 Hello, good evening. My name is Philip Preston and I would like to welcome you to our third online marketing club event developing customer insight to drive marketing strategy. The marketing club was created primarily to help students get the most from their graduate gateway at a graded degree and prepare them for a career in marketing. This club event is one of four online events. We've run this academic year with the final one on the 21st of April. Of course, CIM members and other marketing practitioners are welcome to attend as well as students. As you can appreciate right now, the club exists online only, but when things return to normal we hope to provide network opportunities for students and marketing practitioners. The uninitiated, the CIM Graduate Gateway program enables students to gain a professional marketing qualification by taking advantage of the exemptions graduate gateway provides. If you are a student, you can sign up now to receive the graduate gateway newsletter. Simply use the QR code. You can see on this slide. We'll also send you a link to the sign up page after today's event. Each edition will provide you with content designed to support your studies and actively manage your professional development by keeping you up to date with the latest trends, innovations and concepts in the marketing industry. Okay, before we get started, I'd just like to go a few things so you know how the event will work and how to participate. The presentation will last approximately 35 to 40 minutes followed by a 10 to 15 minute Q&A session. You'll be able to post any questions you have by typing into the questions box on your control panel, which you'll see on the right hand side of your screen if you've watched on a laptop or on the top or bottom if you're watching on a tablet or smartphone. You can send in your questions at any time and during the presentation and will attempt to answer as many as we can during the Q&A at the end. If you want to show your thoughts on social media, we're using the hashtag CIM events. The webinar is being recorded and will be available to view on the CIM YouTube channel in three to four working days. And you'll also be emailed a short feedback survey after the webinar, which we'd love you to complete. It'll only take a few minutes and all survey responses are anonymous, so please do let us know your thoughts. Okay, I'd now like to hand over to Abigail Dixon, who is our guest speaker today. Thank you so much, Phil. So just before I start today's presentation, I just thought I'd take a few moments to introduce myself. So I'm a Chartered Marketeer and Fellow. I'm an Accredited Course Director for the CIM and also an ICF Accredited Coach. And I'm an award-winning client-side marketer and consultant. I've been working with many household brands, helping them step change their growth for over 20 years. I'm Founder and Director of Labyrinth Marketing, whose passion and mission is to step change the growth of brands, agency and the people behind the brands. And I'm also the podcast host and author of the whole market here. The famous brand slide, just a quick snapshot of some of the brands and industries that I have helped grow over my 20 year career. So let's get into the crux of today's webinar. What is Insight? Today I'm going to start off before we go into customer insight and then how we apply that into strategy by actually talking about what truly is insight. And what insight is not is data. Data is important. It's the root foundation of any insight and without it we can't mine, but it is not insight. So just want to take a moment to just stress test and pull apart what those two things mean. So data will tell you what is happening. It will tell you a fact or an inference or a movement that is happening. But it won't tell you what is insight. Insight only comes from the act of mining the data and extracting that information, a bit like the orange juice from an orange for a variety of different source of data sources. And that's what I want to focus on today is I'm not going to talk to you about all the different data sources out there. Qualitative or quantitative, primary or secondary, internal or external, but I'm going to focus my energies on talking through the process it takes to move from data to insight. It's not what is happening, it's why it's happening, that root cause and I'm going to talk about that a lot more today, this evening, depending on where you are in this world. And it's about thinking about not why someone is acting, not what the behaviour, what someone is doing, but why are they doing that as a human? What is the emotion that is fueling them? The decision making process to really try and get under the skill, under the skin and the psychological drivers that are driving that consumer or customer to make the choices that they are making so we can understand and allow them to satisfy that through our products and services that we develop. So the definition of insight is the capacity to have an accurate and deep understanding of something or someone and today we're going to be focusing on that someone. And that someone is a customer, so someone who is buying our products, if that's business to business or a consumer, the person that is also the purchasing, but also the person using the product, so I will use those two terminologies interchangeably tonight, even though they do mean two separate things. So customer insight allows you to help you to understand how your customers behave, but more importantly, why they behave that way. So why is that so important? So if I think about what the definition of marketing is, it's the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers requirements profitably. So without insight, we wouldn't be able to identify, we wouldn't be able to anticipate nor would be accurately be able to satisfy those customer gain or pain points. So to those listening tonight, the challenge I want to put to you is how well do you know your customers and consumers? Who are they? Beyond what I always call the obvious, their age, their demographics or geodemographics or where they live. I see too often, many briefs come in or many strategies written, just simply stating age, sex and location, and maybe some information about what they do for a living. That's not, that's who they are, that's not why they're doing what they do. So what do they do? How do they spend their day? What do they do for a living? What do they do outside of work? How's their day made up? But I'm not only, what do they do? Why do they do those things? What are their beliefs, their passions, their aspirations, the emotional drivers within them that are driving them to make choices? When they're looking to choose your product or service, what is their decision making criteria? What's important to them? What are their preferences? How do they spend their week, their working week, their weekend? What are their values, their motivations, their attitudes, their beliefs? Are they happy with their existing product or service? What would they like to see? What are those pain points that you could help solve and satisfy? Or what are those gain points that you would help elevate them? Especially as we know, consumers and customers at the moment are really looking for brands that allow them to live the life that they want, their future life, their aspirational life that they want to live. So how can you satisfy that? So thinking about this presentation, I wanted to highlight to you something that I often see in many strategy decks, in many agency briefs is the persona. And the persona is a great way of visually building together the representation of a customer or consumer. So in this case, one that I pulled from online today, which was founded Disruptive Advertising.com, was for a coffee brand where they looked at one of their key target customers and started to pull that insight and that richness together that they could then form their communications and other strategies around. So in this case, they're talking about Stacey, the student, and they talk about her daily life. But as you can see, they talk about more than just who she is, where she lives and what she does. They also talk about her pain points. So in this case, being able to pay her bills or get stuck somewhere and not having enough time with her cat or not being able to pay back her school debt. So we're going into the deep things that are bothering her on a day to day basis, as well as her needs, what she is looking for, how she spends her day. Because all of this is important, not only when we're setting our long term commercial strategy, so selecting which customers that we are going to go after, but also how best to communicate with them. And we can only do that if we truly understand what their pain and gain points are, but also where they are and which methods and mechanics we're going to communicate on. I just wanted to bring some attention to Amazon and Prime Now as a really good example of not only identifying, but also anticipating. So it's no surprise to anyone, I'm sure that Amazon is rich in data. It's also rich in insight, because they take the time to not only understand what is happening, so that purchasing behavior, but why it's happening. And where they're really strong is in the predicting, so the anticipation, anticipation about what is going to happen next. And this is where the Prime Now concept has worked so well. So if most people are aware of Amazon Prime, a subscription service that you can sign up to on an annual basis, that not only provides you with next day delivery, but also provides you with an entertainment platform as well, where you can stream live videos. And most of those deliveries are made within 24 hours. And most of the time those deliveries are made within 24 hours, because the Amazon is watching what you have bought, mapping it with what you might buy next, and has already made the action and the bravery to move that produce closer to you and proximity. I often liken this to Lego sets. I have a son at one point in time was very interested in Lego. If he was buying set 532, they knew that it was likely that I was going to buy 533 and 34 to follow those. They probably had already made the anticipation of that that would be purchased and therefore move that stock to fulfillment center near me. That is how, with that level of bravery and action anticipation, they are able to serve through Prime. Prime Now goes that one step further and actually allows your produce to be delivered within a two hour window. Once again, from the things are most frequently purchased in your geographic location for consumers that need that pain point of needing something quickly, because they are cash rich and time poor. So really good example of not only taking data, collecting that data, which they do do through many sources, anticipating, predicting and taking that action and bravery to actually move it into a proposition. That sells more pain points or more gain points than their competitors. So if that's what insight is, how do we get insight? So if we're taking those data sources, whether that's primary, secondary, internal or external, quantitative or qualitative, how do we get to insight? Now, one of my favorite methods to do this is the five wise method where we move from inference, an observation that we've made. Maybe there is growth in a certain market. Maybe there is some share differences that we've noticed. Maybe we're noticing that certain consumers are buying certain things or there's a trend or a habit in inference. And it's really important that you start with an inference. You're already identifying a behavior that has happened that you want to be inquisitive and find out more about. So if that inference is the what, the five wise allows you to ask the why question and hypothesize, which you can validate later as to what that root cause is by asking five wise. Now, funnily enough, I often get asked the question, if I get there in three wise, is that fine? If it takes me seven wise, is that fine? It doesn't have to be fine, but my only build would be if it's only three, have you gone deep enough? Now, marketing as a science is what I love about it. However, this is the one place where I will say, you know, when you've hit the insight, when you feel something inside, because it's a motive. You know, with customer insight or consumer insight, when you've hit the insight because you're getting to a raw consumer truth, something that is telling about human behavior. So you take the inference, you ask yourself why, why, why, why, why, using hypotheses, using various data sources as you go until you get to the crux of what you believe is that consumer insight. Then to make insight usable, you need to think then about the so what, so what does this mean? Why is this a benefit? What could we do with this and have some clarity before presenting into your business than now? What? Because otherwise that insight isn't actionable and then it can't be used internally in your strategy in the wider business. So let me take you through an example. I'm sure there's many of you on here that are cat lovers or cat owners. And if I just use an example, if we were working on a cat food brand, just to bring this to life. So an inference would be something that we have noticed. So in this case, we've identified value growth in cat food. Now we've got inference. Now we can ask the first why. Well, why is that value growth? So by mining the information or getting a data source, where is that value growth come from? Well, we've noticed that the value group, the growth in the cat food market, which is value, is because premium brands of cat food are in growth. That's what's driving the value. OK, so it's premium brands. Why? Why are cat owners willing to pay more for premium brands of cat food? In this case, because they feel that cats are part of the family. Well, why is that important that they treat their cats and give them the best with premium cat food? Because they feel bad for leaving the cats at home all day. OK, so now we're getting to the emotion behind it. What they're doing is they're buying premium cat food. But why they're doing it is to negate the guilty feeling of neglecting or feeling like they've left their cats at home all day while they've been busy out working. The cat owners want to treat the cats because they're part of the family and it helps to alleviate the guilt. But now what? Because if that's the insight, what are we going to do with it? Well, I'll talk about I'll talk about later on in today's presentation around actually putting that into the strategy. But really what we want is actual insight. So going back to the business with what you've uncovered and actually giving some clear recommendations on now what? So if I was that cat food brand owner and whether I was a premium player or not, you know, I could use this human truth to either a feel maybe some communication. So showing how my premium brand of cat food allows my cats to feel loved after having left them all day or maybe even creating that scene so people really feel that I understand as a brand what it feels like to be a cat owner and alleviate that guilt for that cat to be rewarded and to very much be seen as part of the family. So, you know, that could fuel very much some of the comms. It also might feel potentially expanding my product range. Maybe I want to put more premium cat food as it's in growth in the market. But ones that talk maybe about treating or indulging or rewarding the cats because they that is the pain point that this premium cat food is going to address. So the what the so what and the now what? And the reason I want to spend some time on this is because I see many data sources across many different organizations from those that have hardly any to those that have ample. And what I often find is that the more they have, the less likely they are to have minded actually mind all those data sources to get the richness and actually identify the insight when they have identified the insight. Very often they will go great and it gets dropped into a PowerPoint presentation. But the so what? Why is that of interest is often forgotten? And if it's not forgotten and the so what and the now what is identified, not many organizations are acting with pace, acting quickly and with bravery to bring those products or services or comms or new strategy to market based on that new insight that they have uncovered. And so for me, insight needs to come with acting with paced bravery and a business that is willing to work quickly to leverage that insight. And that's for me is what drives competitive advantage with insight. Yes, having a different data sources or a richness of data versus your competition, but actually competitive advantage comes from actually it quickly. So having spent the time reviewing your data sources, observing inferences, using the five wise model to identify a mind or hypotheses, which you may then need to go and validate further with some additional research. And you start to think about the what the so what and the now what. I just wanted to show with you a really great tool that is a good way comes from the leading edge around how to present that insight back into the business. So a good insight has a structure and insight is a significant human truth about that target audience that you can leverage to grow. So the target who and as I said earlier, when I was showing you the personas, we want to go deeper than just the age, the profile, the demographics. We also want to be talking about their pain points, their drivers, how they're spending their day, what their emotional pain points and game points are. How they spend in their week, what their values and attitudes and beliefs are. We want to get to that level of emotional richness. So the who then? What's that significant truth? Why are they doing or not doing something? Leverage, which is not dissimilar to the so what. So what are our capabilities to respond? What could we do? And the bit that makes a difference is the last, which is growth. So how can I get the business to gain traction behind me to want to action this insight with bravery and a can do attitude and allow it to be leveraged quickly? So what do we prioritize? And when do we do it? And what is that sometimes worth to the business if I'm to leverage that and leverage that quickly so that you're getting the sense of importance and traction and buy in from others within the organization? So that's insight. That's how you build customer insight by taking a variety of different data sources, ensuring that you have enough understanding of the customers on that deep, rooted emotional level that you understand what they're doing throughout their day, what pain and game points you can satisfy. Then we need to think about how this can be embedded into our strategies. So in order to embed them to our strategies, I wanted to take you through a strategic planning process. And one of my favorites is from PR Smith, which is the soft stack planning system. And the reason I love the soft stack planning system so much is that it could look from the outside in. It starts off by looking outside the organization and then moving in so that we can make decisions before setting the strategic agenda. So let me just walk you through this process. The first stage is situational analysis. That's a mouthful. Where are we now? So where are we now as an organization? What is our current position? But when people say that they think, oh, what is happening right now? But actually, when you're writing your situation analysis, you need to be able to look at what is happening for the duration of the plan that I'm actually building. So in this instance, if you're writing a three to five year strategy, I want you to be able to predict at what's happening both now in the organization with your current situation and your position, but also what might affect you in the organization over the next five years. So insight is fundamental to understanding not only your current position, but also what trends might be affecting your business. So trends being things that are happening in our macro environment, so political, economical, social, technological, legal and environment. It also is asking you to look at your micro. So what is happening within the market in which I operate in? How competitive is it? What are the suppliers doing? What are the stakeholders wanting? How are employees involved? In order to get a viewpoint, we need to also have data sources that allow those questions to be answered. How well are we doing versus our competitors? But also what competitive intelligence do we have that's going to allow us to think about not only what our competitors are doing now, but what they might do next and what are we going to do as a result? We also can use that insight to get an internal viewpoint of what I'm employees think about organization where it is and where it could go. So we're getting a rounded view. The next is objectives. So where do we want to be? So the vision, the mission, the corporate objectives, the purpose that we are setting that forward stands. And once again, without insight, we would not be able to set an accurate vision or mission or even one that is motivating to our customers, to our consumers. If we didn't have clarity or understanding what our customers and teams want, but also the space in the marketplace that we could own. The next and the most important is strategy. So how are we going to get there? If you have set out your vision, what are the choices that we can and should make strategically to ensure that we get there? And those choices around which geographic markets, which segments of those markets, who are we targeting having identified that customer insight or that consumer insight and how we're positioning ourselves. And I personally truly believe that positioning should be built once we have got clarity on who that target audience is, because we want to build a brand that is reflective of what they need and want us to be for them. So having defined that strategy and having set your smart objectives, then we can look and only then into the tactics. Once again, if we don't have the understanding about how our consumers or customers are spending the day, it's going to be very difficult to map those tactics, whether that's the products and services that you develop, the pricing that we should be setting, choosing the right distribution channels, or even looking at how we communicate if we don't know how we spend their day. If we don't spend their day, we don't know how we're going to get to them. How are we going to communicate where we need to sell our product so that they can be accessible, especially in this digital world in which we live in? So which channels are they truly using? And not only what channels, what are we going to say that's motivating? And that once again is intrinsically, we need to be based on insight so that we are communicating on that motive level that we're building communications that allows us to connect deeply with our consumers and resonate to the point that they go, yes, they get me. That's my brand of choice. That's my product of choice. We then need to put that plan into action. In order to put it into action, we need to make sure that we are continuously monitoring ourselves and making sure that we are delivering against that. So KPIs and trackers, once again, they need data to make sure that we are measuring against where we said we were going to be, as well as setting KPIs and calculating ROI, neither of which can be done without the understanding of what those activities would be worth or whether those key performance indicators are realistic when they're initially set and whether they've been achieved when we monitor and evaluate them afterwards. So in summary, insight is fundamental to the whole strategic planning process. It's fundamental in the beginning when we're talking about auditing our markets, where we are now, where we're going, but also within our actually the competitive nature of our markets. It's important when we're trying to set a vision and a mission and a purpose that is motivating but also realistic. It's important when we're making the choices versus our competition on where we're going to play, who we're targeting. It doesn't have to be just one target audience. It could be multiple and how the brand is positioning ourselves to ensure that we appeal to those target audiences. It's also looking at the tactics. As I said, the product that plays the prize, the promotion, the people, the process, the physical evidence, all of which need data to inform where we're setting on which ones we're choosing, the implementation of the plan, and then also monitoring that through ROI and KPIs. So in summary, if we're going to put insight into our plans, there are many tools that we would use in order to make sure that we are have insight being put into practice. So the PESTL, our SWOT analysis, our competitive strategy, we're going to be able to use our competitive scenario planning, so what our competitors are doing now, doing next, and they do in the future, and also how may they respond to the activities that we're planning to do. Admission. Is it realistic? Is it motivating, not only internally but externally on the same for the vision? Objectives. We want to be setting smart objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timed, but we can't do that. We can't determine whether they're realistic, if we don't have an understanding on the marketplace or what we're likely to achieve in any specific time period. The selection of the activation, so how are we going to bring this to market? And this, once again, is another key area in which customer insight is intrinsic. And then also the tactical strategy. So how are we going to deploy this? How is this going to be motivating? How are we going to bring this to market? Which ways are we going to do this that is disruptive? Based on how we know our customers or consumers spend their day, and how we're going to make sure we communicate those pain and gain points on an emotional level to really get into the heart and into the decision making. And last but not least, performance. So what are those KPIs key performance indicators? What are we going to generate in return for what we are doing? And without that market data and information, we aren't able to set that to be a realistic target. So having looked at the true definition of insight, insight being what happens when you mine your data to get to a true aha moment, a true consumer emotional truth, and then taking that insight and making sure that it's actionable, thinking about the what, the so what, and the now what so that you have actionable insight and that you are quantifying that to get traction internally and then taking that insight and applying it to your strategic planning process and then ensuring that insight sits at the top, middle and bottom as I would like to say of that strategic planning process it's not an easy task. So what I wanted to do now was allow you some time to reflect by asking you a few questions. What data sources are you aware of and if you're working with an organization which is your organization possess? Have these data sources be mined using the five W's or another form of methodology to uncover true consumer or customer insight? How well do I know my consumers or customers? Do I have a deep rooted understanding of what they do but more importantly why they do it, how they spend their day and why the motivations and beliefs their values and their aspirations. Have I developed an insight statement that is actionable that can be used by the wider organization? And having built those insight statements how can I ensure that these are used at the base of any strategic work or any tactical work done within the business? And the reason I ask you these questions are because when I'm auditing businesses or helping them build strategic plans some of the issues within the organization will sit amongst some of these questions. So the first being what data sources do I possess? Sometimes some businesses have so many that most marketers aren't aware of all of those that they're currently being collected so a good exercise to do is to actually map your customer journey and say what data sources do I have at each step of this journey that would allow me to understand if I have gaps how do I solve those? Sometimes we don't always need new insight or new data we just need to simply mine the existing data that we already have. Have these be in mind many organizations continuously track certain data sources without taking periodic times or moments in time to actually mine this to find out the what and the so what and the now what and they become more continuous tracking than they do necessarily fresh insight. And also with your data sources do you have a good mix of qualitative and quantitative the thoughts and feelings but also the robustness? Do you have primary and secondary data or research studies that you've commissioned yourself versus those that are already available in the marketplace that your competitors can also get hold of? And are you also looking at internal data sources and what you can gather about your customers and consumers as well as external? And ideally you'd have a mix of all of those data types to get the richness that you need. Qualitative you're getting more of the words and not enough of the robustness too much quantitative you're getting the proof but not necessarily the level of understanding and emotional intelligence that you need. Secondary sources only means that you haven't got any unique sources versus your competitors whereas primary allows you to have richness potentially that your competitors don't have. And how well do you know your customers and consumers? If you were having to develop a campaign a strategy a brief are you able to tell that third party or in your wider organisation something more than their age their job title what they do for a living and where they live? Could you tell them what their values are their beliefs are their motivations their pain points their gain points so that you have that richness so that you can really tap into on that deep emotional level and how have you built insight statements so that that insight can actually be shared I see too often insight being mined either in a research and insight department or by the marketer alone or as a team and it not being cascaded and shared in that wider business or potentially a customer service provider or the sales force or anybody else that is client facing in any way could actually benefit from having that understanding of your insight of your customers and your consumers and how do we make sure that they are centre top middle and bottom of everything we do when we are building a strategic plan. So often people say well Abby when you're looking at marketers and you're looking at those that are strong insight what would you recommend what would you suggest they do to build these skills. So the first is look beyond age demographics and geography if somebody gives you a brief or tells you about something internally or a campaign that has happened really start to question is there more richness than this question the people that have given it to you is there more if there is not more go and find it there is always a secondary data source or social listening that you can do to get that richness. So now we know not only who they are but why they're doing what they're doing. The next is to be curious spend time people watching in my early career this was something that I would always do get as close as I can to my consumers and be a bystander look at what they're doing look at how they're making decisions look how they're interacting with that product or service go for a ride with the sales force to see those customer interactions but try and be a bystander actually see that natural behaviour so you can get as close to what is happening as possible and try to start making your head conferences about why that is happening and what they are doing and not just with your consumers and customers are you somebody that people watches something very easy to do which is to grab a cup of coffee sit on a park bench and just observe the people around you why they are doing what they're doing trying to draw hypothesis trying to answer those five wise questions in your head to see if you could hypothesize the reason why that behaviour is happening another fun game that I often play is guess the insight on adverts so I play a game where I watch the advert and guess what the insight behind it could all should have been and always ask why whether you're asking the consumer or customer yourself or you're asking that why keep going until you get that emotional richness so that's the end of the formal presentation I do want to say please do keep in touch whether that's unlinked in via labrink my consultancy whether you want to listen to the podcast the whole market here podcast or follow me on instagram at the whole market here and also artists keep an eye out for the book that's coming out in May the new activity that will be happening for the whole market here that's great many thanks Abbie before we go into the questions I'd just like to point out if you haven't already noticed that there's a handouts tab in the control panel and in that tab you'll find a PDF of Abbie's slide deck from today together with some additional reading so we're now going to have a short 10-15 minute Q&A session as a reminder you can still submit your questions via the questions box in your control panel okay Abbie first question for you then besides pain and gain points do you think customer personas really work in B2B or would a customer archetypes model approach teach me, guide me, serve me enlighten me is a more appropriate approach there are many methods when it comes to business to business but I would say decision making criteria is probably the one that I would fall to where we're looking at the gatekeeper, the information search the decision making holder the purchase holder and so on and what I often say is that don't forget their human too so some of the things I've talked about with consumers in this case still apply because if you can get the understanding about why they're doing what they're doing maybe a nervousness around purchasing you know how they're spending their day what they're going to get out of their day what they're going to get out of making this purchase with you things that they may be nervous around all of those things still apply they're still human so yes a different structure of methodology of thinking of mapping out that journey helps yes but so does not forgetting that they are human too and thinking about their attitudes and beliefs especially with the overlap with organization as well great second question how scientific does the data and insight need to be is some of it assumptions or common sense does it need to be quantified each time yes it does need to be validated so if you are making a hypothesis on so the second or third why either I was at the best way to do this is almost like as a as a hot house so that you have multiple data sources so as you start to hypothesize as to why that is happening you can go and find that data source as quickly as possible to say whether that is true or not also it's not always a linear line so it could be that you have multiple hypothesis as to why so if we just think about that cat food brand there could have been many reasons that premium brands of cat food were in growth yes it could be that it could have been that there is I don't know shortage in supply of premium cat food maybe they've been overly promoted there could be multiple reasons and you might want to explore all of those as their own funnel of asking the why and they do need to be validated because unless once you get to the bottom that hypothesis and validated is not insight it needs to be robust okay how do you organize your data into meaningful information to make decisions so I I think the first thing that I would always do is map that customer consumer journey because that will give you the blind side as to what you do and don't know so if you're thinking about if we're using a consumer one awareness, interest, desire and action or thinking about business to business information search need purchase and so on what do you know at each of those points so you get understanding of that journey and I think so that's my first one the second one is do you have enough to make strategic decisions so do you never know enough about the segments of the market or at least how they're being used so that you can cluster and do you know enough about the target audience and I would say they're the two things that I would focus on if I needed to know how much insight do I actually need to have and where would I prioritize okay this one comes from the heart I think how do you convince people who have worked the same way for 30 plus years to change and look at things differently commercial benefit it's always commercial benefit so there is a method called the square method spelled s c q u u a r a I do believe and it talks about pivotal question and in that pivotal question you are basically stating to the business what they will get or what they will lose so you're heightening the importance of what you're presenting if they do something or they do nothing and if you link that with commercial benefit or loss that's usually how you get traction internally so it moves the insight from being a nice to have to something that's a need to have and actually opportunity for the business okay do you have any advice on how to start finding secondary data where do you start when there are so many different options okay so there is Mintel and I do believe as students you have access to that for I think a year within your studies as well so I would always start there and the reason I start there even if you don't buy the full report is it will tell you in the first few pages the size of the market how much it's worth and who the key players are and with those key players then you can go off and do your own secondary research whether that be online or doing competitive shops yourself to allow you to get into under the skin of each of those customers so that's why I always would start and there are many studies also on the CIM database and industries academic journals I always start online though so there is a lot of riches to be found okay great sort of a related question really what kind of tools are used currently to mine the data human behavior there is some artificial intelligence looking at behaviors and patterns I don't understand enough about that to be able to comment but I haven't seen others then the 5Ws or the question why all things being kind of trying to get to the root cause is usually in a workshop environment the most productive methodology I've seen okay great there's a couple of questions here around how do you gain evidence if you don't already have customers so if you're setting up a new business what would you recommend there if you're a target customer so if you haven't got them yet who do you want to get and also so do an exploratory research and that doesn't have to be expensive we live in a world where survey monkeys and asking if you believe to be a target customer certain questions is easy and quick to do and inexpensive and I just like to say that for a second because if I think back to the start of my career well we used to commission what's an omnibus which is a series of questions that allow you to get a quantitative read across the geographic representation it used to take 2 weeks in field and a week for someone to analyse that and I can get those feedback on that same level of data now within 24-48 hours so the speed and the cost is not as significant as it used to be also by researching your competitors because everybody has a certain level of pound euro so where are you going to steal that pound back from and it might not be a direct competitor it might be an indirect competitor and start to understand how they're communicating and build the riches around your customer there which is really topical actually fascinating question I work for the NHS Covid vaccine at the moment and it's been difficult to drill down to why some people are hesitant with gathered intelligence in various ways and had to move very fast if you were doing this and we were starting from the beginning what methods would you have followed that's a really good one that's a question for tonight so what I would have done I would have had a co-creation form of communication so when it was launching out I would have been building the communication with a mixed representation of the population so it's from us for you because that way you're in this case where you have to move so quickly and it's not something that's been done before we would have to make a lot of assumptions about what their concerns would be before they were being asked them whereas if actually you were co-creating with them what are your concerns if you were building this what would you say what would be useful then you're more likely to be able to have communication that allows you to address any concerns they may initially have before it gets scaled out that's the first thing I want to do the second thing is is about understanding the true barriers as to why they don't want to take it and because it's such a sensitive issue I don't think this would have been done in a way so even omnibus where they can have open-ended questions where they can say how they truly feel without feeling that someone is watching or judging or an in-depth interview where there is no bias from somebody maybe in a focus group because if somebody is truly nervous there is that potential fear of not speaking the truth and especially when it's medicine we know that from many studies especially in Ash and anyone wearing a white doctor's room is that they feel inferior and they often go with the most intelligent person that they believe is intelligent in the room as opposed to speaking their truth so I think which has been really clear and sensitive to the way in which methodology would be conducted so you get the true concerns as to why and the true space to allow them to explore why because they might not know why themselves and that nervousness around not taking the vaccine fascinating change of tact there so you talked about competition scenario planning are there any good frameworks or models to use for this? I don't think there is a classic framework that you can look at oh yes there is Davidson's competitive drill I think that is what is coming off my head I think it's called the seven step drill I'm not completely sure but if you put in Davidson a competitive drill I'm pretty sure there would be something in there Davidson's written many books around offensive strategies mainly on comms but has I'm pretty sure ones on competitive drills as well which follows a similar principle around what are they doing now where are they investing what would we do as a result okay thank you how do you highlight the value for all of this insight when there is no monetary value for the company there is no monetary value for the company yet that's what I would say so if they are saying there is a monetary value for insight I think it's clear that the so what and the now what has not been moved forward because that's what moves it from being a nice to have to a need to have so if you have identified something that's a true human truth when you are identifying the now what looking at what that could then be worth that's when the monetary value would come in that's when business cases and models can be models through and that's also when that can further testing can happen to understand consumers' propensity to purchase as well that's when the money starts to happen great there's a very specific one from a student who's doing a dissertation currently so quite a specific question I'm currently working on some pen portraits for my dissertation I'm using a few sources including acorns consumer classification can I use information from acorns different consumer classes and create one pen portrait from them all these groups are set and there is no fluidity between them so can she make a max match so mosaic and acorn is a kind of two different classifications so yes you can use when you're doing a pen portrait use those by all means for me though however that's the who so they are statements of national representation I think from geodemographics if I recall correctly and you can use those statements that I put in there you can also use statements from things like TGI that are used for media when they are pulling together pen portraits they are all statements I would say having a good mix of the who, the where and the why is what makes a really good pen portrait and also one that can be really clear and succinct on the pain and gain points so what problem could I solve and so the satisfy what could I gain as well what could they gain from what we are offering okay great how can you test that you have uncovered a real insight so there's twofold here one is you often feel it because you've hit that emotional piece so like in that cat food example that I gave you know that you've hit the emotional truth when we're talking about a human behaviour so in this case someone feeling guilty that they are leaving their cat you must get that emotional richness and then the second is you can take those statements and then sense check them so you could have which the following do apply on a quantitative scale I buy premium cat food because and you could have those listed statements that would then give you that kind of robust validation of your hypothesis great I think I know the answer to this one is it required to make a customer persona in a digital marketing plan yes 100% yep and the only thing that would make it digital buy this would be on the digital platforms that they would use in their day and content that they find motivating and also content that would also be in their periphery as well everything else still applies what sort of models can be used to justify the sales picked through marketing mix the seven P's justification is one thing that is asked by senior managers to provide the go ahead action plans as to what product they're serving which promotions all of those can be tested by all different methodologies so there is for product or concept testing there is something that is national representative which is done by system one thinking and they used to be called brain juicer now called system one which will give you a national read on their propensity to purchase something that would validate you could also do price elasticity models to understand what someone would buy for a certain product you could also look at what types of range called turf analysis or flavours or ranging that you would pull together and you can also concept test your communications as well via link testing so there is many different methodologies to validate everything that we do within promotions before we spend significantly how do you know if my organisation has enough customer insight if you can map the whole journey and have enough robust data sources under each stage so that you know what you need to do when then you're good if not you need to plug those gaps okay and I think it's time for one more question so what kinds of data do I need to mine insight from you need a mix of both quantitative and qualitative primary and secondary so that you can find the answer to the question as you move as you move through each of the wise okay I think we've run out of time for questions now so thank you very much Abby for that that was fascinating so some great questions and some great answers so that's all we have time for for our Q&A session today I'd like to say thank you to Abigail Dixon for today's presentation and a thank you to you for watching we do hope you found it interesting and worthwhile our next online marketing club event takes place at 630 on Wednesday the 21st of April when award-winning speaker Shira Kay will be talking about expressing your work you'll find further details listed on the CIM events page where you can also book for the webinar once again you'll shortly be receiving a survey on today's webinar and we'd really appreciate it if you could provide your feedback so on behalf of CIM thank you very much again for joining us and we hope you enjoy the rest of your evening thank you again Abby pleasure