How Well Do You Know Your Audience?

I'd also say though that there are some things that market research companies do have on social media research oriented inquiry. Lets take this example:

Mobile phones... here is a very inexpensive, basic, simple market research site (I would actually recommend it, much more user friendly than other sites!)--

http://researchmob.com/research_mob/industry?in...

How many of these stats are you going to get off facebook?

Ok, I will give you that I was being a bit facetious, social media is important on the customer end of the research, but that's only really half the picture. If you were going to start say something related to mobile phones, you wouldn't just want to know who you would sell to, you would need to know related products, prices, revenue structures, competitors, etc. So in my opinion despite the changes brought on by social media, there is still quite a need for market research.

Sold. Thanks Michael. Love what you guys are doing with ResearchMob. Filled
out a suggestion form while I was checking it out.

Yes, there is need for general market research to know and understand
industries, but as your team (I'm assuming you're affiliated with them) is
proving, high level research and insights is a commodity that can be had
without spending an arm and a leg. What's most important in guiding brand
decision-making is knowing what your customers want/need and what your
potential customers want/need. No pie chart shows us that. You have to ask
enough of them until you begin to see trends and commonalities in the
answers. Then you go solve those problems for them.

Social media offers the opportunity to take small sample focus groups of
customers/fans WHO CARE ABOUT YOU specific questions about your product or
service. All the focus group and market research to date has been with a
couple hundred (or sometimes thousand) people in Kansas City (or some other
such nominal middle-America market) and is done with people who sometimes
don't even know who you are.

Market research should be done on your market, not on randomly chosen people
who might be. Social media closes that gap and makes it so you can ask the
right questions (which you've done) of the right people (which you probably
haven't).

Make sense?

It's absolutely important for us to know our consumer. we cannot just assume what they can say with our product. So, it's needed for us to conduct some market research and do some surveys which is costly and time consuming, But is very essential if we're into meeting our objectives and success.

I agree with you 100% that your target demographic is something that you need to continually question, and you should never jump to conclusions. It's not the amount of data you have, it's how effectively you use it.

However, it seems that perhaps this company you are talking about has an established niche. If you start targeting women, wouldn't you be afraid that you would lose the men you were loyally targeting? In a similar example, taco bell is now marketing to health conscious people. This is after years of targeting young, cheap, teenagers. I have talked to many of these young, cheap, teenagers and they are borderline pissed that taco bell no longer cares about them.

Similarly, if you take a product directed at men and start marketing it to women, maybe men won't want it anymore. I myself want products that are made for me, not the entire world. Where do you draw the line with expansion into new demographics? Should you really start marketing to women just because there is demand?

Good push back Sean. Don't mistake, I wouldn't turn off what works and turn
on something based on some anecdotal instinct. The client in question
shoudn't stop marketing to men, but should add an effort to reach the female
consumer that likes the product, would/could identify with it, but doesn't
know any better because the men-only assumptions that guide the brand have
never been questioned or stretched. Research questions are geared to get
confirmation they're right, not indications there might be other audiences
to consider. It's a blind spot for them, in my opinion. Even some of the
research I saw indicated there was potential for that marketing approach to
be successful, but it's like telling Ford in 1987 they may want to market a
truck to women and them not seeing that a truck/van hybrid ... the SUV would
actually sell very well if targeted to the soccer moms. (Sort of.)

It's not about cutting off the men. It's about seeing the full potential of
the audience and addressing the needs and opportunities accordingly.

And for what it's worth, I don't think people are upset Taco Bell is
targeting health conscious people. I think they're upset Taco Bell thinks
we're dumb enough to buy diet tacos. (My tongue-in-cheek-ish opinion.)

Good explanation. Sometimes I get stuck on trying to focus a marketing message too much and end up not appealing to a large enough audience. I like your example of Ford and the soccer mom.

As for Taco Bell, I think I just miss their funny commercials, haha. Thanks for the great response.

I think you ask. That is the beauty of social media. You can pose a question to your target audience and get a direct answer.

Jason

You've given away the secret of targeting women through sporting events! The days the mom staying home with the kids watching the soaps are diminishing as is quality family time. Now a big game is the family time. Whether that is a sign of the times or that "needed" outlet of taking the time to relax from the constant running around is yet to be seen.

So many times companies think that their target is X when really they have not delved deep enough to realize that there is an entire market share that they are not tapping into. Traditionally X consumer would buy this but with more women taking on executive roles and working there is opportunity to look at them in a different way.

I didn't give it away. Just smacked people on the head and made them realize
it for themselves. Heh. Thanks for the thoughts, Suzanne.

Hmm, pretty awesome. Well, women are pretty weird! I think I would ask!

Funny how we get stuck in our ruts of believing what we've always done is
right, isn't it?

A halfway solution some orgs use is the focus group or advisory council. Somehow, this extreme subset of the customer base is responsible for expressing the desires of the entire customer base. From my experience, the companies that use this tend to select participants for these groups based, consciously or not, upon the likelihood that they will hear what they want to hear.
This really doesn't work as well as they wish it would. There needs to be a kind of triangulation of social media listening/feedback, customer panels, and 'regular' marketing research. Sadly, most of the time only one of these is used and a less-than-optimal view is assumed.
I think the triangulation works pretty well, short of talking to everyone!

Thanks Jeff. The advisory council to me is just a subset of market research.
It's a more permanent focus group. And you're right, most are selected to
say what the brand wants to hear. In the client I made reference to, they
probably would only have an advisory council of men, for instance. I think
social media will change the way some folks listen to their audiences for
insights. I just think for many, it's a long way off.

We are in the middle of "conduct market research".

From a small business POV, it's been my experience if you think you know who your customers are, ask 3 top management personnel. If you get 3 different answers, you've got some work to do.

Awesome!

Agree, products could be targeted to multiple people and could potentially be used for other reasons than the intended purpose, which could give you a completely new demographic and consumer base to target. For example Aspirin was marketed as a way to help cure headaches, then apparently studies showed it could potentially help in the event of a heart attack, and then they adjusted and marketed towards that base as well.

Great point, Craig. Proctor and Gamble started by selling soap. Imagine if
they's stuck to just that. Heh.

Thanks for getting this question up in our minds again that is the customer know how that important before marketing a product,In this era one thing is for sure that we cannot depend solely on R&D department for learning about the prospective customers.
The opportunities in social media which you have mentioned here are a part of a complete integrated program,I must say that we are getting better at this as some firms have started measuring buzz from the status updates on social networking sites and that would help a lot to know who wants the product and why.

Good thought, Akash. Thanks for the comment.

Jason,

Great post - you have to do all three but, unfortunately, 2 require additional resources (money, time) so they get cut/under-funded all too frequently. That leaves us with a little too much 'gut' and, as the old saying goes, we know what happens when we assume...

I think the greatest challenge in all of this is the focus on quarterly results. This has created a "Fire. Ready. Aim." approach to business where marketing is focused on getting lead gen campaigns out so that the organization is fed...and that's an approach that can be ineffective, filled with waste and/or lost opportunities.

Using your example, the company goes to market and has success with the male market - but it never realizes the full potential by also targeting women. They could have, ideally, doubled sales with this audience...wow!

Best,
Pat

Agree Pat, but I think the "ask" doesn't have to require as much time or
money as we think. If you have a community of listeners in the social space
(Twitter, Facebook, Blog) asking is as simple as filling out the form and
hitting "submit." Sure, there's the lack of scale for most businesses - they
don't have big online fan bases. But asking the people who are your
customers might be smarter than those who may not be in formal research.

Great answer, Jason. I think more and more brands are figuring out how social media brand monitoring and engagement can be a very simple (and inexpensive) method for market research and, like you said, maybe even more accurate than formal research. I think the likelihood of participation may be greater as well. Personally, I'm much less likely to fill out a written survey (or even one online) than I am to tweet my feelings about a particular product or experience I just had with a brand. It feels a lot less formal and I don't have to worry about scaling my "feelings" somewhere between 1 and 5.

Yeah, the only real challenge brands face is how to gather, count and
measure those reactions. Surveys are simple, easy, clean and calculate-able
in a button push. Collecting all that informal language on Twitter and
making it look like insights isn't easy. But, as marketers, it's our job to
make our customer's relationship easy, not our own workload. Right?

Yes, exactly! There may be value in the "social media expert" after all. I would never refer to myself as such, but I don't mind making fun of myself to prove a point. Also, we're lucky to be in business at a time when developers are creating free tools that make part of our job, mainly the aggregation of data, easier. But it's still a lot of work!

Great point, Jason. Ongoing dialogue can be done inexpensively with current and prospective customers. And with a little thought, you can ask the questions that address the big issues - needs, wants, perceptions, motivations, buying process - so you can come back to leadership with deeper understanding of the target.

A little creativity and maybe a subscription to Zoomerang and you would be covered.