New market trends seem to happen hourly in today’s competitive business atmosphere. Rivalry is fierce among the hundreds of thousands of new products and services that launched within the last year alone. What successful brands have in common is the amount of research they do before following or disregarding trends. To meet and exceed aggressive company goals while staying on top in the industry, you must weigh each trend’s pros and cons carefully.

Here are three things to think about before you get swept away by the momentum.

1) Will this trend help me achieve my goals?

When a new trend makes waves in your industry, don’t just automatically incorporate it into your business plan. Question your organization’s need for the new trend. Just because everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon does not mean the trend is right for you. To be an insightful, direct, and smart organization, you must have a clear brand destination. Consider what the trend could do for your company, if anything.

Decide whether the market trend is absolutely necessary for your company’s success. The more precisely you define your brand’s destination, the more accurately you can evaluate new trends to see if they will drive success. If the new trend does not help your company achieve your main intent and purpose, just say no. Taking the time to clarify your intent can prevent over-excitement about a new trend just because it’s bright and shiny. But trends that can help you achieve your brand destination more quickly? Those are worth further consideration.

2) Does research support this market trend?

It’s imperative to do your due diligence prior to adopting or disregarding a new market trend. Instantly adopting every new trend can run your brand into the ground. However, ignoring trends on principle gives competitors the opportunity to get ahead. Knowing which trends to drop and which to adopt requires adequate research on your part.

What qualifies as “adequate” depends upon the trend and your company. You need to focus on the big picture, but you must also dive deeply into if – and how – the trend would benefit your brand. Consumer studies, brand examination, and competitor assessment reveal valuable insights and may all be necessary before reaching a decision to commit. You need to know what your consumers find valuable, what the benefit and drawbacks of the market trend, and whether its adoption would push you toward your company goals. Take the time to dive deep into the efficacy of the trend. Remember that gleaning constructive insights will take time.

3) Do the risks outweigh the benefits?

Finally, weigh the risks against the benefits of adopting the new trend. Implementing a new trend often brings a necessary amount of risk. After all, an unproven investment could jeopardize your company’s budget, bottom line, and stability. With patience and smart marketing, however, the benefits of incorporating some trends outweigh the risks. It is up to your team to analyze the trend and determine whether the investment will more likely than not deliver returns. Proper research and assessment of company goals can help you come to the ideal conclusion for your organization.

Why do big brands trust Big Squirrel?
We have a history of cracking some seriously tough nuts. The proof is in our case studies!

Brand research today is both easier and more challenging than ever before. Oceans of data provide extensive marketplace knowledge, but transforming your data into actionable insights requires the ability to uncover meaningful takeaways from the data you collect. Unlocking useful insights from your data begins by asking deeper, more qualitative questions, even if yours is technically a quant study.

Finding the right questions is the key that unlocks a vault of qualitative insights from your data. But the search for the right questions is often haphazard. A disciplined approach to developing your questions will lead to more impactful qualitative insights – a foundation on which you can build deeper brand understanding.

Design by Design

You’ve heard it before, but “start with the why.” Part of asking the right questions is understanding why you’re asking these questions in the first place. As you undertake the process of identifying your goal, a multitude of priorities vie for attention. Crafting your questions around a narrow objective gives you the ability to drill deeper into your target. By bringing a specific purpose into focus, the answers you receive will provide more effective insights.

As you solidify the purpose of your inquiry, make sure to involve your entire team. Their input will produce greater clarity on the objective and might reveal areas for exploration that directly support their own goals.

Are you talkin’ to me?

You may be eager to learn about your customers, but before you can derive deeper insights into who they are and what they value, you must establish what you already know. All lines of questioning should start with basic knowledge about your target. Analyze what you already know about your intended audience. What are their ages? What brands do they prefer? What’s their preferred method of contacting your organization on social media? Go deeper than simple demographics.

The better you integrate the information you already have about your intended market, the likelier it is that you’ll be able to craft insightful questions that encourage their responses to extend beyond the superficial.

We gather meaningful, influential and real brand insights through
ethnographic research techniques.

Examine Your Assumptions

Even a few customer interviews can provide significant insights and break long-standing assumptions you may have about your user. On the other hand, lack of awareness can lead to asking the wrong questions altogether. When you ask the wrong questions, you stifle your ability to achieve truly meaningful insight– regardless of the amount of time or money you pour into your research project.

For example, if your app has more downloads than your competitors, it’s easy to assume that your app is better. However, a few direct consumer interactions might reveal that they chose your product due to a misstep by your competitor, not because they prefer your product. If you had crafted your questions around your flawed assumption of a superior product, it would have skewed your line of inquiry, causing you to miss an opportunity to discover how to truly serve your customers better.

Float like a butterfly…

While your inquiry strives to answer a particular business challenge, an observant researcher may well discover patterns that indicate a richer line of questioning outside your original objective. Should such a vein present itself, be quick to identify this as a new opportunity.

Your research goal is a strong guide for developing the appropriate questions, but don’t overlook qualitative insights that pop up during the process. Maintain an open mind and allow the research to direct your path. Don’t dismiss customer input simply because it steers you toward an unexpected direction.

Inspection Time

Once you have generated your data set, it’s not enough to simply identify trends and statistics. You must translate analysis of your results into actionable intelligence that your teams can apply. This is where an unbiased brand strategy team comes in. By applying an impartial evaluation to your findings, your strategist can provide you with a roadmap–sometimes expected, sometimes surprising–to align your business offerings with what your customers want.

Research is never a “one-and-done” project. It’s an ongoing journey that constantly evolves. Big data is only the first step. Additional lines of questioning that did not match your current purpose can become the springboard for areas of future exploration. By continuing down the path and pushing beyond the numbers, you discover the deeper brand understanding that all those facts and figures are trying to communicate.

Contact Big Squirrel and start uncovering actionable intelligence within your research.