Many people disregard my customer research approach. People believe they know their customer base well enough and they might. However, in my experience that is seldom the case. I have taken over subscription services that were not emailing their customers. I have worked with clients that have email databases in excess of 100,000 that were never segmented. The lack of customer definition, customer knowledge is the main hindrance in establishing relevant content.
A study of 30,000 startups that Harvard Business Review did several years ago, found by a wide margin that lack of market segmentation or customer definition as the number one reason for product/company failure. This holds true with mature companies and product launches. In fact, they may be surviving on past laurels but are ripe for disruptive innovation.
If you do your homework and conduct good customer research; things begin to change. We create better relationships and a higher level of learning opportunities. Thus, we can communicate more effectively across more channels and/or people within our customers, develop more business development opportunities and connect with influencers.
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In medicine what has better equipment provided? It has allowed doctors deeper knowledge of their patient. It creates a better understanding of the problems they have.
In research, it becomes all about engagement and building effective feedback loops. These loops become our method of learning. We use this learning to provide more value to our customers and participate with them at the relevant edges of the use of our products/services.
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Listening is only part of it; you must be willing to dig deep to understand customers. Without that understanding, it is like starting a trip without a destination. I like to start with an address in mind when I travel; then I determine the best ways to get to that city that state. If you don’t start with specifics, it is amazing how easy it is to get stuck in a Cul de Sac. And often the next turn puts you in another one of those circles. You just drive around without getting anywhere.
Do you know your customer well enough? Could you stand on a balcony at a gathering and pick the one person or the next five you would want to have a conversation? Would they want to have one with you? What about a trade show looking down at the booths? Or would you just walk down the aisle aimlessly stopping in a booth if it looks interesting?
I like to start talking to customers, people in the pipeline, and possible markets. Starting this way allows the qualitative to guide the quantitative that old USA principle: Understand, Simplify, then Automate.
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