So what is an insight? We at Insights in Marketing believe it’s the intersection of facts, data and analysis that brings to life the consumers’ deepest beliefs and desires in a way that enables the business to grow.  It’s no wonder, then, why Marketers want marketing researchers to give them more and deeper insights!

Ideas

To truly craft insights, researchers need to have a sixth sense on the consumer, they need to know what consumers want in their lives and how they want to feel.  Here are five ways to tell if your consumer insights will really matter to marketers:

  1. Insights that matter drive new ideas, thinking and behavior within your company. You will know you have an insight when you can envision the changes it will bring about.
  2. Insights that matter turn consumer pain points or problems into opportunities. These insights can be especially fruitful, as they solve consumer’s problems, even problems they don’t know they have. Combining the solution with the problem is insight.
  3. Insights that matter say more about the consumer than about the product or service. A wise marketer once said of technology marketing, “They need to stop talking about what the product does and start talking about how it benefits the consumer.” That sums it up for all categories!
  4. Insights that matter reveal more about how people want to feel (their personality, habits and values) but can’t articulate, rather than what they think. Consumers are not very good reporters of the history of their behaviors or thoughts, but they do remember and can tell you how they feel. And that’s fortunate because insights about consumers’ feelings are much more powerful than facts about what they did or what they thought. (Check out IIM’s Marketing to Women eBook for more detail on this.)
  5. Insights that matter focus more on what is enduring and slow to change. Insights deal with the deep-seated characteristics of the consumer, which don’t change rapidly. If what you are seeing is not going to be around tomorrow, it probably is a fad and not an insight.

Learning to deliver insights that matter to marketers is a core competence for marketing researchers. Developing insights goes beyond mere data and facts, no matter how advanced or sophisticated. It takes courage, thought, empathy and imagination, and the effort is well worth it.