Setting your sights on gaining insight
Debbie Allman, Strategic North
‘Insight’ has become a popular buzz word in pharmaceutical marketing in recent years. But, has it not always been important to understand the customers, what they need and how your brand can deliver against this need? Yes, of course, but marketing seemed much more simple back then – when the unmet needs were obvious (e.g. high blood pressure) and the influence and dynamics of customer groups simple to understand (patients and prescribing physicians).
How things have changed. Particularly in the disease areas that have been well served by the pharma industry in the last decade or two, the most obvious and pressing needs (e.g. blood pressure control) of yesteryear have already been addressed, so the hook now needed to differentiate a brand is often less obvious at first glance and requires a deeper understanding of multiple customer groups and their needs – not just today but also how they may evolve in the future.
The skills and techniques now required to understand what customers value have had to become more sophisticated in order to tease out the untapped opportunities that still exist.
What is insight?
‘Insight’ can be defined in many ways. Here at Strategic North, we define this as ‘a truth that underpins an enduring advantage for your brand’. In other words, how can you marry a distinct feature of your brand together with the needs of your target customer segments (whether they know it yet or not) to form a competitor advantage?
A means to an end
‘Insight’ in itself is interesting but unless it is well executed against, it will achieve very little. ‘Insight’ acts as a springboard to create enduring strategies and creative solutions for your brand. In fact, it is put to best use when working together with customers to build, refine and validate these strategies and solutions. In our experience, customers tend to find it much easier to express how a well communicated solution resonates with them, rather than how much they believe a carefully crafted insight statement to be true.
Building solutions directly with customers
Many standard market research techniques can have fairly black and white approaches – for example 10% of customers prefer option A, 60% prefer option B and 30% are undecided. This really misses the opportunity to actually enlist the help of customer to build solutions that are the most meaningful to them. A more flexible approach that allows for the initial ideas to evolve throughout the process leads to a richer and more valued solution at the end. This works along similar lines to prototype testing - the concept that goes into the first customer workshop is evolved, tweaked, changed, and it is this output that then goes into the next round. And so on. At the end of the series of workshops, together with the customer you will have co-created a solution that they actually want, rather than just testing their reaction to some fixed ideas.
Don’t put words in their mouths
It is very easy to try and anticipate what you think your customers will want, based solely around the exact problem your product solves. Or in other cases, pre-disposing the answers by asking questions in a certain way. However, in our experience this does not get you to the optimal solution. At the start of any customer workshop, it is important to immerse yourself and your customers into their world, their issues, their feelings by using different techniques, stimuli and media to unearth ‘the unstated’. This means that throughout the creative process you use the customer’s expressions, words, images – and not your own. In this way, the customer feedback and your potential solution is rooted in the customers real world and not your perception of it. It all makes for a more meaningful and customer-valued outcome.
How do I get more from my marketing budget?
Spend it smarter, get into your customers world and really develop strategies and solutions that they need and want. What’s more, ensure your strategies and solutions are appropriate for the timeframe you are working within – there’s no point developing ideas in the context of today’s environment if you are only planning to launch in 8 years time. Always have an eye to the future and make sure the techniques you use do so too.
