Why You're Not Developing Deep insights & How the Best Marketers Do

Are you as busy as I’ve been, trying to deliver on all your final objectives before heading off for your Summer Vacation? Stressful times indeed, but this post is a must-read if you want to finish 2017 ahead of the competition!

At the end of last year, I ran several 1-Day workshops in China. The topics were "Insight Into Action", "Insight with Impact" and "Improved Ideation and Innovation".  One of the things that I loved about the workshops was that they had participants from several different departments. These included the executive team, marketing, business development, R&D and market research. These multi-disciplinary groups made for some interesting and highly engaged exchanges as you can imagine; it was fantastic!

In many organisations, training courses are organised separately for individual departments. So it was great that my client saw the benefit of mixing the teams up like this. They understood that both insight development and innovation are too important to be left to one team alone. (>>Tweet this<<) They have worked hard to build strong relationships across departments and demolish silos within their company.

Successful businesses depend upon deep customer insight on which all other major developments should be based. My client understands the power of connection built on insight, to resonate with and inspire their customers. And yet many companies continue to leave this to the insight team to develop and deliver on their own. It’s as if they believe that this group have some natural-born skill or magic that enables them to do it while others cannot. Don’t worry, we can all do it - with the right training and a few tools I'm going to share.

Great companies understand the importance of insight generation and the challenges faced by everyone in developing them. This is why the best marketers search for greater collaboration. I always encourage the market researchers and marketers in my client companies to socialise with other departments, rather than sitting behind their computers all day. The best marketers already do this, do you?

If you are struggling to develop insights that will truly resonate with your consumers or customers, I suggest you review these following tips which I shared with my client’s marketing and insight teams. Despite being some of the best marketers I know, they are still keen to advance their thinking and processes, even more, to embrace customer-centricity in every area of their organisation.

1. Turn business objectives into customer-centric ones. If you are defining your objectives in terms of the business, such as increasing sales, beating the competition or increasing awareness, you are not thinking customer first. Instead, identify what you want to change in terms of your customers’ behaviour or attitude, and you are likely to meet with more success. This is because you will be thinking about your customers’ objectives rather than (just) your own.
2. Insight generation should start with customer connections (>>Tweet this<<). When was the last time you personally spoke with your customers? If it wasn’t in the last week, you’re not getting out enough! Make a habit of regularly watching and listening to your customers. They are changing faster than you may realise, so it is important to keep your finger on the pulse of market changes. See below for more ways to connect.
3. Have regular contact with all other departments. It is impossible to really understand the business if your contact with other groups is limited to meetings and presentations of analyses you have conducted or plans you have written. It must become a daily habit, so you are the true voice of the customer/consumer internally. Another advantage of getting close to the other groups in your organisation is that you can exchange information and ideas, which will then make it easier to get their support when it comes to insight development.
4. Get MRI to share their nuggets of information at every occasion. While they may present findings in formal meetings and presentations, I know that market research and insight teams learn new things about the business every day. So why not ask that they share them more frequently? Every project and every analysis turns up more information than that for which it was designed. Somehow these learnings get lost, as they are not seen as relevant to the question at hand. However, ask that they are shared as a regular part of internal newsletters, Lunch & Learn sessions, or internal “Tweets”. From my experience, they will inspire new ideas and thinking throughout the company.
5. Get into the habit of speaking with consumers at every chance you can. Suggest to join in when research projects are being run, listen in to call centre conversations, speak to demonstrators and merchandisers, or even talk to shoppers at retail. These connections can quickly become addictive as they are for the best marketers in the most consumer-centric organisations. As an added bonus, the insight development process will become both quicker and less challenging for everyone.
6. Ask MRI to analyse more than market research information alone. They are the best synthesisers you have and can manage multiple data sets from all available sources. There is so much information flowing into organisations today that there is more data than even the best marketers can manage. According to IBM, more than two-thirds of CMOs feel totally unprepared for the current data explosion, especially as it relates to social media. And in some research conducted by Domo, a similar number of marketers claimed to be unable to handle the volume of data available to them. Ask MRI to help and you will be better informed and feel less overwhelmed.
7. Remember that insight development takes energy and time. My client teams usually get close to the perfect expression of an insight in just two short working sessions. However, in most instances, it takes days, if not weeks or months to refine, group and synthesise information down to an actionable insight. There is one way to shorten the time needed to develop insight and that is through the right training. Simple tools and processes can be quickly learnt, which then speed the development of insights for everyone and not just the best marketers.
8. Insight development should involve more than the insight team. This is why it is important for you to build relationships with other departments. The alternative perspectives brought by the different groups will enhance your overall understanding of both the customer and the market situation you are looking to address.

If you work in marketing or another department outside of market research and insight, I would love to hear what you do to develop your relationships internally. Do you get involved in insight development or only attend the presentations of results? What could you do better to make insight development and customer understanding easier in your organisation? Please add a comment.

For more information on C3Centricity's training courses on brand building, insight development and innovation, please check out our website or contact us here. Let’s have an informal chat about how we could support your efforts and provide fun training days, as we already do to businesses in many industries across the globe.

Denyse Drummond-Dunn

Denyse is a global speaker & change catalyst, helping companies grow more PROFITABLY by DELIGHTING their customers, consumers, clients. After 30 years in senior global executive roles (Nestle, Philip Morris International, Gillette), she founded C3Centricity to help organisations just like yours be more successful, by putting customers where they belong, at the very heart of business.

She’s a new-age global marketer, combining creativity with technical expertise and cultural sensitivity. Her book "Winning Customer Centricity " was called a "must-read for today's and tomorrow's marketeers" by Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever.

She is an avid blogger on both her own site C3Centricity.com and invited guest blogger on many others. She was recently voted one of the top 5 bloggers in the world on Digital Marketing and Customer Loyalty!

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