Sometimes your marketing needs LESS . . .

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. . . Because sometimes less is more.

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When conducting primary customer insight research, sometimes asking the fewer of the “right” questions can give you greater insight and better responses than more questions.

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A client asked us to determine where their brand stood among their direct competitors in terms of strength and recognition, memorability, and whether it was positioned where they intended it to be as part of their strategic plan.

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I love those types of calls, by the way, it shows the leadership is committed to getting their marketing “right” and making it work as hard as possible for the firm’s success.

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I assigned the initial discussion guide draft to one of our top researchers, and let them do their thing for a week.

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When it came time to review the Guide, I was handed twelve pages of questions, for what was intended to be a sixty-minute interview! I asked why there were so many questions, and received the following response:

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“I wanted to be sure we got the full essence of the candidate’s feelings about the brand . . .”

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Needless to say, we didn’t use all twelve pages.

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The insights gathered from the interviews, however, yielded quite a few pages of data! Participants were very happy to tell us everything, gave us chapter and verse about their interactions with the company and their feelings about the brand, certainly capturing the “essence” of the brand, time after time, throughout the study.

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Ultimately, in the execution of each interview, I used just seven questions, and pried open those respondents like a can opener!

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The trick was to establish rapport and trust, and show the respondents we were listening carefully and actively, and then use open-ended questions.

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Most of the time it’s not what questions you ask, but how you ask them, that yields the really effective insights. And that requires skill, experience, and time in the saddle, things only an experienced professional can offer you.

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If you’re new to customer research, or just curious about how it can help you drastically improve your marketing activation, messaging, media buys and conversion rate, message me, and we can have an initial conversation about your growth plan, and how I can help accelerate them.