10 insights into brand marketing!

The importance of insight is actually a helpless move. The world is changing too fast. If a brand does not build an insight capability system of its own, it will repeatedly fall into traps without knowing why. It will constantly rely on the boss's guess or that of a senior executive. Even if their guesses are bad, it is still a matter of probability.

Recently, Dean Mandy Mai@HBG carefully looked at the specific insight methods and various spreadsheets of some new brands. In fact, the underlying logic is essentially the same as the insights conducted by those century-old multinational companies with evergreen foundations. They are all looking for logic and causality.

However, the application dimensional decisions and required data analysis tools are indeed more complex than in the past, and we need to focus more on developing a new insight system. We cannot follow the old path or rely on past experience, but must take new paths.

But how to gain insights? In the past, many founders would often ask Dean Mandy Mai Qing@HBG questions about insights.

01. First of all, the premise is to try not to have "vacuum insight"

Don’t directly recruit a person/department with no business experience. Don’t just focus on insight. You need to first understand the business and the overall path of brand building. Make insights after touching it. Otherwise, it might just be a self-congratulatory insight.

02. Second, understand the fundamental purpose of insight

The fundamental reason for insight is not to find reasons for the boss's statement, nor is it to find support for past experience conclusions. The essential purpose of insight is to explore business problems and business opportunities. If we can know where the business problems and opportunities are based on experience, then there is no need for insight. However, in actual practice, it is often impossible to use past experience or to find business opportunities or business problems by just guessing, so it is necessary to rely on insight.

03. What does insight include?

Insight is actually a comprehensive and systematic project, not just the so-called market research. Market research is just a way and method of insight. Ultimately, our goal is to obtain the results of insight. Some people can get results through market research and data analysis, while others can get the same results through in-depth communication with customers. The process is not important, the result is what matters.

Generally speaking, insights cover all aspects of our business, from supporting the most basic product launch decisions to subsequent brand building decisions and marketing penetration decision channels, large-scale penetration decisions, and even financial and organizational decisions. Insights can also be used to provide support and explore problems and new opportunities in the work.

04. Which part of insight work does the often-mentioned user insight belong to?

User insight is the most core part of the entire enterprise insight work. Since the fundamental purpose of an enterprise’s existence is to create new users, every task is based on finding new users and exploring their pain points.

Many companies actually do things based on past experience, but not based on user insights - this is the most common practical pitfall. The more experienced you are, the easier it is to fall into the same pit repeatedly, and you will be so obsessed with how wonderful this pit is.

05. What are the common misunderstandings about user insights?

Myth 1: Insiders pretend to represent “users”

Representing user ideas

Represent user aesthetics

· They claim to represent users, but in reality they are “speculating about users from top to bottom”

Mistake 2: Speculating about users from the top down

· “Official brand perspective” is serious

· “Industry expert perspective” is serious

· “Competition perspective” is serious

· Deep down, they don’t respect “real people”

Myth 3: Lack of understanding of the real shopping path

Cognitive pathways: How does the user’s brain think?

· Path to purchase: How does the user behave step by step?

Usage path: Why don’t you use it after buying it? Why do you use it so slowly? Why don’t you repurchase?

Misconception 4: We are used to using “big data” and ignore “small data”

Big data: macro reports, macro data, macro trends

Small data: actual shopping behavior insights and shopping cognition insights of users targeted by your brand

Misconception 5: Using “small data” and ignoring “big data”

Small data - helps to get started quickly and is easy to implement, such as making a good product

Big data - helps to identify trends, seize dividends, and avoid future pitfalls, such as investment pitfalls

Mistake 6: Too much emphasis on data, or too little emphasis on data

Too much emphasis on data will easily lead to missing out on phenomena that cannot be digitized (common in foreign companies)

·If you don’t pay enough attention to data, you will just make decisions based on your own ideas (common in private enterprises)

Mistake 7: Being too attached to past experience and conventional wisdom about users

The more industry experience you have, if you don’t use your brain a little, you may tend to have a rigid understanding of user needs, such as thinking that users only buy things according to the series

The more past experience you have, the easier it is to disrespect users and the harder it is to open your mind and innovate across categories.

Too many people don’t like to use their brains to rethink, but rely on past memories or experiences or what others say.

Misconception 8: We are used to classifying users by stereotyped attributes

For example, divide users by city, age and income

For example, according to the so-called spending power

For example, according to the so-called 360-degree user portrait, the 360-degree portrait is actually the most unrealistic and self-congratulatory user definition.

Misconception 9: We tend to imagine users in a complex mental and conceptual way

Many brand people think that users are very complicated, especially in terms of their spiritual level. This is essentially because brand people want to start with the emotional differentiation value of the brand and build the so-called brand barrier.

There are still many brand people who cannot tell the difference between branding and business and art and creation.

· Founders and team leaders who come from creative, brand, and marketing backgrounds are more likely to fall into this trap

Mistake 11: Being too obsessed with the process of user insight and neglecting the purpose

Many people with rich experience are more likely to get stuck in the process and pursue perfection in the process.

The most important thing about user insights is the result. As long as the result can be achieved, all processes can be tried as long as they are not illegal.

It is not necessarily the case that the more complex the user insights are, the better. Often, great insights can be obtained using the most common-sense approach.

The most difficult part of user insight is not the method, but the mindset

Misconception 12: Only knowing how to do user insights but not how to apply them

· This is often because the person in charge of user insights is not responsible for the actual business, which leads to not knowing how to apply it

I really don’t understand the path from user insights to brand building, marketing content, and product planning.

To obtain more systematic brand methodology courses on user insights, you can contact the assistant at the end of the article and consult Mandy Mai@HBG Dean for more detailed questions.

06. What are the innovative methods for user insights?

The underlying logic of user insights has never changed, just as the method of system brand building has never changed. Only the path and method have changed. Traditional user insight tools mainly rely on consulting and research companies to conduct market data analysis, as well as focus interviews and other qualitative and quantitative methods. Current user insights are more dependent on various big data and small data - big data is often combined with the background of our daily e-commerce business, and small data is often combined with our customers.

07. What should you do if you are in a company that does not believe in user insight methods and only relies on experience and guesswork?

Often, many private enterprises do not believe in user insights when they are just starting out, and they just make guesses. On the one hand, this is because the founders are overconfident in their past experience, and on the other hand, it is because they have no money and resources and do not know what to do. However, if a business has already grown from 0 to 1 in size, but still does not believe in the user insight method, then it may be purely due to a lack of underlying logic. All founders who start from the bottom-level logic will be painfully aware of the importance of insight, because their first pot of gold in business often comes from their insight into opportunities that others don’t know much about; and the pitfalls in their business often come from their failure to gain insight into opportunities that others have already gained insight into. Therefore, practice makes perfect, and people who have no practice often don’t believe in user insights, while those who have experienced practice will believe in the power of user insights.

08. Do we need to establish a dedicated user insight team before going?

When a company is first established from scratch, it is often limited by resources and money. There is no way to establish a dedicated user insight team. It is even difficult to find a full-time dedicated user insight staff. Often, insight is the founder’s own job. But after making the leap from 0 to 1, you will have money and resources to recruit team members who can do insights. However, when recruiting, you should be careful not to recruit people who only do research. Because if you only do research and don’t touch the business, it is easy to fall into bookishness and empiricism, and fall into the vicious circle of insights that are full of craftsmanship. We must find ways to recruit professionals who have been in business and understand the business, but also choose professionals who specialize in insight. If there is really no professional team, then the founder can only rely on himself to recruit smart and logical team members to form and train them.

09. Can you directly help external teams to gain insights?

In the early stages of a startup, there is often no money to seek external insights, so the founders still have to rely on themselves. After crossing the jungle, wait until you have money and then look for an external team to gain insights. Assistance is necessary because the external team has a big data system that can reduce the pressure of building a big data system from 0 to 1 internally. However, we cannot rely entirely on external teams for insights because the external company is, after all, the second party, and the second party serves multiple first parties. The second party will share the insights you and he created with other customers, and confidentiality is a huge hidden danger. In addition, the work of insight is originally the job of Party A, not Party B. Party B plays an assisting role for Party A. If Party B jumps on Party A's head and points fingers to show that he is professional and can do the work on behalf of Party A, then there is only one possibility - Party A himself is not smart enough or lacks confidence.

10. What if you have a lot of insights but still can’t make the right decision?

First of all, the key to insight is not whether the workload is rich or not, but whether the results are correct or not. Many times, internal work seems to be vigorous and busy, with overtime work of 996, but in fact, there are no results at all, which is still equal to zero. Of course, there are many insights in reality that are correct, but errors occur in practice, often because of feasibility issues and deviations in the team's implementation. This can only be solved through continuous adjustment in the later stage.

Author: Mandy Mai

Source: Mandy Mai