"There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."
– Sam Walton
Business leaders who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore the decoded signals of the enemy.
Now lets talk about your customers.
EIS Company's Top 5 Reasons For Doing Market Research:
1. Put Innovation to Work For You.
Many-some would argue most-successful new products and services are the direct result of speaking with customers. Often, customers actually suggest the new ideas.
2. Get Performance Feedback – A Brilliant Old Idea.
Often, customers spotlight processes that are working well, and others which are not. By discovering your customer's satisfaction level, organizations can spot important opportunities for improvement.
3. Sell More to Existing Customers – It's Easier Than Finding New Ones.
Learning what is most important to your customers and how your organization is seen as performing relative to your competitors, is the secret to getting your customers to spend more money more often.
4. Recover Lost Customers.
The first step to recovering lost customers is finding out why they left.
Once known, a company or organization can recover many customers with relatively little work.
5. Discover The Power of Advance Warning.
Done right, customer data can be used as part of your measurement system to warn of upcoming trends, performance issues, or opportunities.
Fortunately, EIS Company has been providing market leaders the research services and the technology that help companies understand exactly what customers demand in today's market place.
Customer service issues are complex. Understanding them doesn't have to be.
Strategy is at the heart of marketing no matter what medium is being used. Strategy must inform everything you do. Researching your customer base defines strategy.
As business leaders we need to debrief success as rigorously as failure. We need to understand what works just as thoroughly as what doesn't. We need to experiment, review and revise. Then repeat the process. We must ask the right questions, collect the right data, and use it to course correct as needed.
All Marketing Must Begin and End With The Consumer.
Few Web site developers or marketers share my appetite for research. Many think it inhibits creativity. Our experience has been the opposite. Research has often led us to good ideas, such as the man and woman in bed in the Carlisle Construction ads.
We have seen ideas so wild that nobody in their right minds would dare to use them - until research found that they worked. When we had the idea of writing headlines for French tourism in French, our client told us we were nuts - until research revealed that French headlines were more effective than English headlines. Research has also saved us from making some terrible mistakes.
We admit that agencies and their clients often misuse research. They have a way of using it to prove they are right. They use research as a drunk uses a light pole - not for illumination but for support. On the whole, however, research can be of incalculable help in producing more effective Web sites and marketing campaigns.
Grateful as we are to the researchers who have helped us to produce effective Web sites and marketing campaigns, we have one bone to pick with them. They take three months when we have only three weeks.
When Eisenhower was President, the White House called Dr. Gallup one evening at six o'clock. Eisenhower wanted to know the state of public opinion on an important issue of foreign policy. The report had to be on the President's desk at eight o'clock the next morning.
Gallup sent for six of his top researchers and dictated three questions. Then each of the researchers telephoned six interviewers in different parts of the country, and they interviewed ten people each.
By midnight they had called in their results. Gallup tabulated them, wrote his report and dictated it to a White House stenographer. The report was on Eisenhower's desk two hours before it was due.
This is an example of presidential clout.
With our online survey, combined with e-mail, what used to take weeks for anyone other than the president, can now be accomplished in hours. For your FREE demonstration of how we can put innovation to work for you, give us a call today or drop us an e-mail.
