Winning is a relative game
Good marketing puts the zip into businesses. Good market research puts the zip into marketing, says Mike Rigby, CEO of MRA Research.
In the early rounds of Rugby’s World Cup many scores reflected the unequal matching of the teams. France v Namibia 96:0, South Africa v Romania 76:0, England v Chile 71:0. But nearer the final, reflecting the quality of the better teams, several games were won by the finest of margins. Ireland v New Zealand 24:28, France v South Africa 28:29, and England v South Africa 15:16.
Luck played a part in some results. But as Gary Player is alleged to have said: the more I work and practice the luckier I seem to get.
The winning teams were more clinical, made fewer errors, and took more of their chances. Elite teams know competitive games are won by being better than their opponents where it matters. Improving 2% here, and 1% there, is often enough to win, while 5% or 10% where it confers no advantage does nothing and wastes a huge amount of time and effort. Top teams win by studying their opponents, making sure they’re better prepared and build a winning edge. They don’t try harder at everything, or work by gut feel; they find out where they stand and what matters, and what will make the difference.
Marketing is also a relative game. You grow, regardless of the state of the market, by researching what matters, what will attract and retain customers and what will get a bigger share of their spend. And then build that into your marketing and your business. Improving what doesn’t need improving is a waste.
Who knows what needs improving, what will make a difference? Customers. Their needs are not fixed. They change as they try to raise their game when demand falls, making it harder for them to win business.
How do you find out? Ask the right questions, of enough customers so they are representative, and don’t just ask your fan club. Ask them in the right way to give you reliable answers. Avoid leading questions that encourage them to say what you want them to say to please you. Ask why customers left you for a competitor. Ask grumpy customers what’s making them grumpy. Ask what you’re doing wrong or not doing before they go elsewhere.
Good marketing helps businesses grow rain or shine. Good research puts the shine on marketing.
In recent years many large groups have adopted NPS (Net Promoter Score) as an overall measure of brand health, asking: how likely are you to recommend company X. It’s meant to wrap up everything you feel about a company because you’re only likely to recommend a company if they’re great. It’s like taking the temperature of the organisation. And users can compare the performance of different businesses in a group or compare themselves against competitors.
NPS was conceived by Bain the international management consultants and its popularity has spread globally. Many groups now bonus senior managers on NPS scores, so they have an incentive to keep improving. But improving their score is difficult, because NPS doesn’t link to what drives recommendation. And norms vary by country and market, so an NPS score of +20 in a grocery company in the US isn’t equivalent to +20 in building products in the UK. And norms vary quite a lot by category within building products.
For some years MRA Research has been building norms in the UK and Ireland so companies will know that their score of +30 is very good, for example. We’ve also created six customer experience measures, and registered their trademarks, that together ‘explain’ NPS scores and enable companies to confidently focus and drive their improvement programmes and their NPS scores. The six measures ask if service has got better or worse, how easy it is to do business with them, whether customers feel valued, the difference they make to the customer, do they trust their promises, and whether the company is better or worse than other suppliers.
The time and effort spent on improving service, support, customer relations and products is a huge investment, so it makes sense to invest a relatively small sum in getting it right.
Good marketing drives growth come rain or shine. Good professional market research and insight makes your marketing work harder, smarter and more effectively.
This article was first published in the BMF’s One Voice Magazine.
