International Orange Outlook

OK, so you have decided to do some custom research.  What now?  Achieving valuable research results depends on the quality of the sample source, a well-defined questionnaire and efficient project implementation. 

To ensure high-quality results, be sure to:

• Recruit sufficient respondents that closely fit the target customer profiles – Only results from recruits who fit the criteria should be included in the study.
• Enlsit enough recruits to conform to statistical targets – To reach a certain level of confidence in results, a certain sample size is required.  Ensuring a sufficient sample size is a key to obtaining meaningful results.
• Reach knowledgeable, willing recruits – Participants with recent, deep experience regarding the research subject provide the most useful data.  Extracting relevant data requires experienced interviewers who can put participants at ease.
• Ensure the completeness of each response – Long questionnaires lead to incomplete responses.  The upper limit for on-line surveys is 20-30 minutes.  For telephone or one-on-one interviews, 60-75 minutes is the upper limit.

A well-executed research project can yield valuable survey responses.  By grouping data into industry segments you can get superior insights.

The payback for a well-executed research project is an accurate reading on what customers your are thinking, what is important to them, what they are focusing on and what their challenges are.  Then you can use these insights as inputs to the definition of marketing programs or as a steering direction for the marketing organization in competitive scenarios.

Posted by Mikko Disini at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

All customers – whether they are end-user consumers or enterprises – respond to messages that indicate that a product or service fits their needs – for example, solving a specific problem, advancing their lifestyle or improving a business situation.  By uncovering these customer “hot buttons” and crafting marketing initiatives based on them, marketing executives can dramatically boost marketing effectiveness.

To get to this “holy grail” of customer preferences and opinions and jumpstart marketing effectiveness, you have to become closer to your target customers – and now, by taking advantage of customized research, you can.

Today, experts provide services in a broad range of markets areas and techniques to deliver unique insight on customers’ preferences, objectives, and plans.  With the availability of on-line tools and the growing use of custom marketing research by technology-based enterprises, a wide variety of recruits – the customers whose opinions are so valuable – particiapte in custom research studies. 

This combination of the availability of experts and potential target customers enable you to discover customers’ “pain points,” perceptions, and purchase thresholds.  With this information, you can develop more effective business strategies, deliver successful customer-facing programs and boost bottom line results.

Posted by CJ Glynn at 06:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Clients and customers have approached me on how they can sell more product or service.  The issue is framed as a problem with a desired outcome - "I want to sell these new line cards that have been commercially-released; how can I do that most effetively?" 

At International Orange, we have steered clients to adopt a marketing framework based on customized market research.  The objective is to get to your target customers quickly and survey them to identify "pain points", buying thresholds, perceptions and needs.  It used to be an expensive effort to do this well.  Recently, specialized panels have become available from leading research firms to enable high tech companies to conduct qualitative research. Such research is ideal for market studies of early adoptors or new markets and segments.

I am always impressed with the type of results we get when we conduct telephone interviews of well-targetted recruits - the people you interview who fit the target market of your study.  We have received return-on-investment calculations for networking products that vendors would love to see. 

The upshot is, high-tech companies can now be more effective in developing customer-facing programs by incorporating customized market research results.  Actually, the results drive the program which increases its chance of success. 

Posted by Mikko Disini at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)