The Super Bowl of Research

January 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

SuperBowl46LogoThe Super Bowl is huge in every way, even when it comes to market research.

It is by far the biggest sporting event in the U.S.  Perhaps more significantly, it is annually the highest rated television program.

The contest is preceded by two weeks of sheer, unadulterated hype.  It’s not just the sports networks and websites making hay.  Other media outlets capitalize on Super Bowl hype in the weeks before the game.  Every commercial is dissected six ways to Sunday.  Even the halftime musical performance gets a huge amount of attention (this year it’s by Madonna).

This hype may excite you or disgust you, but you can’t ignore it.

As a researcher and a marketer, I find the hype surrounding the Super Bowl endlessly fascinating.

This has been true even in years where my team is not in the game.  My beloved New England Patriots are going up against a very worthy opponent, the New York Giants.

This year’s contest, as a rematch of a hotly contested (and wildly disappointing to Patriots fans) game from four years ago, looks to be bigger and badder than ever.  Add in the growth of social media, and you have the makings of a true marketing spectacle.

Awesome!

As a market researcher, I’ve heard endless talk over the past few years about how the poor economy has had a negative effect on our industry.

Well, I say we should be thankful as market researchers that the Super Bowl gives us so many things to measure, analyze and interpret.

The Super Bowl is a great thing for anyone involved in marketing.  Market researchers should be thankful for this bonanza.

Here are some of the many places I can only imagine extensive research has occurred connected to the Super Bowl.

-       Of course, at the National Football League, by widely respected Director of Research Alicia Rankin.
-       At ESPN and other sports media entities
-       At NBC, the television network broadcasting the event
-       By the city of Indianapolis, hosting the event for the first time
-       By the dozens of television advertisers for this year’s game

This list just scratches the surface.  Literally thousands of businesses run Super Bowl related promotions, creating numerous business opportunities for the market research industry.

Yes, it’s a hype-filled marketing event, a spectacle of capitalism that gives a major boost to our economy.

Only in America!

Please share your thoughts on Super Bowl market research in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Essay, Market Research, Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Game Over. Let the Tablet Surveys Begin.

January 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

TabletThere’s some stunning new data on tablet computer and e-reader adoption in the U.S. from our friends at the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

According to the center’s director, Lee Rainie, “the share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January”.  E-reader growth was similarly dramatic.

Rainie pointed out that this sharp growth came after a period where there was “not much change” in the growth of tablet computer ownership.  ”As the holiday gift-giving season approached,” Rainie added, “the marketplace for both devices dramatically shifted.  In the tablet world, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s Nook Table were introduced at considerably cheaper prices than other tablets.  In the e-book reader world, some versions of the Kindle and Nook and other readers fell below $100.”

This is a shocking level of growth for any new technology.

Remember, when the iPad first came out, the doubters were numerous and vociferous.  There were many, and there are many still, who feel tablets don’t serve a useful purpose that can’t be served by either a smartphone or a laptop.  To these doubters, a tablet is something of a novelty, with dubious staying power.

This new data leaves no doubt:  Game Over.

People want tablets, and they want them very badly.  And as Rainie pointed out, the introduction of cheaper iPad alternatives – the Nook and the Kindle Fire – is making tablet computing much more accessible. The tablet is here to stay in a big way.

So what should we make of this phenomenon in the context of market research?

Should we drag our feet, like so many of us did when it came to the adoption of online research a mere decade ago?

Obviously not.

The advent of the tablet is a major opportunity for many people in many industries.

For researchers, the appealing features of tablets are as obvious as they are many:

  • Bigger screens = better user experience
  • Multi-touch technology = ease of use
  • Portability = data collection flexibility
  • Advanced computing power = sophisticated presentation of stimuli and interaction with respondents

Services like Survey Analytics’ SurveyPocket have already begun to break methodological ground with innovative tablet-based research applications.  I look forward to seeing the many creative ways researchers think to take advantage of the charms of the tablet computer in 2012 and beyond.

Let the tablet surveys begin.

Filed Under: Digital, Essay, Featured, Market Research, Mobile Tagged With: , , , ,

Was Steve Jobs a Genius about Market Research?

January 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

SteveJobsbyWalterIsaacson

When Apple founder Steve Jobs died a few months ago, there was an unprecedented reaction to the death of a business leader.

In the week or so after his death, there was a huge amount of online conversation about Jobs, much of it in the form of tributes and an outpouring of sentiment.

I personally felt sadness at his passing, and I discussed his life and legacy with a number of friends and family members.

I was interested to learn more about the man and his accomplishments, so I just read Walter Isaacson’s fascinating Jobs biography.

One thing that really hit home for me when reading the biography was Jobs’ attitude about market research.  It can be described as nothing short of disdain.

From page 170 of the Isaacson biography:

“On the day he unveiled the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked Jobs what type of market research he had done.  Jobs responded by scoffing, “Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?”

Here are a few other Jobs quotes from over the years about market research:

“Mr. Jobs’s own research and intuition, not focus groups, were his guide. When asked what market research went into the iPad, Mr. Jobs replied: ‘None. It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.’”

“It’s hard for [consumers] to tell you what they want when they’ve never seen anything remotely like it. Take desktop video editing. I never got one request from someone who wanted to edit movies on his computer. Yet now that people see it, they say, ‘Oh my God, that’s great!’”

I find this all a bit baffling.  The last time I checked, Apple had a market research department.

Don’t get me wrong; I read Blink.  I can appreciate the power of intuition.

But something tells me there’s been a ton of good market research done over the years at Apple. Maybe people just didn’t bring it to Jobs’ attention.

As much as I admire Jobs’ abilities as a business leader, I have to say he was wrong about market research. He was prone to making extreme statements, and this is probably just one of many examples.

It sounds to me like Jobs was referring to market research in its worst, poorly constructed and uncreative form. Bad market research is definitely a waste and a distraction.

But market research done well – and creatively – is invaluable.

What do you think about Steve Jobs’ statements about market research?  Was he right? Was there a grain of truth to what he said? Or was he totally wrong.  Share your point of view in the comments section.

Filed Under: Essay, Featured, Innovation, Market Research Tagged With: , ,

Survey Tip: Pay Attention to the Details

January 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

blueprintWhy survey creators need to pay more attention to the details of wording, question types and other matters that not only affect results but also how customers view the company. A recent survey from Sage Software had quite a few issues, and gives me the opportunity to share some pointers.

The survey was for follow up satisfaction after some time with a new version of ACT! Call me a dinosaur, but after experiments with various online services, I still prefer a standalone CRM. Still, this post isn’t really about ACT! – I’m just giving a little background to set the stage.

  • The survey title is ACT! Pro 2012 Customer Satisfaction Survey. Yet one of the questions asks the survey taker to compare ACT 2011 with previous versions. How dumb does this look?

  • This same question has a text box for additional comments. The box is too small to be of much use, but also the box can’t be filled with text. All the text boxes in the survey have the the same problem.

  • If you have a question that should be multiple choice, set it up correctly.

Some survey tools may use radio buttons for multiple choice (not a good idea), but this isn’t one of them. This question should either be reworded along the lines of “Which of these is the most important social networking site you use“, or – probably better – use a multiple choice question type.

  • Keep up to date.

What happened to Quickbooks 2008, or more recent versions? It would have been better to simply have Quickbooks as an option (none of the other products had versions). If the version of Quickbooks was important (I know that integration with Quickbooks is a focus for Sage) then a follow up with the date/version would work, and would make the main question shorter.

There were a couple of questions about importance and performance for various features. I could nitpick the importance question (more explanation about the features or an option something like “I don’t know what this is” would have been nice), but my real issue is with the performance question. 20 different features were included in both importance and performance. That’s a lot to keep in mind, so it’s good to try to make the survey taker’s life easier by keeping the order consistent between importance and performance. The problem was that the order of the performance list didn’t match the first. I thought at first that the lists were both randomized separately, instead of randomizing the first list and using the same order for the second. This is a common mistake, and sometimes the survey software doesn’t support doing it the right way. But after trying the survey again, I discovered the problem was that both lists were fixed orders, different between importance and performance. Be consistent. Note, if your scales are short enough, and if you don’t have a problem with the survey taker adjusting their responses as they think about performance and importance together (that’s a topic of debate among researchers) you might consider showing importance and performance together for each option. QuestionPro and Survey Analytics have a special question type just for this.

  • Keep up to date – really! The survey asked whether I used a mobile computing device such as a smartphone. But the next question asked about the operating system for the smartphone without including Android. Unbelievable!

There were a few other problems that I noted, but they are more related to my knowledge of the product and Sage’s stated directions. But similar issues to those above occur on a wide variety of surveys. Overall, I score this survey 5 out of 10.

These issues make me as a customer wonder about the competence of the people at Sage. A satisfaction survey is designed to learn about customers, but should also create the opportunity to make the customers feel better about the product and the company. However, if you don’t pay attention to the details you may do more harm than good.

Idiosyncratically,
Mike Pritchard

[Editor's Note:  This post was originally published on 5circles.com]

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Filed Under: Featured, How-To, Market Research Tagged With: , ,

New Data on QR Code Adoption

January 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

QR Code Baby BuggyWe at Research Access are fascinated by QR codes, and thus we are always on the lookout for new data on those little guys. As luck would have it, our friends at market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey just conducted a really interesting investigation of consumer knowledge of and attitudes toward QR codes.

I had a chance to speak with CMB Senior Consultant Jeff McKenna about the study.

Dana Stanley: Why did you decide to do a study about QR codes?

Jeff McKenna: Each quarter we conduct a CMB Consumer Pulse study so we can stay up-to-date with trends and issues we see going on that may be affecting our clients. Last year, for instance, we conducted a study on the growing use of smartphones in retail stores, foretelling the rise of mobile apps to make comparison shopping easier, such as Amazon’s Price Check App. The next technology we wanted to understand is the QR code. We’ve started to see those little boxes everywhere and often wondered if people actually use them, and for what reason they do. They also strike us as an ideal way to engage with consumers, giving marketers a direct line to communicate and deliver useful information.

Dana Stanley: Tell us about how the study was conducted.

Jeff McKenna: We conducted an online interview among nearly 1,500 US adults at the end of October. The series of questions about QR codes were part of a broader set of questions we ask in our quarterly Consumer Pulse, exploring topics from healthcare and financial services to technology and entertainment. And since this research cuts across many topic areas, we balance the sample to be representative of the US population in terms of age, gender and income. We also worked with iModerate Research Technologies to conduct 20 one-on-one conversations which adds color to the quantitative.

Dana Stanley: As much as I love QR codes, it seems to me they are still something that mostly marketers and researchers know about, but John and Jane Q. Public might find them confusing. What did your study show?

Jeff McKenna: That’s a great point. We find the general public to be less knowledgeable about them. In fact, only 21 percent of adults know the term “Quick Response code” or “QR code” (when asked if they’ve heard the term). On the other hand, 81 percent of adults recognize them by sight; so they are not unnoticed. Additionally, half of smartphone owners tell us that they have scanned a QR code. This tells us that a thorough understanding of QR codes is not a prerequisite for usage and application. This is often the case when it comes to new technology, and although QR codes themselves have been around for nearly two decades, it’s still very early for American consumers.

Dana Stanley: What were some of the findings that surprised you?

Jeff McKenna: Building on the previous point, we expected confusion to be more common. In that regard, the fact that half of smartphone owners told us they have scanned a QR code was a surprise. Even more surprising, 70 percent of the people who scanned a QR code found it to be easy to do. This tells us that wider acceptance of the technology is not hindered by complexity or poor functionality.

Instead, we find a sizeable share of people using QR codes for a specific need. On the one hand, 46 percent said they scanned a QR code because they were “curious”; but that still leaves a majority of consumers scanning with a clear purpose in mind. The reasons ranged from getting more information and access to exclusive content to receiving a discount and making a purchase.

Dana Stanley: What were some of the top take-aways for marketers?

Jeff McKenna: Clearly, marketers should remember the point that nearly one-in-five of people who scanned a QR code ended up making a purchase based on the information they received. A sizable (and we expect growing) share of consumers are relying on QR code scanning to assist and improve the purchase process.

As I mentioned earlier, the curiosity factor wears off, marketers need to focus on the specific purpose people have when scanning a QR code. Of greatest interest in our research, was the opportunity to receive discounts, coupons, or free items; therefore, crafting the right offer for the situation will be important for marketers. Next on the list of needs is “gaining information” – and again, marketers must be aware of the situation where consumers will be engaging through QR codes. On this point, we find that 35 percent of people scanned a QR code from a magazine or newspaper. The next most common source is produce packaging (18 percent scanned in this manner). Marketers need to tailor the information and offers to each of these unique situations.

Dana Stanley: How can people get a copy of your study?

Jeff McKenna: They can check out a short video here (Editor’s Note: the video is embedded in this post).

Scan the QR code or click on the link to download the report. Or go directly to the report here.

Dana Stanley: Great stuff, Jeff. Thanks for your time, and thanks for conducting this study.

Be sure to check out Research Access’ new QR Code Gallery, and have a look at some of our other articles on QR codes.

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Filed Under: Featured, Market Research, Marketing Tagged With: , ,

New Data on New Year’s Resolutions and Holiday Exchanges

January 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Fingers CrossedResearch Access is proud to announce a new partnership with qSample, the Research Access / qSample Poll.  Our goal is to regularly provide interesting, topical poll results.

Our first Research Access / qSample poll was fielded using qSample’s online consumer access panel in the US.  The poll fielded from January 3 to January 7th and includes 296 completed interviews.

We decided to ask a few questions about holiday gift-giving and exchanges as well as New Year’s resolutions.

Research Access / qSample Poll

Here are the results:

1. Did you receive a gift or gifts this holiday season?

Yes 83%
No 17%

2. Have you returned or exchanged any gifts received this holiday season? (asked of those who received gifts)

Yes 33%
No 67%

3. Did you make one or more New Year’s resolutions this year?

Yes 54%
No 46%

4. So far, have you kept or broken your New Year’s resolution(s)? (among those who made one or more resolutions)

So far I have kept my resolution(s) 87%
I have broken my resolution(s) 13%

We hope you enjoyed this poll. Our resolution, which we promise not to break, is to bring you more interesting data throughout 2012.

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Filed Under: Research Access / qSample Poll Tagged With: ,

The Nerd with the Dragon Tattoo

January 6, 2012 By 1 Comment

Dragon TattooThis weekend I watched the new American movie version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based on the first book of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy.

I’ll try not to reveal too much of the plot, in case you haven’t seen it, or the original Swedish movie, or read the book. Though, if you haven’t by now – really?

I’ve read all three books and seen the Swedish movies, which were very well done, and I was looking forward to the American version. Director David Fincher did the story justice and created a beautiful-looking film. I felt Rooney Mara‘s performance as Lisbeth Salander was Oscar-worthy, and Daniel Craig did a very fine job portraying Mikael Blomkvist.

As I was watching the protagonists search frantically, it occurred to me that they had something in common with any good researcher and any good marketer. They were trying to find the right data!

Lisbeth Salander is a hacker who specializes in getting information by any means necessary. Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist who can dig deeper than any other.

They had an important question that needed to be solved. They had an overwhelming amount of information to sift through. And they had very little time in which to find the answers.

That sounds like just about every research and marketing project with which I’ve been involved!

Most importantly, they were super-motivated to scour their environment for the right information. Granted, the stakes were much higher in the movie than they are in our daily lives, but I do feel the most important quality for any researcher and any marketer is a strong sense of curiosity.

The best of us become slightly obsessed with our task and will overturn any stone to find the truth. Kind of like our movie heroes.

So when you watch or read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, feel proud that in your own small way, you’re a badass too.

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Filed Under: Essay, Market Research, Marketing Tagged With: ,

Market Research Trends 2012

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Wed 12/14/11 at 10AM PST

Market Research Trends 2012

The world of market research has experienced tremendous change over the last few years.  Last years’ trends of mobile surveys and analyzing social media chatter have evolved to higher levels that now include gamification; turning the feedback process into a fun and engaging experience as well as the growth of private panels and communities that can provide on-demand feedback within the hour!

Join us for a free webinar on Wednesday December 14th at 10:00 AM PST where we will explore the top trends that will impact how you will gather information and make decisions in 2012.

SurveyAnalytics is proud to be a part of this free live webinar featuring panelists: Romi Mahajan, CMO of Metavana, Leonard Murphy, CEO of Brandscan 360 and editor in chief for the Greenbook Blog, and Vivek Bhaskaran, founder of SurveyAnalytics.  This will be a discussion style webinar where our speakers will share their opinion on what trends to look for in 2012, and audience member are encouraged to ask and share opinions as well.

In this fast paced session, we’ll be exploring:

- 2012’s top research trends that have influenced how we collect feedback

- Resources where you can see examples of these trends in action.

- Tools that you can use today to get started

Register today  for this exciting discussion to discover how your peers are leveraging insight into defined opportunities to innovate via today’s technologies for tomorrow’s research!

click-here-to-sign-up

About the speakers:

Romi Mahajan, CMO of Metavana

Romi Mahajan

Romi Mahajan

He comes to us from Microsoft where his last role was  WW Director of Sales and Strategy for the Digital Marketing & Search team at Microsoft Corporation.  In this role, Romi focused on growing the Digital Marketing business for the company as well as helping define Microsoft’s increasing role in Internet Business.

Before this stint at Microsoft, Romi Mahajan was founder- President of KKM Group, an Advisory company focused solely on Strategy and Marketing in the Technology, Media, Agency, and Luxury Goods sectors.  Prior to founding KKM, Romi was Chief Marketing Officer of Ascentium Corporation, a leading digital agency with 96M in Sales in 2008.

During this first tenure at Microsoft, Mahajan spent over seven years in the company’s US business where his last role was as Director of Technical Audience & Platform Marketing. Earlier in his career, Mahajan started two boutique consulting companies specializing in technology and finance joint ventures between U.S. and Asian companies.

A well-known speaker on the technology and media circuit, Mahajan serves on a variety of Advisory Boards and speaks at over a dozen industry events per year. In addition, he has been published prolifically in the Technology press.

Mahajan graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, at the age of 19 with a Bachelor’s degree in South Asian Studies. He also received a Master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin.

Leonard Murphy

Leonard Murphy, CEO of Brandscan 360 

Leonard Murphy is a seasoned and respected market research industry leader with an entrepreneurial drive. He has been called a visionary and am renowned as an innovator.

His credentials include:

-Editor in-Chief, GreenBook Blog, GreenBook Research Industry Trends Study, GreenBook Newsletter atGreenBook Marketing Research Directory

-Chairman at 2011 & 2012 Chairman & Co-Producer of Market Research in the Mobile World Conference series

-2011 Chairman, 2012 Co-Chairman at IIR Market Research Technology Event (formerly TDMR)

-Co-Host at Radio NewMR & Advisory Board Member at NewMR Virtual festival

-Event Advisory Board Member: Qualitative Consumer Research and Insights 2011 at Merlien Institute

-Board of Advisors at InsightPool, Kontrol, Decooda, and Market Research Global Alliance

-Principal at LMC Group Consulting

Vivek Bhaskaran

Vivek Bhaskaran, founder of SurveyAnalytics

Vivek Bhaskaran is the founding member and CEO of Survey Analytics, one of the industry’s leading providers of web-based research technologies. As Chief Executive Officer, he plays a key role in defining the company strategy and using technology and innovation continuously to maintain its leadership in the industry.

He has played a pivotal role in the Survey Analytics journey. In 2008, Survey Analytics made Inc. magazine’s list of the fastest-growing private companies, ranking 172nd overall and 25th among business-service providers.

Puget Sound Business Journal recognized Survey Analytics as one of the 100 fastest-growing private companies in Washington State.

Vivek completed his primary education in India before moving to Russia and then US. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young University, Utah.

Filed Under: Events, Featured, Featured Video Tagged With: ,

Market Research in the Mobile World Lead Sponsor is SurveySwipe

December 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Market Research in the Mobile WorldHere at Research Access we love mobile research, and we really love writing about it.

So you can imagine we’re pretty excited about the news that Research Access sponsor SurveySwipe is the exclusive Platinum sponsor of the upcoming Market Research in the Mobile World conferences in Amsterdam and Cincinnati in 2012.

The last MRMW conference, in Atlanta in 2011, was pretty fascinating, and we’re expecting even more from this “little conference that could” in 2012.

You can expect extensive coverage of both conferences right here at Research Access.

Here is the press release announcing SurveySwipe’s sponsorship, which was just posted on the MRMW website.

MRMW Welcomes SurveySwipe as the Platinum Sponsor of European and North America Conferences

Press Release: Singapore, 9 December 2011: We are pleased to welcome SurveySwipe as the exclusive Platinum Sponsor of both the Market Research in the Mobile World® Europe and North America conferences. SurveySwipe is the market-leading mobile research app. With its integrated Survey Analytics software, mobile panel functionality, analytics and gamification, SurveySwipe is the trusted choice for companies like Zynga, CareerBuilder and Ipsos Loyalty.

Vivek Bhaskaran, CEO of SurveySwipe parent company Survey Analytics had this to say about the opportunity: “We are proud that our premier mobile survey application, Survey Swipe, is the lead sponsor of the premier mobile marketing research conference. 2012 will be a huge year for SurveySwipe and the Market Research in the Mobile World conferences are critical events for us “.

“Having SurveySwipe join as the Platinum Sponsor for these events is a testament to the massive success of the MRMW 2011 conference held in Atlanta and the outstanding foundation established in Europe by the GlobalPark’s Mobile Research Conference.” said MRMW Chairman Leonard Murphy. He continued to say “More and more research professionals are discovering the potency of a content-driven social media engagement strategy when combined with a highly targeted event of global thought leaders like the MRMW series. SurveySwipe is one of the companies that is leading the charge on this new model to drive the global industry dialogue forward.”

The Market Research in the Mobile World European conference will be held in Amsterdam on 18-19 April 2012. The North America edition will be held on the 18 & 19 July 2012 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sponsorship details and preliminary agenda will be released shortly. To participate at these conferences, please sign up at: http://www.mrmw.net

About MRMW
The Market Research in the Mobile World (MRMW) is an International Conference Series organised by the Merlien Institute. The aim is to bring together distinguished experts to discuss important and wide-ranging issues on the state-of-the-art of mobile marketing research. MRMW conferences are held annually in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. For more information, visit mrmw.net

About SurveySwipe
SurveySwipe is a community based mobile research platform that allows user opinions to be heard. Users receive occasional surveys that they elect to be a part of. Those responses generate information for researchers from profit and not-for-profit companies while also rewarding respondents with points for their opinions. For more information, visit surveyswipe.com

Filed Under: Events, Featured, Mobile Tagged With: , , , ,

5 Reasons So Many Market Research Pros Suck at Marketing Themselves

December 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

nerds

[Editor's Note: this post originally appeared on my personal blog, DanaStanley.com.]

It’s ironic, isn’t it? We’re advising others on marketing strategy and tactics; our advice is used to formulate email campaigns, website copy, online and offline advertisements and more.  Yet our own marketing is often no better, and in some cases is even worse, than that of many other industries.  I’ve discussed this observation with many others in market research, and I’m far from the only one with this opinion.

As marketing advisors, shouldn’t we be leading most, if not all, other business categories when it comes to marketing our businesses?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I do have a few thoughts about why many market researchers aren’t particularly good at marketing their businesses.  Here are the top reasons I came up with.  I invite you to comment on these ideas and suggest others as well.

1) We are not comfortable with self-promotion.  

Most of us did not grow up dreaming of being business moguls.  We tended to be good in school and nearly all of us went to college.  We “fell into” the research field because we were good with numbers and interested in social science.  Marketing doesn’t feel comfortable; it feels too close to its dreaded cousin, sales.

2) We don’t practice what we preach

We spend our time evaluating our clients’ marketing, but for one reason or another, we don’t spend time evaluating our own.  On any given day we may be conducting a website visitor survey for a client.  How many of us invest the same time and effort in ourselves?  Very few, it seems.

3) Our products and services, especially our new ones, are so awesome they will market themselves

This one is simply self-delusional.  If you’re thinking this way, snap out of it.

4) We are wary of new methods

Twitter? Facebook? Blogging? Email marketing? Those take effort to learn and can seem scary at first.  Also, ROI can be challenging to measure, and if there’s anything we love, it’s numbers.

5) We think we don’t have time.

This one is a doozy.

We don’t have time to find more customers? We don’t have time to demonstrate value? We don’t have time to promote our industry?

Please.

What do you think?

Am I wrong on some or all of these?  Did I miss anything?

Filed Under: Essay, Market Research, Marketing Tagged With: ,
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