What do you do if you want to understand consumer behavior in Product Marketing?

To get the best data, it has to be a combination of qualitative and quantitative data. For qualitative information, make sure that you are meeting your current customers as well as your "not customers" (people that buy from the competition or have not purchased from you in some time). This will provide a better view of what is the true customer behavior. On the quantitative data, make sure that you collect external information from the customers but that you also leverage your internal sources of data, like the CRM, so you have a more holistic data set.

- Utilize various sources to gather quantitative and qualitative data, including sales figures, customer surveys, social media analytics, website traffic, and industry reports. - Example: Using tools like Google Analytics to track website visitors' behavior, such as pages visited, time spent on site, and referral sources.

It depends on the overall objective of the observation. My experience is more on product / equipment. Let’s assume you have a new production to develop. You can start survey, collect data etc but what if your data goes wide and the company does not have access to new technology? Or let’s assume you have to improve your product / launch a new version. Probably, sales data and historical information could be a good starting point. At the end, data are important and need to be relevant to your market and target group. In my experience processes should start with a clear definition of the objective and a well conducted diagnosis. starting from brand, available technologies and production capabilities, desired positioning etc.

The two basic approaches that I found very helpful are: social media listening and focus group discussions. Tracking keywords related to the product, capturing relevant conversations and analyzing the sentiment overall tells you a lot about the target group. While working with Conagra Brands, in-depth social listening and sentiment analysis gave me fresh insights, helped identify gaps and formed the base for new campaign ideas. Focus groups, on the other hand, proved very helpful during my stint with MakeMyTrip, wherein we would often have one-to-one or group interactions with TG members. Apart from what was said, body language and involuntary reactions used to give valuable data to work with.

Deep dive into return data and customer complaints instead of just sales data. Analyzing the reasons behind returns and complaints can offer direct feedback on what might not be working with your product or marketing. Conduct retrospective journey mapping sessions with customers to narrate their experience from awareness to purchase. This method reveals real-world paths and touchpoints that influenced their decision-making processes, which can be more illuminating than predictive models.

It's important that your sample size is adequate to develop statistics that are statistically valid. It will also be important to look at trends by comparing the changes in time of the same KPIs - for example, Year over Year changes. Lastly, it's important that the you also identify actionable insights from the data. These are insights or conclusions that can provide guidance to take specific actions.

- Identify patterns and shifts in consumer behavior over time, considering factors like demographics, economic conditions, technological advancements, and cultural influences. - Example: Recognizing the increasing preference for eco-friendly products among millennials and Gen Z due to growing environmental concerns.

Instead of standard A/B testing, incorporate behavioral economics to explore how irrational behaviors influence consumer decisions. Test variables that influence psychological triggers like scarcity, social proof, and loss aversion to see how they actually affect consumer choice in real-time. Use eye-tracking technology to study how consumers interact. This can provide granular insights into which areas of your website or product listings draw attention and which are overlooked, helping you optimize layout.

Por meio da escuta social, da análise de dados e talvez até mesmo do uso de ferramentas de IA, você pode entender as tendências para posicionar seu produto e criar uma mensagem ressonante com seu público relevante.

Make sure that you look at trends outside the scope of your research to find correlations with sentiment changes. For example, you may be researching how purchasing trends are changing for furniture. What other factors may be affecting this? Are there changes demographically, socioeconomically, social media trends, or supply chain related that are driving some of these changes? This is where it's sometimes helpful to look at the past to help understand the future.

Depends if we refer to a mass product or a “elite” / premium product. In a mass market where the product is “democratised” a segmentation might be misleading because a product or service can serve different purposes in the different segments. In my view, I will give more relevance to data, feedbacks, focus group, market research while the segmentation I will leave for a tactical approach to the market. For instance, identifying key feature, advantages and benefits to address the product to the target group. For example”elite” or premium product probably the segmentation will have more relevance, to make a product more “personal”.

This really happens before you connect with customers. You initially segment the market to identify the segments that are most attractive to your organization given the customers, the competition and your organization's own strengths. Once you've selected your target(s) segment(s), then you need to define the key personas that you are going to target within this segment. And then you need to clearly understand the unmet needs, pain point and value drivers for these personas. It's only at this point that you then start gathering information (qualitative and/or quantitative).

To understand consumer behavior, market segmentation is crucial. By analyzing demographics, behavior and needs, we as a team identified successful segments. This precise target group selection enables tailor-made marketing strategies. Recommendation: Divide your market into clearly defined segments and focus on the needs and preferences of each group. This allows you to create more targeted campaigns and convey your message more effectively, ultimately leading to stronger customer loyalty and higher sales.

Segmenting would help make work easier and organized. Looking at the area of coverage considering the structure makes it flexible.

Customer interviews are the most powerful source for understanding customer and prospect behavior. Before the interview, you need to spend time preparing: defining your research objectives, describing your target audience, and developing a structured interview guide. Here are some tips for conducting an interview: - Build rapport - Listen actively - Ask open-ended questions - Ask follow-up questions to clarify answers - Keep the conversation focused on your topic and objective.

If you are going to do several cycles of qualitative data gathering, then make sure that you starting point is talking to the target personas at the target customers that are present in your target segment. You have to be narrowly focused on the most important personas to be able to get the most value from the interviews. Just make sure that your sample size is large enough so that you can define specific actions, KPIs and goals.

1. Ask your prospects to walk you through the process they follow. 2. Ask what they are doing to solve the problem currently. Is it working? 3. What is the cost of not solving the problem? 4. How urgent is the solution needed?

In the B2B sector, the desire for comprehensive customer information goes beyond direct customer interviews. While direct communication with customers is undoubtedly of great importance, it is equally important to tap into the wealth of knowledge possessed by sales and support staff. These employees, on the front line of interactions, have invaluable experience and first-hand observations about customer needs, pain points and preferences.

I think of larger consumer research trends as a guiding principle, but try to double click on that information. Talk to your target user. Make sure that the larger trends aren't overly reductive or explore if there's a smaller segment you want to understand within a larger trend. Having earnest and direct conversations with people is where you'll be able to find the most interest insights.

It's important that you set an automated way to capture and dashboard KPIs directly tied to customer feedback. It's only though this automation and dashboarding that you can focus your energy in "listening" to the VoC and not just using your resources to capture the raw data.

Don't just set and forget. Trends are always changing. Make sure that you're updating your mental model or research over time. Choosing the right cadence for this depends on the insights you're focused on. You need to decide the right cadence (weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually) that makes sense to revisit your hypothesis. Make sure you're documenting all your work and logic so when you revisit it, you can easily update your mental models!

Through the process of testing several marketing methods, you are generating a feedback loop. You test different strategies, measure customer reaction with data and interaction, and then improve your knowledge of what functions. Making judgments based on verifiable evidence instead of merely conjecture about consumer behavior is made possible through testing. Subsequently, this information can be utilized to guide product development and marketing initiatives.

When thinking about consumer behavior, don't reduce people to a data point. Remember that humans are humans. Start with what you know about the people around you, your relationships, and human behavior. Make sure that you keep people at the forefront of your research.

"The world cannot be understood without numbers. But the world cannot be understood with numbers alone." This quote by Hans Rosling pretty much sums up the study of consumer behavior. While you need data to prove your point and understand patterns, perform data crunching, correlation, and regression, the analysis and insights are not limited to numbers. And one must also consider the qualitative aspect to know the problem deeper. Put yourself into customers' shoes, look at your product message, use your product, realize the user journey, and then present insights.