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Tag Archive for: Sean Campbell

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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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 partner enablement

How to Build a Trustworthy B2B Partner Program

June 29, 2021/in B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts, Marketing Enablement, Partner Enablement /by Krista Daly
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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.

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user persona research

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

May 12, 2021/in B2B Customer Experience Research, B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts, Product/Service Research, User Personas /by Krista Daly
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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?

April 29, 2021/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts /by Raeann Bilow
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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.
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buyer personas

5 Risks of Conducting Your Own B2B Buyer Persona Research

April 8, 2021/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts /by Raeann Bilow
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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.
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Buyer Personas

Mistakes B2B Marketers Make Without Buyer Personas

March 19, 2021/in B2B Buyer Persona Research, B2B Market Research Blog, Blog Posts /by Raeann Bilow
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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.
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More Software Won’t Fix Your Data-Driven Marketing Strategy | Cascade Insights

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

December 9, 2020/in B2B Market Research Blog, B2B Marketing Blog, Blog Posts, Data-Driven Marketing Research, Marketing Enablement /by Brian Surguine
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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.

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