Knowing Your Audience: How Market Research Defines Your Customers

As an agency, we’ve conducted market research for a wide range of brands, from ministries to NFL teams and everything in between. Over the years, we’ve found that regardless of an organization’s level of success, one of the most common questions leadership asks is “why do people buy?” That is, “what makes people decide to become our customers — or decide to walk away?” We’ve learned that even companies selling their products or services hand over fist may have no idea why, or what specifically about their brand makes people choose it over a competitor.

Market research is an excellent tool for answering questions like these in a way that is concrete, measurable and true. It allows brands to discern the kind of people to which their value proposition is most likely to appeal, creating a solid foundation on which strategic business decisions can be made. This process begins by evaluating four primary groups of people in relation to the brand: customers, rejecters, defectors and prospects (including competitor customers).

Customers are the first category of people with whom brands should conduct research. It’s important to understand why those people made the decision to buy, what’s most important to them and what qualities they’re looking for in a product or service. It’s possible the answers to these questions could be much different than the assumptions leadership is making, which would prompt a shift in strategic decision making.

The next group to consider is rejecters. These are people who looked at the brand’s offer but ultimately chose a competitor instead. Often this includes people on the company’s prospect list. To grow an organization, it’s critical to understand why rejecters made the decision to go with the competitor’s offer and what they were looking for when they made that choice.

The third section is defectors — people who had been customers but decided to walk away, i.e. past season ticket holders who chose not to renew the following year. Knowing what changed from year to year — why they decided to jump ship — is extremely valuable in moving forward.

Finally, the research should involve prospects (including competitor customers). People in this group could be defectors and rejecters, but they don’t have to be. It can be more difficult to define and reach this group, but they are important to include. When data is not available on a category of people via the brand’s customer or prospective customer database, market research tools like prepopulated panels and lists can be extremely beneficial for accessing them.

With each of these groups, it’s also important to discern the perceptions about the brand and competitor brands. 

To move forward and grow your brand, it cannot be overstated how important it is to understand your audience, know what they want and focus your efforts to meet those criteria. And the only way to truly get answers to these questions in a reliable way is to find the people who matter most and ask them.