Developing a strong brand identity requires much more than simply deciding how you want customers to view your business. If you want your marketing and communication strategy to have a lasting impact, you also need to consider how your brand is perceived from the customer’s point of view.
Qualitative research is great for uncovering the unconscious ideas and perceptions consumers have about a brand. Whether you’re launching a new product or making significant changes to an established brand, market research can help minimize risk and make you feel confident that you’re headed in the right direction. However, it’s also essential to have a solid research strategy that will produce the actionable insights you need to see results. Here are a few ways to use qualitative research to create an impactful brand strategy by understanding your customers.
Get a Deeper Understanding of Your Audience Through Qualitative Research
Building brand loyalty and long-term customer relationships requires organizations to take the time to look beneath the surface and understand the wants, needs, and values of their target audience. According to a survey by Harvard Business Review, 64% of respondents cited shared values as the most important factor in developing a brand relationship.
Conducting qualitative research studies is an excellent way to uncover customer values and perceptions, whether conscious or unconscious.
Start by defining the goals of your research and what questions you need answered. Are you looking to better understand customer perceptions? Uncover hidden emotional drivers? Reveal unexpected pain points? Articulating the objectives of your research will ensure that you use the right methods to acquire the data you’re after.
You can acquire rich qualitative insights in a few different ways:
- Surveys: Use surveys with carefully crafted, open-ended questions to get direct feedback on brand perceptions, product preferences, and customer experience.
- Projective Techniques: Personification, sentence completion, and other projective techniques are great for focus groups. They help bring to the surface hidden associations and beliefs customers feel but may be unable or afraid to express openly.
- Ethnographic Observation: Observing customers during the buying process is a great way to understand how people naturally interact with products and what factors impact their purchasing decisions.
Using Qualitative Insights to Support Smarter Decisions
Once you’ve gathered all the data you need, you’re ready to take action and use it to inform your branding choices. There are countless ways to interpret the information and use it to inform your business decisions. How you choose to do so will depend on the goals you set for the research. But here are a few simple ways you can use the data to make smarter decisions.
- Identify Recurring Themes: Look for similar responses and patterns in customer feedback to spot any recurring themes about brand values and common pain points so you can tailor branding to address any unmet needs.
- Optimize Messaging and Communication: Pay attention to the language and visuals that most resonate with your customers and use them to optimize the copy and imagery of the brand.
- Validate Brand Positioning: The data can help shine a light on whether a brand’s positioning aligns with customer expectations and if not, what adjustments may be needed.
Case Study: How American Standard Used Projective Techniques To Update Its Packaging
A great way to truly understand how qualitative research can help support a stronger brand strategy is to look at a real-world example.
New Perspectives was hired by the company American Standard to conduct market research before implementing a new packaging design. As an established company with a household name, they wanted to know if they should stick to a brand identity that was consistent with the classic, Americana imagery they were known for or if the packaging needed to be updated or elevated in some way to stay relevant.
We conducted focus groups and used projective techniques to get a better understanding of the unconscious thoughts customers have about the brand. Using a personification exercise we asked them to imagine American Standard was having a party.
Questions we asked participants:
- What kind of party is it?
- Who is invited?
- What kind of food is being served?
- What kind of music is playing?
- What is everyone wearing?
An example response might be something like; it’s a backyard barbecue where shredded beef and coleslaw are being served. Everyone’s wearing blue jeans and the music is country but very patriotic. By analyzing their responses, we were able to gather valuable insights into the customer’s unconscious associations and perceptions about the company.
Using this information, the client felt confident that tapping into the “American” association was the right direction for their new packaging because that’s imagery customers expect.
Elevate Your Brand Identity With Qualitative Insights
Qualitative research can reveal astonishing insights into the thoughts and feelings of your customers, which can be used to create a deeper connection through your branding and communication. However, conducting and moderating research studies is a skill that can be difficult to master. New Perspectives will make it simple and help you conduct impactful research studies that align with your business goals. Contact us today to learn more.
