Tag Archive for: Philippe Boutros

Research Panel Quality Check: Trust Then Verify

Research Panel Quality Check: Trust Then Verify

/in , /by
Share this entry

“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:

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.

Read more

B2B partner enablement

How to Build a Trustworthy B2B Partner Program

/in , , , /by
Share this entry

B2B partner enablement programs unlock new routes to market and product synergy opportunities. Even so, they can be more trouble than they’re worth without proper management.

Over the years, we at Cascade Insights have analyzed many different types of partner enablement programs in the B2B tech industry. Based on our research, we’ve discovered several strategies for building and improving partner programs and helping partner managers achieve success.

Read more

user persona research

How Does a Person Fall in Love…with Your Product?

/in , , , , /by
Share this entry

Users aren’t buyers. Unfortunately, B2B companies typically skip over this essential fact.

It is also true that B2B companies tend to buy buyer persona projects quite frequently, and user persona research much less so. We believe this is a mistake. Both research efforts are equally important, and the failure to do either one can lead to a lost customer down the road.

One reason for this divide is that marketers typically purchase buyer persona projects, not product research. These marketers are rightly concerned about the buyer’s journey, how buyers influence each other in the buying committee, and the customer’s key buying criteria. Regrettably, with all of this emphasis on managers, directors, and VPs, minimal attention is placed on users. And users can make or break a product’s success. Read more

buyer personas

Is Your Buyer Persona Research Written So You Can Actually Use It?

/in , , /by
Share this entry

Buyer persona research should always yield highly useful information for companies. It allows marketers to understand exactly how certain buyer personas make complex buying decisions. With such valuable research in hand, marketers can then go on to create effective messaging that resonates with prospective buyers on a deep level.

To be able to unlock the powerful benefits of buyer persona research, however, marketers first need to ensure that it’s written in a way that their companies can actually use.

Buyer persona research should not be presented as a template that has been filled in with demographic and psychological details. Instead, it should dig deep into buyers’ key motivators, pain points, jobs-to-be-done, the decision making chain, and more. Those are the types of critical insights that companies need to win business.
Read more

buyer personas

5 Risks of Conducting Your Own B2B Buyer Persona Research

/in , , /by
Share this entry

Imagine your company is about to launch a new product. As a B2B marketer, it’s your job to lead the charge on developing buyer personas. You need to gain insights into the people who will be buying your company’s new product.

To begin your research, you scroll through Google and see dozens of guides with instructions on creating your own buyer personas. There are templates you can fill out. They have checklists you can follow. There are sample interview questions for you to ask your current customers.

Initially, this may seem promising. However, given the importance of getting this research right—and the level of risks that are involved—DIY buyer persona research can be added to a growing list of things that are better left for the professionals.

Other projects like updating your kitchen, changing out your snow tires, or cutting your own hair may all seem like things you could potentially handle on your own. However, unexpected setbacks are bound to pop up along the way. These setbacks threaten to leave you with results that range from lackluster (at best) to catastrophic (at worst).

Similarly, marketers who attempt to take on a buyer persona research project on their own can expect to face setbacks that result in a reduced quality of output. These issues can lead to generic, run-of-the-mill, and sometimes even inaccurate information for companies.
Read more

Market Opportunity Study

Market Opportunity Research: What’s the Point?

/in , , , /by
Share this entry

Research needs to be acted on. Otherwise, what’s the point? A market opportunity study is one of the most powerful tools a business leader can use to drive that change.

Too often an organization falls down the rabbit hole after launching a market opportunity effort, simply because they can’t see the path forward.

At Cascade, we don’t just drop market opportunity research on your (virtual) desk and walk away. Instead we stick with you to make sure you learn, apply, and drive change inside your organization.
Read more

Market Opportunity

Market Opportunity: Go Beyond Quant to Get the Right Insights

/in , , , , /by
Share this entry

When considering market opportunity research, you may think a straightforward quantitative survey is enough to get to know the landscape. But if you don’t understand why your customers think the way they do and the environments in which they operate, you can’t possibly have the whole picture, and you’ll end up creating a bad game plan.
Read more

Buyer Personas

Mistakes B2B Marketers Make Without Buyer Personas

/in , , /by
Share this entry

Buyer personas are the multi-vitamin of market research efforts. Without them, companies grow weak sales and marketing efforts. With buyer personas in hand, companies can confidently take on new markets, new buyer types, and new opportunities with ease.

Yet this truth is sometimes ignored by marketers who are taking over a new position. Whether it’s a newly promoted marketer or a marketer at a new company, we’ve traditionally seen these people focusing on brand studies first vs. buyer persona efforts.

We think this is a mistake. While brand research is important, of course, it can sometimes be nothing more than a sugary snack that supports rebranding efforts, especially when compared to the multi-vitamin of buyer personas.

Is choosing a new website palette, a new logo, a new company name, or the design for a new website fun? Yes. However, we suggest marketers not take this step until they understand a fundamental question first: Am I saying the right things to the right people? That is a question that buyer personas are well suited to address.
Read more

Market Opportunity Research

Market Opportunity Research: Demand Evidence and Think Critically

/in , , , /by
Share this entry

You have a hypothesis: There is a problem you want to solve, and you’re pretty certain you can envision a solution that provides more value than everything already on the market.

Like a scientist, you need to test that hypothesis to ensure you’re on the path for success. In this case, you’re doing market opportunity research rather than an experiment.

Market opportunity research identifies if there is a market, if there is a need, and if it will be profitable.
Read more

More Software Won’t Fix Your Data-Driven Marketing Strategy | Cascade Insights

More Software Won’t Fix Your Data-Driven Marketing Strategy

/in , , , , /by
Share this entry

If you’re a B2B marketer, you probably have one or both of the following problems with marketing and customer data:

  1. There’s too much.
  2. All that data still leaves you with open questions, or partial answers to key questions.

As a result, your data-driven marketing strategy fails to win you new buyers. Consequently, you might be seduced by the idea that more powerful software will make your marketing problems disappear. Or, that you are just one software integration away from truly understanding your customer. But more software won’t fix your problem.

In our research, we’ve seen purely software-centered B2B marketing strategies fail because B2B sales are too long and complex. A B2B sale might take months or years, and involve an average of 6.8 stakeholders. Thus, a single database can’t comprehensively represent what’s going on, and B2B marketers see large holes in their data they can’t always explain.

Conversely, in a B2C sale, the entire purchase might take a single buyer half an hour on Amazon. So, while B2C marketers can find everything they need to know about their buyers from analyzing social media, click streams, web analytics, and content marketing statistics, B2B marketers need a different approach.

Specifically, good B2B marketers rely on a blend of great software, data, and organic market insights – based on independent research.

So before you pull out your credit card, try this sanity check: when you look at your existing dataset, do you have a clear idea of how to fill in those dark spots in your data? If you answered “no,” put the credit card away. More software won’t solve your problem.

Read more