About your audience: Data

I saw a news story today about a political poll that sort of missed an important data point – no one explained “WHY” do the respondents feel the way they do. Since we are about to be inundated with audience research in the form of polling as we start the fall election season, it got me thinking about how we use audience data and about some pitfalls.

Imagine explaining this, my favorite poll response:

Do you support more education spending: Majority said yes.

Do you support more defense spending: Majority said yes.

Do you want to cut taxes: Majority said yes.

Do you want to cut the debt: Majority said yes.

?

I feel sorry for the person who had to create a strategy around that.?

We have to ask “why” if we really want to now what our audience wants. Why do they want my product to stay the same? Why do not support a plan or a candidate? Why did you change the channel?

Here is another example of what I mean: (Group A and B are the same size)

70% of Group A is opposed to plans for a new park

30% of Group A supports the plans for park

40% of Group B supports plans

60% of Group B opposes the plans

You’re going to create a communications strategy to convince these people they need a park? Or your news story is that people oppose the park?

What If I told you that ALL the people in the poll who oppose the PLANS - are unified at 100% in supporting A PARK but oppose the PLANS because the planned park isn’t big enough?

If you missed that important piece of data, your strategy would target the wrong audience and your news story would be plain wrong.

?Question your data. Are you using it correctly? Who are you missing? Have you gone too small?

If your research is too shallow, you miss something super important and go too far down the rabbit hole and you will get lost in minutiae.

So good luck reading those polls and have fun asking your data professionals “but why”. They probably already have that answer, you just have to ask.