Every business has customers, but how well they know their customers is another question. In a recent Harvard Business Review blog, Peter Merholz explains that many large companies lose that vital interaction with their customers as their business begins to grow.
“Business cannot exist without customers, so it’s sadly ironic that many, if not most, businesses, actually understand so little about them,” says Merholz. “In order to become customer experience-driven, you need to go beyond who your customers are, and understand what they do.”
While it may feel tempting to place your customers into simple, definable categories, Merholz urges companies to dig deeper and understand their customers as real people living in a messy, complicated world. What does that mean for your company? It means going beyond the high-level data and seeking to understand and appreciate your customer’s behavior and true motivation.
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Do customers want to ‘hire’ your product?
Through SIVO On Demand Talent or with SIVO custom qualitative research, our clients uncover the underlying motivations behind their customer’s unique behavior. With SIVO On Demand Talent, we have storytellers who mine existing research to bring our clients’ customers to life. And, we ensure the next phase of research fills a customer knowledge gap, extending our clients’ research budgets. With SIVO custom research, our clients tap into valuable customer insights through approaches like In-Store Intercepts, Shop-Alongs, and Ethnographic research, to gain clear, in-depth analysis of their customer in the context of their daily lives.
How well do you know your customer? Maybe it’s time to take a deeper look…
Contact us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com for more information and next steps.
Some teams see the end of the fiscal as a time to take a break, get across the finish line, report on what happened, and then roll into Q1. The problem with this is that they will start next year with the same blind spots they currently have.
Others use this window to listen more deeply, sharpen their focus, and make a few targeted moves that change the trajectory of the next 12 months. (And by the way, this work doesn’t start in Q4, in starts right now, in Q3, when there is still time to learn and make decisions for the future.)
If you want to be in the second group, here are five practical activities to prioritize now, plus how SIVO can support you with both market research solutions and fractional insights professionals along the way.
Before you finalize next year’s plans, you need clear, current truth from the people closest to your business:
Structured “truth mining” conversations cut through assumptions. They reveal:
When you bring these insights into Q4 decisions and planning, you stop guessing. You can prioritize initiatives, messaging, and investments that are anchored in reality, not internal opinion.
SIVO Research team will step in as a neutral, expert listener to:
If you need internal team capacity as well as expertise, our fractional insights professionals can also embed within your team to design and manage this work.
Once you’ve listened to people, you need to look at the numbers.
A focused year-end review should answer two questions:
The output from this analysis should be a short, honest view of:
Going into Q4 and the new fiscal year with this clarity prevents you from repeating expensive experiments and keeps your team focused on what actually creates value.
SIVO will support this review by providing fractional Data Analytics Expert leadership. We can partner with your analytics and finance teams to connect research and performance data. Our Data Analysts can build a concise “year-in-review” insights deck that integrates insights and clear implications around category and channel performance, competitive actions, customer trends and promotional performance.
With fresh insight and performance context, the next step is to see your business the way your customer actually experiences it.
Mapping the customer journey means collecting qualitative and quantitative data and then documenting the key stages from first awareness through purchase, onboarding, usage, and loyalty/advocacy. This will capture what your customer is feeling, fearing and trying to accomplish at key decision moments. This work usually reveals two things:
Identifying and fixing the biggest leaks or friction points in Q4, can improve conversion and strengthen retention among your potential and existing customers in the coming year. It also gives the marketing, sales, product, and service teams a shared picture of “the customer journey we are trying to serve.”
SIVO’s customer experience and journey mapping will help you identify key stages, emotions, needs, pain points, and opportunity areas that will have the greatest impact on satisfaction, loyalty, and revenue. Our experts will facilitate activation workshops so your team can align on the journey and choose focus areas and plan for the coming year.
At this point, you’ve heard from your stakeholders and customers, reviewed the market and your performance, and seen the end-to-end experience. Now you can answer two critical questions with much more confidence:
This work becomes a filter for which opportunities to pursue and when to move on. It gives the team a consistent and differentiated story to tell, in website copy, sales decks and customer service conversations.
Depending on the existing customer data and knowledge that you have, SIVO will customize to your needs which may include, leveraging new and existing data to identify and map jobs-to-be-done, facilitate working sessions to build your ICP and test positioning statements.
Specifically:
The final step is to turn all this learning into focused action.
Rather than a long, generic annual plan, start with a 90-day, growth-aligned plan for Q1 that:
The key is to make Q1 a testbed for insight-led action, using all that you have learned in Q4 of this year.
SIVO will support this translation from insight to action through:
SIVO doesn’t stop at the delivery of insights and recommendations. Our team’s sweet spot is in being your strategic partner to help you get from insights to action plans so your team can align and execute with confidence.
The difference between a “normal” year and a breakout one rarely comes from a single big bet. It comes from a series of better-informed decisions, made consistently.
Q4 can be a pivotal time for your team, that sets you up for a successful next year. These 5 moves:
…give your organization a different kind of starting line for the coming year.
If you’d like help with any of these steps, whether that’s a focused research engagement (using survey or AI-powered intelligence tools) or a fractional insights leader to guide the work, SIVO can plug in at the level you need and at the pace your business can absorb.
by Cindy Blackstock
In Part 1 of our Jobs Theory series, we described how uncovering the underlying needs and motivations of consumer decisions leads to new opportunities for product innovation, renovation and positioning/messaging. Now let’s dig into the keys to success for Consumer Job Mapping.
“Jobs to Be Done” mapping works for all industries and any products or service to create a competitive advantage for your company or brand. There are a few points to consider when embarking on jobs discovery:
There are multiple ways to understand your consumer: in-home observation, longitudinal diaries, one-on-one interviews, in-context intercepts, etc. The optimal approach should be customized for your objectives and your consumers.
Enlist an experienced researcher to listen and interpret your consumers’ words and behaviours to identify the Job. For example, consumers cannot answer the question “What job are you hiring this face cream for?” Asking the right questions in the right way is key to uncovering hidden motivations.
A jobs map will be comprised of multiple jobs ranging from functional to emotional. Ensure each job has been defined – or structured – with context, motivation, and desired outcome. For example, a consumer statement such as “When (the situation) … I want / need (the motivation) … so I can (outcome).
Go beyond just identifying the job. Use activation sessions to translate the Jobs to address your team’s business goals. For example, mapping competitors against your jobs map identifies “white space” opportunities for new product innovation.
At SIVO, we have successfully helped our clients identify opportunities with Job Mapping including white space and positioning opportunities to win in the market place. Here are a few examples to bring it to life.
Innovate in an existing category
OPPORTUNITY: A food manufacturer wanting to find white space in the hot snack category to grow sales and earn a bigger share of consumers’ wallets.
SIVO APPROACH: We used a multi-phased approach to get a comprehensive view into the lives of their consumers. This included mobile journals, in-home ethnographies, in-store intercepts and product user immersion.
RESULT: With the Jobs Map framework, the client was easily able to identify and prioritize jobs signalling white space opportunities, and that led to the launch of a new and unique product to the hot snacks category.
Communicate with your target
OPPORTUNITY: An apparel supplier needed to more fully understand a new consumer target to develop effective messaging.
SIVO APPROACH: We dug deep with both consumers and the sales team to uncover hidden motivations for apparel purchases. We designed an approach that used online boards to capture longitudinal learning (multiple days of apparel choice) followed with webcam focus groups to dig deeper on what was uncovered during the online board.
RESULT: We learned how the target consumer “hired” her apparel and accessories to convey her personal style. This discovery was then reflected in our client’s Facebook and Instagram posts with a focus on the finer details and accessories that are unique to this apparel brand.
Position your new product
OPPORTUNITY: A tech start-up had developed a training app for athletes and were preparing for their next wave of fundraising. They needed to demonstrate they knew their target consumer and how to communicate with them. The company had a hypothesis around what their target consumer was looking for but needed to be sure.
SIVO APPROACH: We needed to capture the First Moment of Truth when exposed to the app and the Second Moment of Truth after using the app. We combined one on one interviews capturing the immediate reaction to the app, followed by a 2-week diary using the app, then one-on-one interviews to learn about the experience.
RESULT: SIVO uncovered an new consumer job, “I want to train like a pro” which was more compelling than the client’s original positioning for the App. The client shifted the messaging, in their introductory video, to focus on this job.
Are you ready to uncover, activate and deliver on your consumers’ jobs through data-driven product evaluation services? Please reach out to SIVO and we will help you build a Consumer Job Map that is full of opportunities to grow your business!
Bringing you innovative performance marketing and
real-time digital shopper insights.
SIVO strives to be on the forefront of new technology and innovations in the insights industry. That is how we discovered Pear Commerce, a brilliant technology company that is on-pace to be the largest provider of shoppable media by the end of 2022!
In 2018, Pear Commerce was founded by two talented serial tech entrepreneurs, Eric Martell and Alex Wyler, bringing their tech expertise to the world of retail.
What is Shoppable Media?
Shoppable media in retail means connecting any media (e.g. free and paid social, digital display, content, influencer, email, owned webpages, etc) to retailers with add-to-cart (ATC) functionality that is just “a click away”.
What are the benefits to Consumers?
Pear provides an industry-leading technology making shoppers online path to purchase frictionless which has been a leading reservation for consumers to shop online. Whether through a digital ad or your brand’s website, Pear uniquely gives consumers a “where to buy” choice, based on real time stock inventory checks and connects them to over 2,000 retail chains across the U.S. That is a clear point of difference.
What are the benefits to Marketing Teams?
A unique way-in to performance marketing. This revolution of advanced technology provides more data and less work for brand teams with real results. At the foundation, Pear provides full funnel click-to-conversion data which improves digital marketing performance while campaigns are in-market. They help marketers with:
What are the benefits to Insights Teams?
At this point you might be thinking, “That’s great, but isn’t SIVO an insights company?” The answer is, “Yes!” SIVO is all about understanding people and in this case, Pear’s technology helps SIVO and our clients better understand consumer preferences and consumers’ digital shopping behavior through real-time, in-market experimentation, such as:
As an example, Pear was able to help a CPG client create a data-driven approach to managing their digital marketing campaigns while also helping them to understand and optimize the plan based on shopper and retailer behavior.
The results were fantastic! Pear created custom audiences for the brand using the client’s own 1st party conversion data and saw 5x add-to-cart (ATC) rates compared to 3rd party audiences and 20x ATC rates compared to the client’s website visitor audience. During the process, Pear scanned over 2,000 retailer’s digital shelves for real-time inventory to help shoppers purchase at their retailer of choice while also helping them avoid hitting out-of-stocks. The client also received valuable digital path to purchase insights and A/B testing results on different creative options to help optimize their digital campaign along the way.
Through our partnership with Pear Commerce, SIVO can now help you achieve strong digital marketing results and new insights via performance marketing and real-time digital experimentation. To learn more about Pear Commerce and SIVO Market Intelligence solutions, please contact our SIVO team at Contact@SIVOInsights.com.
SIVO Insights brings together research, talent, and intelligent technology to help organizations navigate complexity with confidence. Have a business challenge? Let's talk!
We bring together research, talent, and intelligent technology to help organizations navigate complexity with confidence
