Understanding the why behind consumer choices can be enlightening and useful in countless ways. However, it’s essential to ask the right questions and understand how to use the data to drive business growth.
Interpreting feedback from focus groups and interviews can be challenging, but it can also lead to exciting breakthroughs and product innovations when done correctly. Here are just a few of the benefits of qualitative research and how it can produce actionable insights that drive sales.
1. Identify Customer Pain Points
In-depth discussions about the user experience can uncover previously undetected customer frustrations and unmet needs. Social media listening and other quantitative methods may reveal the major challenges of the vocal minority.
However, focus groups and other qualitative methods can be great for exploring the minor annoyances of the silent majority—the customers who feel slightly unsatisfied but not inconvenienced enough to voice their concerns publicly. With these insights, organizations can adjust product features to improve the experience for the average customer.
2. Test and Refine Product Ideas
Speaking directly to customers is a great way to get actionable feedback before a product launch. Focus groups can help you validate new ideas or features to ensure they live up to customer expectations and adequately address problems. Gathering feedback during the prototype stage can help you refine concepts and avoid costly mistakes before going to market.
3. Optimize Messaging and Marketing Strategies
Understanding who your customers are and their needs during the buying process can help you develop a stronger marketing strategy. Projective techniques – a form of qualitative research that taps into customers’ unconscious thoughts, feelings, and motivations – can reveal hidden associations through verbal and visual stimuli. With this information, organizations can craft marketing strategies that use the language and imagery that best resonates with their target audience.
4. Shape Brand Identity
Projective techniques are also very effective when shaping a brand identity. By understanding customers’ core values and any unconscious ideas about the brand, organizations can assess if their positioning aligns with perceptions. It can also reveal hidden differentiators that set a company apart from the competition and uncover insights into the customer experience that can be used to craft a compelling brand story.
5. Evaluate Internal Assumptions
Qualitative research isn’t only useful for understanding customers, it can also be great for evaluating the internal assumptions of employees and key stakeholders within an organization. There’s often a gap between a company’s perception of how well they know their audience and the realities of the customer experience. Getting both sides through focus groups and one-on-one interviews can test how closely internal perceptions match up with customer feedback to determine if things are on the right track or if adjustments are needed.
6. Improve Segmentation
Analyzing the thoughts, feelings, and motivations of customers can provide a deeper understanding of who is actually buying your products, allowing businesses to develop richer, more detailed customer personas. The data may show that you’re gaining traction with an entirely new demographic, allowing you to adapt your marketing to address that segment. It could also give you a better understanding of the needs, values, and aspirations of your existing customers, allowing you to fine-tune your approach to better satisfy their needs.
7. Spot Numerical Anomalies and Outliers
Quantitative data doesn’t always tell the full story and often requires deeper investigation. For instance, you may see a sudden drop in social media engagement, causing you to think a drastic change in your current strategy is needed. However, without the proper context, it’s difficult to know if it’s a sign of a major issue or the byproduct of a passing trend.
Hearing from real customers can help shed light on any concerning outliers in the data to determine if it’s a minor problem that will correct itself or if it warrants a significant change in your current approach.
8. Adapt to Changing Market Trends
In today’s day and age, trends move at the speed of light, making it increasingly difficult for organizations to adapt in time to capitalize. Qualitative research can be very useful for identifying unexpected patterns and new customer needs that may not be apparent when analyzing large data sets. Using this information, businesses can stay ahead of the curve and adapt to these changing trends before the competition.
Get More Out of Your Data With Qualitative Research
New Perspectives can help if you need assistance putting together a research study or making sense of the information. Our research team has years of experience helping businesses get more out of data by speaking to real customers and understanding the why behind their decisions. Contact us today to get started.
