Market research has undergone significant changes over the past ten years. The explosion of digital data has rendered traditional methods outdated–too time consuming, biased and unnecessarily expensive. In order to produce valuable insights, researchers needed to understand what brand customers want–ideally interacting with subjects within their natural environment. The maturation of digital technologies has made this dream a reality, if only market researchers wielded the tools to fully utilize the new data. The information that is available online is more complex than ever before–market research methods should reflect those changes.
The challenge is to understand the “who” behind a brand’s audience, not just listen in on general conversations. New techniques help researchers surface, segment and analyze information within the context of the digital world.
Big data is fine tuning market research. Surveys remain a source of audience insights–see Google and Facebook–to understand WHY and WHAT. Now researchers have the additional ability to identify, segment and analyze to fully understand audiences and drill into WHO they are.
Enter People Pattern’s approach to harnessing big data for applicable market research and results-driven campaigns. In conceptualizing how big data is put to good use, there are three key points that tell the compelling story of how market researchers can effectively use big data in a strategic way:
1. Audience vernacular – by understanding the language that a target audience is using in everyday social conversations, market researchers have the ability to identify the trends and discover high value segments based on self-reported interests and intent.
Using the specific terminology
2. Audience location – knowing where the target segment resides is critical. Location is not just a zip code anymore; it’s understanding where a target segment engages – on their desktop or a mobile device? Using iOS or Android? By pinpointing both the specific digital and geographic locations of an audience, the cost of broad strokes marketing is eliminated.
3. Audience engagement – harnessing available audience data, applying audience vernacular and location targeting, and launching a campaign central to the derived data offers not only a 300% lift on overall engagement rate, but also an 81% reduction in cost per new fan/customer acquisition.
As big data continues to evolve as a source of insights for market researchers, there must continue to be specific tools to harness the data and put it to good use. Market researchers fold data insights into their content marketing.
People Pattern is at the forefront of new methods for market research and actionable audience intelligence. Interested in learning how to optimize your research? Sign up for a demo.
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