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4 Types of Bad News B2B Brand Research Delivers

May 17, 2022/in B2B Market Research Blog, B2B Marketing Blog, Blog Posts, Brand Research /by Tricia Lindsey
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This is one of several blogs in our latest series, “Delivering Bad News to Good People,” where we explore different types of bad news we’ve had to deliver and how these discoveries help companies create meaningful impact within their organizations.

B2B brand research can help to measure the relationship customers have with your company’s products or services. It may either confirm brand awareness hypotheses you already have, or it may surface new opportunities or unexpected perceptions among your buyers.

Sometimes, the findings uncovered in brand studies come as an unpleasant shock. Although initially upsetting, confronting the truth is a necessary first step to success. Once you understand where your brand stands, you can begin to address the gap between customers’ existing perceptions and how you want them to perceive your brand.

Perception precedes reality. – Andy Warhol

At Cascade Insights, we are often the messengers who deliver bad news to good marketers. Below, we’ve laid out four examples of bad brand news we’ve had to deliver, and how they were able to use that information to change the tides of perception — and reality — for their brands.

Bad News #1: No One Knows Who The Heck You Are

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The context: We once worked with a cybersecurity client that was initially interested in learning about how their product compared to competing offerings.

In the survey that we administered, we asked respondents which cybersecurity organizations they were aware of. Their responses showed that our client’s product was not as well-known as what they had thought.

Key takeaway: Marketers often don’t like what the brand research tells them. But information — especially of the unpleasant variety — inspires action.

Once this client fully grasped the reality of their situation, they then had the leverage they needed to launch a smart B2B brand awareness strategy.

Bad News #2: No One Knows What You Offer

The context: One of our clients commissioned a brand study to investigate how recognizable their core offerings were to their clients. This client explained that its core offerings were foot traffic data, geo-contextual awareness, and point of interest data. Yet, at the same time this client wanted to expand from being seen as purely B2C focused to someone who could handle B2B needs.

We found our client had a very positive brand perception among B2C consumers. While this company’s social media presence was well-known, its B2B offerings were not as recognizable. In fact, almost 20% of survey respondents weren’t aware that this company offered foot traffic data. Given this client wanted to grow their B2B footprint, this was a challenging finding.

Key takeaway: While this may be perceived as bad news for our client, the study revealed key insights regarding its varying B2B and B2C awareness that enabled them to react, adapt and realign themselves with target customers.

Bad News #3: You’re Not Being Perceived How You Think

The context: One client of ours had recently made a significant effort to engage with the open source community and invest in a number of different open-source projects. After this investment, they wanted to conduct brand research to see if buyers recognized them as friendly to open-source.

Unfortunately, our research uncovered that buyers felt our client was not involved in open-source projects at all. To make matters worse, despite our client’s efforts in the open-source space, buyers didn’t feel that our client contributed to open-source projects. Further, our research revealed that buyers were more likely to work with a company that they perceived to be open-source friendly.

Key takeaway: Initially, this news was frustrating for our client to hear after already working to establish themselves in the open-source space. But, the research made it clear that they had more work to do. Additionally, it reinforced the value buyer’s placed on organizations who truly embraced open-source.

Bad News #4: You’re a Well-Known Brand, But Not a First Choice

The context: We conducted a brand study with a cybersecurity client who needed to determine their level of brand awareness. Our survey asked respondents what brand characteristics they felt were most important and how they would rate other cybersecurity on these attributes.

After completing the survey, we discovered that our client had a relatively high level of brand awareness. This result was a positive takeaway considering the market was so segmented. Despite this, only 5% of respondents said they would actually consider switching to our client from another vendor.

Key takeaway: You won’t be a good fit for everyone. But if you aren’t appealing to the customers you want, you need to know why. This brand study unearthed customer values that could inform the strategic messaging pillars to use in the company’s sales and marketing efforts.

We’re Not Always The Bad Brand News Bears

We’re not always the bearers of bad news. We’ve also seen instances where companies’ key brand attributes aligned exactly with what the market cared about.

For example, one of our clients wanted to conduct brand research to measure how well their customers’ perceptions mapped onto the company’s brand values. Our client believed they were perceived as a caring, friendly, and responsive online HR provider. Our research confirmed this hypothesis, and the respondents emphasized how much they appreciated that our client’s values aligned with buyers.

The point is, brand studies don’t always deliver bad news. They can also confirm positive sentiments about your products and services. But until you actually conduct the research, you won’t know the reality of where you stand in the market.

You Can’t Ask Life to Take The Lemons Back

In the well known game series “Portal,” Cave Johnson voices the following quote.

“All right, I’ve been thinking. When life gives you lemons? Don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! ‘I don’t want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these?”

Unfortunately, for Cave Johnson, and all of the rest of us, you can’t ask life to take its lemons back. Nor should you get mad about it. But you can make changes. Those changes can be a simple light that others in your organization can choose to follow. And that change in direction can lead to more prospects, customers, or market share.

If you’re tired of dealing with lemons, or you think you might have some lurking around, drop us a note. We can help you figure out what to do with them – instead of just throwing them back.

 


This blog post is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a firm that provides market research & marketing services exclusively to organizations with B2B tech sector initiatives. Want to learn more about the brand research we deliver? Our B2B Brand Research can help.

Special thanks to Sean Campbell, Co-Founder & CEO, Tyler Honsinger, Director of Research, and Raeann Bilow, Content Marketing Architect, for advising on this piece.

B2B Buyer Persona Research: Truth Over Templates

B2B Buyer Persona Research: Truth Over Templates

April 29, 2022/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts /by Ashley Wilson
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The power of a strong B2B buyer persona is undeniable. In the past, creating them brought a competitive advantage for companies that used them. Today, it’s more than just a benefit; it’s a necessity. However, if your personas are so generic that you can’t effectively reach your target audiences, you might want to think about basing those personas on a firmer foundation of truth.

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cascade insights top business to work for in Oregon

Cascade Insights Recognized as Top Business to Work for in Oregon

April 11, 2022/in B2B Market Research Blog, B2B Marketing Blog, Blog Posts /by Raeann Bilow
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A remote company’s account of applying and being selected as a “Top 100 Business to Work for in Oregon”

For the second year in a row, Cascade Insights has been selected as one of Oregon Business’ 2022 Top 100 Businesses to Work for in Oregon.
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B2B Buyer's Journey: Buyers and Marketers in the Blender

B2B Buyer’s Journey: Buyers and Marketers in the Blender

March 8, 2022/in B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts /by Ashley Wilson
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COVID-19 threw organizations into a blender, with significant repercussions for the B2B buyer’s journey.
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B2B Customer Experience Research

B2B Customer Experience Research: Turn Grimaces Into Grins

February 22, 2022/in B2B Customer Experience Research, B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts, Customer Satisfaction Research /by Raeann Bilow
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Consider the last SaaS app that was implemented at your company. How was the onboarding experience? The day-to-day usage? How well did it integrate with other technologies? Unfortunately, if it’s anything like so many SaaS apps, the software may have been clunky, hard to operate, required a lot of training, onboarding, and well … tested patience.
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B2B Quantitative Surveys: Design Them Like You Give A Damn

February 8, 2022/in B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts /by Tricia Lindsey
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This is the second blog in our multipart series where we assess what it means to have a high-quality panel, how to develop a great quantitative survey, and where panels and panel firms come from. This article focuses on developing the right research questions to create a strong quantitative survey. To read the first article in the series, click here.

You can’t write an effective B2B quantitative survey if you don’t care. Yet, unfortunately, that’s how many surveys are created today, by folks who don’t give a damn. Today, many surveys business professionals engage with look more like a dumped-out can of hash than something well thought-out, carefully crafted, and full of empathy for the respondent.
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B2B Thought Leadership

Untrustworthy B2B Thought Leadership: 3 Red Flags To Watch Out For

November 1, 2021/in B2B Market Research Blog, B2B Marketing Blog, B2B Thought Leadership, Blog Posts /by Raeann Bilow
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B2B decision-makers spend at least an hour consuming thought leadership content per week. This content can offer insights that help them to keep pace with current trends, issues, analysis, and research relevant to their industry.

While high-quality B2B thought leadership content can give decision-makers information they need to make smarter business decisions, poor-quality thought leadership can do the opposite.

If readers don’t immediately recognize the signs of untrustworthy thought leadership, they may inadvertently use some of that information to make misguided business decisions. Therefore, it’s critical that readers are able to quickly assess the credibility of a B2B thought leadership piece.
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Customer Satisfaction Research: Common Mistakes to Avoid

October 19, 2021/in B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts, Customer Satisfaction Research /by Tricia Lindsey
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Avoid Spooking Customers With These Scary Stories

Customer satisfaction research is an essential tool business leaders use to understand their buyers. Companies that use customer satisfaction research effectively can quickly fix sales, marketing, and product problems that are causing customer pain.

Unfortunately, too many companies wait until they get to a crisis point before considering customer satisfaction research. It may take a drop in leads or high churn rates before these companies wonder what’s scaring off their customers.

Being proactive with customer satisfaction research is a smart move. Conducting this research on a regular basis can keep your customers from entering the graveyard of dissatisfaction and missed opportunity.

What is Customer Satisfaction Research?

Customer satisfaction research allows an organization to determine how happy customers are with a company’s products, services, and capabilities.

The most common types of customer satisfaction metrics are the Customer Effort Score (CES), Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Customer Effort Score (CES)

  • A Customer Effort Score quantifies how difficult it is for customers to resolve and issue or fulfill a request. For example, you might utilize a CES survey to ask, “On a scale of ‘very easy’ to ‘very difficult,’ how easy was it to use a company’s product?” From there, you would take the total sum of responses and divide it by the total number of survey respondents to determine your CES score. Customer effort scores point out areas of friction between a company’s product or service and its customers.

Customer Satisfaction Scores (CSAT)

  • Generating Customer Satisfaction Scores is another commonly used approach in customer satisfaction research. A CSAT survey may ask, “How satisfied are you with the ease of doing business with our company?” on a scale from ‘very satisfied’ to ‘very dissatisfied.’

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

  • A company’s Net Promoter Score measures customer loyalty. This is accomplished by determining which customers would be willing to recommend you. NPS is used more frequently at companies with product-led growth (PLG) strategies where user acquisition, expansion, conversion and retention are all driven primarily by the product itself.

Customer Satisfaction Research Mistakes: 4 Scary Stories to Avoid

Some of our clients come to us after an attempt to work with a different research supplier or a DIY effort.  In the spirit of Halloween, we sat down with a few of our internal experts to uncover some of these scary stories.  Hopefully, this bit of knowledge will help you avoid the same traps in the future.

Scary Story #1 – Hearing Only From Extremists

Organizations have raving fans and they have hellacious haters. Building out a customer satisfaction research program that focuses on these two subgroups is unfortunately easy to do.

There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is the 90-9-1 rule, which states that in any internet community 1% of the people contribute and 99% of the people lurk. Hence, a poorly thought out survey effort may only grab those who feel most passionate about your brand, either positively or negatively.

For example, your research might reveal that the customers who purchase your products tend to complain more. But in reality, it could be that the only customers who are driven to respond are the ones who have complaints. Even if this is the case, your data is going to appear as though all of your customers dislike your products.

Remember, a poorly structured sample may not represent your customers. A great customer satisfaction research effort needs to dig deeply into the 99%.

Scary Story #2 – Entering The Fight Without a Sidekick

Just because a customer says something bad doesn’t mean you have to fix it. In fact, companies regularly make decisions that generate short-term negatives but long-term benefits.

Do you remember when Adobe moved from an annual price model to a monthly subscription model for Adobe Photoshop? This announcement was met with a lot of pushback from users. Fortunately, Adobe decided to stick with the change because Adobe could foresee a future where subscriptions would be the norm.

Businesses have to make tough decisions like the one Adobe did all the time. Yet, it’s equally true that making these tough decisions without a sidekick can be incredibly difficult.

The best discussion we’ve seen of how this plays out in real life comes from the book, “The Hard Thing About Hard Things,” written by Ben Horowitz. In the book, Horowitz describes a matrix that highlights how decisions must be made if a company is going to succeed. It includes 4 quadrants on a 2×2 grid.

 You are RightYou are Wrong
You Decide Against the CrowdFew remember that you made the decision but the company succeeds.Everyone remembers the decision and you are downgraded, ostracized, or fired.
You Decide With the CrowdEveryone who advised you remembers the decision and the company succeeds.You receive the minimum blame possible for getting it wrong, but the company suffers.

Using Horowitz’s grid, it’s easy to see how important it is to have a strong set of research insights in hand when you’re about to make a decision against the crowd. Without it you’ll have to win the day on your instinct and your persuasive abilities. If those skills fail you, scary outcomes are the result.

Yet, with the right research insights in hand, it can become very clear whether that decision to ignore the crowd is the right one. Plus, you’ll have at least one sidekick at your side to share in the glory of a well made decision.

Scary Story #3 – Using Quant as a Hammer and a Screwdriver

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when conducting customer satisfaction research is to focus on quantitative approaches alone. Quantitative research helps us answer the who, when, how and where, but frequently fails to answer the why.

Consider this scenario: You’ve received a lot of negative feedback about your sales process, so you conduct a quantitative survey. Imagine a sales pipeline where a customer first fills out a contact form, then talks to a business development representative (BDR). The BDR is pleasant and doesn’t ask too many questions, so the customer then meets with an account manager for an in-depth conversation. It’s at this phase where the customer realizes your company isn’t a good fit for their business goals.  The customer then goes out to rate their experience with your sales team as a poor one, implying you wasted their time.

If you looked at this scenario only from a quantitative perspective, you might think there is an issue at the account manager stage based on the survey results. You might only be looking at the what, when and how. But, upon further examination and the use of qualitative research, it turns out the BDRs aren’t properly qualifying new leads.

Scary Story #4 – Don’t Be Overtaken by the Bots

Picture this: You find an automated service like Satismeter or Delighted to assist with gathering customer feedback. This is your dream! Now you can just sit back and read the reports.

Wrong.

Pop-up customer support bots can do some things well. These services are excellent for analyzing and capturing quantitative feedback. Some bots can do clustering and comparative analysis. However, while these tools can collect the data, they can’t always tell you why customers are upset. They can only tell you the what, when, and how. Therefore these tools tend to leave you with a ton of unanswered questions.

Customer Satisfaction Research: It’s Time to Be One Step Ahead

It’s a well-known fact that actors in horror movies make stupendously bad decisions. Whether it’s splitting up the group, hiding in obvious places, or simply failing to fight back these actors never avoid their doom.

As a company though, it’s easier to avoid a horrible end game. First, listen to your customers. Second, put that feedback in the right context. Third, make solid decisions on what you’ve learned.

Finally, don’t wait until your customers get spooked to consider customer satisfaction research. When it comes to knowing how your customers feel about you, you should always be one step ahead.


With more than 15 years of experience in the B2B technology sector, Cascade Insights understands how customer satisfaction research can improve the customer experience and lead to improved customer loyalty. Visit B2B Customer Satisfaction Research to learn more. For more information on all types of B2B market research, visit What is B2B Market Research. 

Special thanks to Scott Swigart, President and Chief Research Officer, and Philippe Boutros, Chief of Staff, for advising on this piece.

Research Panel Quality Check: Trust Then Verify

Research Panel Quality Check: Trust Then Verify

September 22, 2021/in B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts /by Krista Daly
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“Quality, quality, quality: never waver from it, even when you don’t see how you can afford to keep it up. When you compromise, you become a commodity, and then you die.”—Gary Hirshberg

The market research industry has struggled for years to recruit the right respondents and ensure the best research panel quality. It’s a well-documented problem, as evidenced by the small sampling of online articles below:

  • Is Online Sample Quality a Pure Oxymoron?
  • Combatting Questionable Quality of Online Data Collection
  • Does Online Panel Quality S*ck?
  • The Problem with Online Panels
  • How Good are Online Survey Panels?
  • Bogus Respondents, Bots and Bad Data: How to Work with Market Research Panel Providers to Avoid Potential Pitfalls

We’ve talked about issues like this on our blog before, but we figured it was time for a more in-depth exploration of the problem. So, we’re writing a multipart series where we’ll assess what it means to have a quality panel, how to make a great survey, and where panels and panel firms came from.

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Why You Need Message Testing: 6 Worst-Case Scenarios You Risk Without It

Why You Need Message Testing: 6 Worst-Case Scenarios You Risk Without It

September 13, 2021/in B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts, Message Testing Research /by Raeann Bilow
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A product or solution’s messaging can make or break its success in the marketplace.

Great messaging will instantly capture a potential buyer’s attention and inspire them to learn more. It highlights the relevant pain points that the solution can solve, embodies the voice of the customer, and includes a clear call to action.

Conversely, poorly constructed messaging can alienate a potential buyer. Bad messaging may be filled with buzzwords, vague descriptions, and terminology that doesn’t resonate. These mistakes can instantly repel a prospective client.

Poor messaging is an especially acute problem in B2B technology companies. Inside these organizations, a typical messaging framework is filled with buzzwords, look-alike phrases that mirror competitor’s language, and hyperbolic statements about capabilities.

To set your messaging on a firm foundation, it is vital to test it. Message testing research helps companies develop content that resonates with potential buyers and inspires them to take action. Without it, companies risk losing out on potential sales by delivering messaging that fails to connect with buyers.
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Written by

Raeann Bilow
Scott Swigart
Laurie Pocher

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