Great businesses are very open to input and feedback. They seek it out through formal and informal mechanisms like:

• Quantitative Market Research (statistics-based customer satisfaction assessment; many respondents, little depth.)
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
• Qualitative Market Research (insight-based customer satisfaction assessment; narrow but deep.)
  • Focus Groups
  • Customer Interviews
• Competitive Analysis

What’s emerging now is the opportunity for companies to use Social Media as an additional customer satisfaction assessment tool, and also a way to inform innovation in products and services.  Social media provides tremendous opportunities for direct interaction between a company and its customers.  Many companies are using it to drive innovation.  For example, Starbucks realizes that  its customers know better than anyone else what they want  - so they created a platform to engage customers at: http://mystarbucksidea.force.com. It’s a great website and shows a true commitment to customers – and the recognition that it’s a cost-effective innovation catalyst.

Here’s a great tool that lets you search internet forums for comments about your business: Boardtracker (link to: www.boardtracker.com). Forums, though they’ve been around forever, represent a huge part of the internet — and are an area that many services, including Google, often do not search. Posts which reference your company can contain insight and information just as valuable as that from focus-groups.

One caveat – social media is a mecca for B2C companies to get feedback – its usefulness for B2B companies is still evolving.  But it will only grow.  How does your company use social media to track customer satisfaction?

Competitive intelligence is one of the most important ways a company can understand market trends and where its competitors are innovating and positioning themselves. Without it, a company’s strategy will be misinformed.
Competitive Intelligence is tough though, especially for small private companies. Fortunately there are a growing number of useful and free competitive intelligence tools to help. Here are a few of our favorites:

Archive.org allows you to dig up past versions of a company’s website. If one of your competitors wrote a case study in 2005 that you want but is no longer on their website, archive.com might be able to help you find it. Using Archive.org also lets you see how your competitor’s go-to-market strategy has evolved over time.

Spyfu. This is a goldmine for understanding competitors’ online advertising. Using it, you can determine what keywords your competition uses for AdWords, what their daily AdWords budget is, and what their daily traffic volume is. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Slideshare.net is essentially a search engine for PowerPoint presentations… but it is usually possible to dig up ‘confidential’ presentations and templates that can be very informative.

LinkedIn can be used for more than just social networking. It can give you estimates on a company’s size, its turnover, and what positions, if any, are currently open. But be careful – for smaller companies (under 100 people) LinkedIn is usually an inaccurate portrayal of current staffing.

One year after ‘the meltdown’, here are 3 reasons why market intelligence (aka market research plus analysis) matters now.  As companies stop thinking about the downturn and making cuts, and instead start thinking about the growth opportunities that lie ahead, they need to know:

a) how has buyer behaviour changed.  Businesses and consumers (B2B and B2C buyers) have changed their shopping and spending patterns in the last year.  What is the result on how customers and prospects find and make purchase decisions on your products and services?

b) how the competition has changed.  In the last year, many companies have disappeared while others have been launched. Recessions prompt many people to start their own companies, which brings innovative and ambitious new entrants to every industry, and causes other companies to shut their doors.  What impact does the new competitive landscape have on your products and services, and how customers view your offering vs the other guy’s?

c) how the communications landscape has changed. The last year has seen literally millions of people sign up for services like Facebook and Twitter.  There are dozens of new channels for talking with customers.  Where do your customers and prospects go for information, and what do you need to be doing to get their attention?

As companies make their plans for 2010, these are just 3 reasons they need to be starting first with market intelligence before jumping into strategy and implementation.

Marketing prof Robert Kozinets has a provocative article in the National Post on the evolution of marketing.

He says marketing is dying, at least marketing as it’s now understood -  “the broadcasting of commercial and promotional information” and will be replaced by “consumer centric management”.

I agree with him that marketing as ’shouting-really-loudly-in-as-many-directions-as-you-can’ will die (thank heavens) and be replaced by something like consumer-centric management.  But that’s what marketing always has been.  It’s just become somewhat confused in the last couple of decades.  What we’re seeing now is it getting back to its core meaning – defining a target market, understanding customer needs, developing products and services to meet those needs, defining effective messages and getting them out there (to purists: yes I know there are a few more things in marketing strategy).

That’s why I think marketing is being rediscovered rather than dying.  Am I overly optimistic?

So many inbound marketing calls are dull.  ‘Hello Lisa, how are you?  I’m calling from XYZ Company and I’d like to meet with you to talk about how we can help you.”  It’s actually not only dull, it’s also presumptuous.  You don’t know me, how can you know what will help me?   Perhaps that recipe used to work for outbound calls - but I’m pretty sure its days are done. 

We find (both when making outbound calls  and when receiving them), that it’s more effective to be provocative.  Start with a compelling insight that is a big pain for your target market.  Try this – “our experience working with the top 25 fast growing tech companies shows that they are dealing with….”  and then follow it up with data on the costs of the problem or how companies are dealing with it.  Be provocative with your opener – as long as you can back it up through experience or expertise – and you’re much more likely to get return calls and initiate useful conversations.