Editor’s note: Stephen Cribbett is founder and CEO of research firm Further, London. This is an edited version of a post that originally appeared under the title, “How insight leaders can deliver faster, cheaper and more impactful research.”
The marketing function is transforming from one of control to collaboration. This means that the way you go about doing research and gathering insights has to change as well.
The rise of analytical tools and dashboards, AI, the ability to capture and analyze video at scale and automated visual reporting are all mantras of this brave new research world where agile (or just enough) research is key. Here are some of the most compelling trends that are driving how research is being conducted and how organizations are engaging with and acting on it.
Keeping up with consumers. Brands and organizations now have an enormous appetite for speed, driven by the insatiable demand from consumers for new and now! But here’s the real challenge: brands want and need insight quicker and cheaper.
The new world of research has to support agile project management and product development methods, design thinking and ultra-fast decision-making. It has to deliver against the backdrop of many more milestones and stakeholders with titles that didn’t exist 15 years ago. Think of scrums and sprints and how research sits within them and you start to see how the new world of research is evolving.
Sweat what you already have and know. Most brands are sitting on mountains of data including transactional customer experience, satisfaction, social and Web analytics. If it’s well-structured then it can be brought together and analyzed in a meaningful way that generates efficiencies and new value.
Much of the research that brands do, such as using trackers and campaign evaluations, is siloed. By centralizing the research, valuable new insights can be surfaced and used to drive forward decision-making across all parts of the business. Combining this information into one dashboard should be a business aim, making this as accessible as possible through digital channels. This can be achieved using simple tools such as Evernote.
Standardization. By standardizing your approach – and the KPIs and benchmarks that you use – you can automate and speed up your insight gathering and research tenfold. With clear agreement and commitment among your team on things like sampling, research design and reporting you can conduct research in a moment and rely on benchmarks from your partners and tool providers.
Optimize the use of digital tools. There are many DIY research tools on the market ranging from survey tools, recruitment platforms, communities and access panels. They provide easy and inexpensive ways to get your data but there are associated risks. If you don’t ask the right question of the right people you risk getting the wrong answers and going down the wrong track. Research design and interpretation are skills that people spend years learning, so pay attention and get the right advice. It’s often said that the majority of startups fail because they develop a product or service that people don’t want. This is often the fault of poor research and working on hunches and assumptions that aren’t fleshed out by quality research.
Accelerate the feedback loop. Agile businesses, or teams using agile methods such as design and product development, need insight during most stages and to achieve credible milestones. The agile methodology is about learning, building and then measuring, so it figures that each of these stages will benefit from interactions with the intended audience. If you designed and implemented a project at each of these steps it’s likely to be slow and costly. Instead, think about research sprints that are done using standardized tools that reach large audiences quickly, or dive deep into smaller groups over shorter time periods. Qualitative research is perfect for this as it brings the human story to the table and enables the design teams to color individual problems and difficulties.
Research communities are another way to quickly gather feedback from your intended audience or customers. They also provide the added benefit of being able to engage audiences around the world without the need to leave your desktop. You could enrich your feedback with one-to-one video interviews and immerse your teams with the everyday lives of consumers via mobile ethnography. The possibilities are limitless.
Report in new ways. You’ve gathered your data, done some analysis and now you just need to share your findings and convince others of the right way to go. Not so easy when they are time-poor, located in different continents and moving at different speeds. Thankfully there are a host of new options and methods to support better reporting. Automated reports can focus on key insight for brand and insight managers, leaving them and others free to create their strategies. Data visualization and storytelling is another way to focus on that one thing that is going to drive the decision and plant it firmly in the mind’s eye of the stakeholder.
Getting started
Generating the right insights at speed has never been easier but there are risks and it requires a culture change and potentially a range of new tools. Working with data you already have is a challenge, especially among larger organizations. Data science is also often something that smaller brands don’t have access to, or experts in social sciences, for example.
If you want to make not just better decisions but more decisions over a shorter period of time it takes commitment and clear agreement on the goals. Only then can you design and organize the right partners and start automating proceedings. Faster, cheaper research only benefits those brands and organizations that can develop products and solutions faster. Don’t go for fast and cheap if your processes don’t require it or you can’t support it on the delivery side.