Marketing: Research matters (but catch the cluetrain)

Growth Strategies, Jun 12, 2000

Most companies, from established giants to small start-ups, do not plan strategically, failing either to conduct strategic market research, or to apply the intelligence such research can produce. The big companies may do the research, developing information and insight, but are slow to act upon it or to adapt to change. The start-ups, on the other hand, seem to glorify in their ability to act fast without research or data, because they believe producing it takes too long, costs too much or adds too little. The result for most businesses is a huge shortfall in the application of a concept essential to long-term business success.

That's the essence of Market Research Matters (John Wiley & Sons, 2000), by Robert S. Duboff, director of marketing at Ernst & Young. According to Duboff, this shortsightedness affects most companies large or small, growing or failing. Profitable companies suffer from the sin or success - they think they instinctively know what their customers will want (or can sell them what the company has to offer). Unprofitable companies, meanwhile, don't feel they have the time or money to really learn enough about their key customers to matter.

But knowing your market intimately is not a luxury, it's a necessity. Market research is vital not just in developing a company's abilities and methods of learning about its best customers, but also in retaining its most talented employees (another key source of profitable growth). The sign of the best companies is their in-depth understanding of their most valuable customers and employees, and their track record in acting upon that knowledge. If a company's really built to last, writes Duboff, market research and strategic planning are directly linked and empowered to influence decisions.

We here at the Growth Strategies Group agree. It's our business: "Trend Analysis that Builds Business Decisions." We too see that most companies either don't conduct strategic market research, or don't implement strategies to leverage their marketplace knowledge. But the smart ones do.

Nor do most companies use strategic marketplace research to build effective communication messages. On this note, check out the Cluetrain Manifesto, a book and Web site built around 95 theses whose thrust is that corporate American marketing is clueless. A sampling:

1. Markets are conversations.

2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

"Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies....

"...most companies ignore their ability to deliver genuine knowledge, opting instead to crank out sterile happytalk that insults the intelligence of markets literally too smart to buy it....

". . . if you only have time for one: clue this year, this is the one to get: we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers, we are human beings - and our reach exceeds your grasp. Deal with it."