In my many discussions with players in the market research industry, I sense a constant quest and strong desire to elevate from being viewed as mere data providers to becoming strategic partners for enterprises, thereby moving up the value chain.
I’ve experienced first-hand the great work of strategic importance market researchers are doing. I’ve worked in and with this sector for 25 years.
Researchers are proud of their work. However, there is often an underlying feeling that they are underselling themselves. They feel squeezed in the value proposition between management consulting companies who are charging a premium for very often the same level of insights and the DIY software tools on the bottom end.
Much progress has been made by the research providers and the industry associations to strengthen their value proposition and earn the respect they deserve as strategic partners. But more can be done.
It has been great to see how the research industry is embracing the recent AI developments. Not blindly, but with the rigor market research is known for. After all, there is nobody better positioned than market research professionals to deal with data, understand statistical models, apply proven research methodologies and never compromise on the all-so-critical ethical considerations.
There is however one specific function of strategic importance for enterprises which needs the attention of market research professionals. Growth Marketing.
In essence, Growth Marketing is a data-driven approach that uses experiments to determine how to optimise results for all stages of the marketing funnel and the customer journey.
Growth Marketers are masters not only in running experiments to identify and fine-tune the best traction channels but also very often in moving from a campaign-driven to a product-driven approach to drive growth. The product/service in itself can be designed as the most effective growth tool to gain traction.
This approach is the foundation of the Product Led Growth (PLG) and Product Led Sales (PLS) strategies.
For companies adopting such data-driven PLG or PLS strategies updates and initiatives from Growth Marketing teams form a key part of each board meeting.
Other more traditional marketing metrics like NPS, brand awareness, etc… are mostly hidden in the appendix of the board papers. Updates and initiatives from Growth Marketing have the Board’s full strategic attention.
There is however often an unmet need for these companies – market research expertise.
The Growth Marketing function is typically staffed with professionals covering product marketing, customer experience, UX/UI design, customer acquisition etc…But the all-important aspect of collecting, managing, integrating data and extracting insights from it gets in many cases neglected.
Yes, there are great tools out there and the AI-enabled tools are now making even bigger promises of doing sophisticated analysis DIY style. No prior research expertise is needed so they claim. But a fool with a tool is still a fool.
Data management and analytics might not be the sexiest parts of the growth marketing function but without applying the rigor of market research all can go very wrong. Not handling the research design, data management and analytics aspect correctly will result in wrong strategic decisions, costing wasted time and money.
Market researchers are seldom directly connected to the Growth Marketing function yet, their core competencies are desperately needed. In particular:
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- Defining the objectives. It is critical to understand what decisions need to be informed by the experiments and formulate the hypothesis/research questions accordingly.
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- Setting up the right data infrastructure. This gets mostly overlooked. Data are fragmented, in silos, in different formats. To have impactful insights from multi-channel data companies need to have a clear data strategy first and implement the necessary tools, technologies and protocols for collecting, managing, analysing, reporting and sharing data.
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- Developing a research plan and selecting the right data collection methods. Growth marketers often rush from one experiment to the other risking limited ROI on their efforts. Mastering the data side of the growth marketing experiments based on proven research methodologies forms the basis of any meaningful insights derived from such initiatives.
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- Data analysis. This is where market research professionals shine. Without market research expertise growth marketers are too reliant on analytic tools. Missed opportunities, meaningless insights and even wrong conclusions are the consequences of improper data analysis work.
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- Measuring results. Growth marketers are typically fast and skilled in implementing gained insights from experiments. They are, however, not always consequent in the ongoing measurement of the results. Research professionals can help with continuously monitoring the impact of changes and facilitate iteration based on ongoing data analysis.
These core competencies of market research professionals are critical to the success of a product-led growth strategy. Through the involvement of market researchers such projects are more likely to be thorough, insightful, and directly applicable to the business challenges or opportunities at hand.
Yet, market researchers can do a better job in reaching out and tailoring their offering to this fascinating world of growth marketing. They truly have all the ingredients and opportunity to become a strategic partner of companies which adopt PLG or PLS strategies.