forget to look across the entire organization. They're really focused on what happens within the customer journey in the section of their journey that they control. So, to give an example, for a healthcare institution, we do journey mapping for a lot of service lines.

So, we might do a journey map for heart failure for a patient that comes in through the ER. We might journey map the journey of an expecting mom and how she selects her OB, how that processes all the way through her journey up until the point that she delivers. And when we do that, we look at every single place an organization might quote touch the mother as she traveled. Starting from awareness like what are you doing to make sure that when a mom finds out she's pregnant, that she's finding you? And she's coming to you or at least looking at you for OB services. All the way through, like I mentioned, the baby is delivered. And then what happens after that? What are you doing to capture that mother and baby into your system for primary care and pediatric care to ensure that then they stay in your system or at least increase the likelihood that they stay in your system.

There's a lot of people and departments and places that moms are going to get information about that. But if you would ask a healthcare organization, multiple people in the healthcare care organization, they're going to tell you what happens when, for example an OB doctor is going to tell you what happens in her office. She's not, he or she is not focused on what happens before they get to the office and they shouldn't be, really. But where the value of the journey map comes in is we bring together all of those people and we really talk through that.

What does it look like at this stage? What does it look like at this stage? What information are you passing on internally to the next person to make sure that, that experience for the mother and her partner is seamless and wonderful? Because marketing is just as much, if not more about what that experience is internally, just as much as it is, what messages and ads we're placing externally. So, really this looks at a 360 degree view, what's happening internally, what's happening externally. And what we hear from our clients is there is such great value in bringing those people together, talking through that journey, listening to each other talk about that journey from various departments of the organization and stages in the journey because they've never done that before.

And a lot of times there are really simple things that they can do in order to enhance that patient journey for in the healthcare setting. What it also does for marketing is now they're looking at, okay, so how can we help? And sometimes that's providing content and educational materials and whatnot for other members to use along that journey. And a lot of times it's okay, what content is in our website? Are we saying what we need to say? Maybe we should produce some videos that educate and inform at the top of the funnel. What are we providing, I'll keep with the mother baby example, what are we providing to the mother and baby before they leave the hospital but before she delivers that informs them about our pediatric care and our family doctors and that sort of thing? Are we giving them the information that they need to make an informed decision about our organization?

The key part of that process is we talk to the target audience, whatever journey we're mapping again, mother baby example. We're going to talk to some moms and we're going to ask them what went well, what didn't go well, where were you left hanging? What friction points were there in the journey? At what point did you feel like you needed information, but didn't have access to it? What information did you have access to that was wonderful? Or we're going to ask them about the good, the bad and the ugly. And they're honest with us. It is a visual thing. It is a literal map that shows all the steps that a customer goes on throughout their journey. It identifies the touch points that they have with your organization as well as the touch points that they have outside of your organization, that you need to be aware of. What are those pain points and barriers that we need to make sure we're being sensitive to and addressing in messaging? And then what are the opportunities and recommending actions to really improve that journey in the future?

Mark: That's fantastic information, Erin, thank you so much. As a writer, I think about how a lot of people turn to me and to other people that are creative in our department and they go here be creative. They don't realize how much research is required to be creative and to come up with a great creative product. And unless we have this kind of deep dive, this deeper understanding, it's impossible to have creative that's actually going to connect with people. It makes the creative process so much more sophisticated. So much more successful. It takes it from the oh, this is a lot of fun being creative, to this will actually work.

And when your tagline is move the needle, you really need to know what the guidelines are, how can you move the needle? How can you be successful? How can your marketing investment really make a difference? So, thank you, Erin for being a part of this, I think you've really helped us understanding the wider market environment and really how to identify new opportunities, new thinking about businesses. So, I appreciate it very much. So, Bryan. I think our first guest was a hit. I think we could actually do this. We can have guests on. So.

Bryan: Yeah, if they, keep showing up like Erin with great information, this is gonna make our job really easy. So this is, yeah. Fantastic. So, Erin, do you want to come back again next week? I don't know what you might want to talk about, but come back again.

Erin: Sure. Absolutely. This was fun. Thank you for inviting me.

Mark: And thank you for listening. We really appreciate it. And if any of this thinking and strategy really strikes you as something that you're interested in, please go to amperagemarketing.com And reach out to us and we'll be able to help you in any way that you need. So, for Bryan Earnest and myself, Mark Mathis, thank you for listening.