How insights create marketing expertise

Daniel Kahneman, the father of behavioral science, and his biggest opponent – and, likewise, respectable scientist – Gary Klein agreed on one thing only: expert-level knowledge comes from feedback loops. Simply put: you do something and, then, based on the outcome, you learn from it (through feedback); later, you modify your actions for a better result. When it comes to marketing and brand directors, market research represents a feedback loop and helps deepen expertise.

Market research speeds up your growth

As noted, market research and insights can play a huge role in providing feedback. Imagine you have a couple of ads or package designs and you decide to test them out in order to determine which one performs better and why. The research would ensure you learn what works and what does not, and would also ensure you obtain the necessary ROI. However, research acts like feedback that builds your advertising expertise so that you can create better campaigns in the future (before testing).

In comparison, with live testing, a new product launch can take between 6 and 24 months. Research, however, provides you with faster feedback –i.e. within weeks. This significantly speeds up your acquired expertise and gives your company a competitive advantage.

Not all feedback is created equal

Obtaining feedback is often much more difficult than it looks. The cause and effect might not always be clear: e.g. determining whether the Coca-Cola ad campaign increased sales, or if the uplift was a result of external influences such as weather, competitors’ actions, etc… Also, feedback might arrive too late, be incorrect, or unknown. Research can help with circumventing these hurdles. For instance, having a clean experimental design (A/B/C test) will decrease the impact of other variables (e.g. weather) and provide a more straightforward relationship between the tested variables and the outcome.

That being said, not all market research methods provide equally reliable feedback and it is important to use the appropriate methods to achieve your goals. Using widely popular surveys to measure purchase intent is not ideal; behavioral methods such as virtual shopping in a simulated store provide much more predictive insights and a 0.8 correlation with real-life shopper behavior. Another example to support this is an instance in which EyeSee tested displays, and, consequently, yielded results that did not match the competitors’ survey findings. The competitor allowed respondents to look at displays for 15 seconds and their preference, which happened to be the more aesthetically pleasing option, one which took, on average, 7 seconds to be processed. That is all well until you realize that in real (i.e. brick and mortar) stores, people look at displays for 1-3 seconds on average. We accepted this limitation and tested the respondents – our results matched the real in-store behavior more precisely.

Why are feedback loops relevant for business?

The more companies know about their market, through applied research, the more likely they are to succeed. Therefore, building great feedback loops lead to a competitive advantage. On a personal level, feedback-informed decision-making makes you a more impactful team member and a likely candidate for promotion. Feedback loops can create careers, too!

So, what is stopping marketing and brand directors from relying on research more often? The current obstacle – market research is mostly perceived as a validation hurdle. However, we would argue that is an opportunity to receive feedback, grow and be competitive – all at a quicker pace, of course!