Empathetic AI: Are we ready for a future where machines will care for us?

January 23, 2019 / nancyrubin

Warehouse Stuck in the Neolithic Age? 4 Ways to Automate Your Facility

December 5, 2018 / nancyrubin

When it comes to the warehouse industry, the future is automation. This involves several components that all work together in order to get the task done. Here are some of the ways that you can automate your facility and bring it into the next century.

Cartonization

Through the use of technology, you can save some money on your shipping costs by employing cartonization methods. This is where the size and number of boxes are calculated in the most efficient manner possible to get the order out the door. Automation has made this task a little bit easier because your employees don’t have to spend time trying to get all of your customer orders packaged into boxes safely for shipment.

Robotic Technology

Another advantage when it comes to automation is through the use of robots.There are any number of robotic technologies that can used across a variety of different types of manufacturing fields. For example, robotic arms can be used to remove and stock whole pallets or individual items on a shelving system in your warehouse. This may eliminate some of the concerns that are more prevalent when it comes to workplace injuries that could occur.

Automatic Pallet Wrapping

It may take two employees for you to be able wrap up your pallets for shipping without the use of technology. Automatic pallet wrapping systems are available for you to purchase from companies like Fox Packaging Services. The point of many these machines is that your employees only need to position the pallet and then push a button in order to have it done in the most efficient manner possible. This will prevent the loss of products during the shipping process.

Automated Labeling Systems

Labeling all of your products can be a tedious process. It can also lead to mistakes if you have a person completing this task. Using an automated printing and label applying machine ensures that the label is done correctly and applied in the correct location all of the time. It allows your employees to focus on the more important tasks when it comes to running your warehouse. More quality control steps can be taken to ensure that your products are the best on the market.

There are advantages when it comes to the use of technology in manufacturing and warehouses. More automation often leads to higher-skilled labor who can work to refine the process further. Consider these reasons when it comes to the benefits of upgrading your facility.

Guest author, Lizzie Weakley is a freelance writer from Columbus, Ohio. She went to college at The Ohio State University where she studied communications. In her free time, she enjoys the outdoors and long walks in the park with her 3-year-old husky Snowball. @LizzieWeakley

Should Your Business Consider Chatbots?

November 15, 2018 / nancyrubin / 1 Comment

The business community has benefited greatly from advancements in digital communication technologies. Today, there’s practically no end to the ways companies and brand representatives can engage with, troubleshoot for, market to or otherwise stay in touch with their fans and customers.

Chatbots are a relatively new addition to a bundle of tools that already included email, video chat, SMS, social networking and more. Chatbots are the next logical step in many ways when it comes to keeping businesses and customers in constant and easy contact. But they’re not for everybody. Below are some of the advantages of — plus one or two warnings about — chatbots to help you decide if it’s the right time and the right tool for your company.

What’s a Chatbot?

This word is one of those terms that pretty much gives it all away up front: A chatbot is an audio-based or text-based assistant that can autonomously help customers find answers to questions, troubleshoot problems or carry out other business-related tasks, such as ordering or re-ordering products, changing payment information, inquiring about or renewing subscriptions and memberships and much more.

Command-based chatbots are relatively rudimentary but still deceptively “intelligent.” They can respond to customer inquiries using heuristics that match replies with the most relevant topics or sub-menus for the customer.

On the other hand, AI-based chatbots are more sophisticated but also have a further way to go before they’re available to a wider array of businesses and more consistently able to reply accurately to any inquiry. But chatbots powered by AI are undoubtedly already showing their potential: Thanks to their use of natural language processing, they can reply “from scratch” instead of using canned responses. They can even become better over time at picking up meaning and intent from conversations with human callers.

With the different types of chatbots a little better understood, let’s move on to the main question, which is whether or not chatbots are worth the investment for your business. For a start, some industries are simply a likelier fit than others.

If Chatbots Make Sense for Your Industry

Chatbots are a relatively new concept, but they do already exist out in the wild. And there are several frontrunners when it comes to the types of industries that are well-suited to adopting chatbots. Some of them are:

Hospitality
Banking and financial services
Retail
Service-based companies

Based on polling, some 80 percent of business representatives would be interested in bringing chatbots into the fold at their company. But early popularity in the industries mentioned above already indicates which use-cases might yield the best results and return on investment. In hospitality, guests and travelers often require nearly instant solutions for checking into hotels and lodging, boarding airplanes and other conveyances, choosing venues, organizing transportation for meetings and conventions and a multitude of other tasks that have to happen at the speed of business.

In financial services, chatbots can help even regional banks and nonprofit credit unions provide members with account information or help them tailor their retirement or college savings. In retail and services environments, chatbots can pick up some of the slack during high-traffic times of the day or season by taking orders, pointing customers to what they’re looking for and more.

The point is, there might be use cases in your industry, and there might not be. Industries that depend on timely, accurate, always-available customer interactions appear to be early favorites, but as the technology improves, applications will undoubtedly continue to appear almost everywhere.

If You (and Your Customers) Value Time

On the customer and the company side of things, the first major advantage of chatbots is that they’re on standby 24 hours a day and don’t take a single day off during the year, provided there aren’t any technical snafus behind the scenes.

Allowing customers to have their questions answered on their own time is great already, but chatbots also save time for the company by providing an automated solution to the “problem” of answering common inquiries all day long. Both parties can breathe easier. Customers know they won’t have to try their luck calling back during business hours or trawling through a website for answers, and businesses know their employees are a little freer to respond to other, more urgent demands on their time.

There are one or two caveats when it comes to using chatbots in extremely customer-facing industries. Human beings know — or can be trained by locals — to respect cultural taboos and avoid words or phrases that might cause offense in another country or region.

The problem of maintaining cultural propriety during international affairs is not a new problem. But while it seems to make sense to turn chatbots into public liaisons in regions where you don’t have a strong employee presence to process customer calls, those chatbots had better have been developed with linguistic and cultural input from the region they’re intended to serve.

Being mindful of potential cultural frictions and even the subtleties of respectful political correctness is key to successfully using a chatbot to fill in your service gaps here and abroad.

If You Want Additional Insight Into Your User Base

The average interaction between a human customer and a chatbot can yield a surprising amount of information about your user base — too much, potentially, for a human operator to take in all at once, much less record and pass on to interested parties.

A phone conversation is practically analog compared with a chatbot chat when it comes to the potential to take in information from your user base. When your customers interact with your chatbot, with just a couple of simple questions and basic analytics, you’ll come away with a greater understanding of how they use your products, where common sources of frustration are coming from and nitty-gritty details. These details include their location, the device type they’re using to contact you or interact with your services and other factors that might be of interest to your marketing team, your R&D team or both.

Chatbots are here already — and companies are figuring out how best to put them to work. By 2021, say industry experts, the chatbot “market” — including third-party cloud-based chatbot solutions — should reach a total value of $15.8 billion. That’s a ringing endorsement. Just remember that chatbots are a product like any other, and computing their probable ROI isn’t that much different, no matter what else you’re promised by a software vendor. In some cases, the human touch might just be the better choice for your business anyway — you’ll need to decide based on your unique circumstances.

Bio: Nathan Sykes is the editor of Finding an Outlet, a source for the latest in IT and business news and trends.

The Exciting Future Of Robot Development

July 11, 2018 / nancyrubin / 1 Comment

There’s a lot the future is going to bring us. Considering everything going on in the world right now, we know things are going to be extremely different in 5 or 10 years time. And there’s no future possibility more exciting (or daunting, depending on who you ask) than the idea of robots operating in our society.

Sure, we already have forms of AI in our phones and in our houses to play music and record the shopping list for us, but what about actual walking and talking robots with semi-human faces? Are they on their way? With that question in mind, here’s some technological developments in the works regarding our mechanical counterparts right now.

There’s a lot of imagination surrounding the future of robots, and the future isn’t so distant…

Humanoid Robots are On Their Way

But don’t worry, we’ll still be able to tell them from any other humans out there! The idea about having robots take jobs away from people, considering the rates of unemployment out there currently, but having an AI to take part in potentially dangerous tests and experiments to save any human from having to participate can be seen as a huge success.

The idea of bringing cybernetics into the work sector is something that’s debated a lot, but also focused on as something we can move into to make the working world both safer and easier. Check out articles on Human Paragon if you want to know more about this in particular; there’s a lot artificial intelligence can perform or pick up on that many humans cannot, and it’s this idea of efficiency in human form that excites a lot of companies out there.

AI Looking After Your House

We already have Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home to sit on our coffee tables and tell us the weather, but is there bigger ways an AI can take part in your household? Apparently, yes. Already there’s an app to allow these technologies to control the lights and the heating in your house, as long as there’s an electronic connection between the two.

And we see it all the time on the TV and in movies; the sci-fi genre is often based on the idea that an AI is in control or on the rise over humans. But it won’t quite work out that way in reality: they simply make running a household a lot more convenient and easy, and they can order things online for us. You can turn off the categories of data they take on you, and they can always be switched off or unplugged if you’re worried about what they’re gathering.

What are your thoughts on the coming implementation of robots? If you’re someone who likes the idea of a technological world, this is something to look forward to. Don’t worry, the security surrounding these ideas aren’t as bleak as the media can make them seem, but you can always choose what AI comes in and out of your house.

A Beginner’s Guide To Starting A Stock Market Trading Business

April 5, 2018April 6, 2018 / nancyrubin / 1 Comment

The stock market is often seen as this mysterious thing that people throw money at in the hope that they’ll get more back in return. Many people believe that trading stocks is something you do in your spare time, or as a long-term investment on the side. However, starting a business in this industry can be one of the best decision you ever make.

If you look at some of the richest people on planet earth, a lot of them have a history of trading. There are massive companies on Wall Street that trade millions, sometimes even billions, of dollars worth of stocks/shares. They make in one day what a lot of businesses would be lucky to make in a lifetime.

Obviously, you won’t see this type of success right away; every business has to start somewhere and grow to be great. Keeping that in mind, how can you get involved in the stock market, and start your own trading business? If this is something that interests; you, then you’re in the right place. Below, there’s a guide to help you pursue this business idea:

Brush Up On Your Stock Market Knowledge

It would be fair to assume that most people interested in this business idea will already have a bit of an interest in the stock market. As a result, you could already have some semblance of knowledge on this subject. However, it’s well worth brushing up on your stock market knowledge and becoming something of an expert. This will help you learn more about the field you’re going into, and figure out some of the tricks of the trade. A simple bit of research and studying can help you understand basic things like the best times to trade, which stock markets you should trade on, and how much money you should start with. Of course, the more you trade, the more this knowledge will grow. But, it’s definitely worth taking a few weeks or months to properly study the stock market before you start opening your business.

Decide How Much Money You Want To Start Trading With

A stock market business requires you to have a pool of money to kick everything off. This can come from your own bank account, or you may think about applying for a relevant loan to raise the capital. Some people have sold their home and downsized just so they get enough money to start trading with. It’s entirely up to you how you get this money, but it’s not exactly the same as looking for regular startup funds. With many businesses, you have lots of startup costs and overhead expenses. As a result, you can apply for business loans, look for investors, or start crowdfunding schemes. With a stock market business, it’s unlikely that you’ll find an investor or manage to raise money crowdfunding. Your best bet is either your own money or a loan. Regardless, think about how much money you want to start with. This will be your little pot of trading cash, and the key is that it’s never empty. No matter how many trades you make, you should never have a point where there’s no money in your account. The more successful you get, the bigger this pool of money becomes!

Get Your Hands On The Right Software

Trading businesses are pretty much built around the trading software you use. As someone who will devote their life to trading, you need to ensure you have the best tools at your disposal. There are loads of different software offerings around the web these days. Some of which include features that let you run simulations, analyze data and find the best trades to make. For someone starting a business, you need to think about software that allows you to do algorithmic trading. Why? Because this type of trading is automated. The software creates algorithms that let you run so many more trades per day than you could possibly do by yourself. This is how all the big boys make their money; they have computers running the numbers and doing everything for them. It’s an essential part of your business, and you need to make sure you have the best software available.

Slowly Bring In Some Staff

The great thing about this business is that you can start it on your own. You can begin trading from your bedroom and enjoy a fair bit of success. The other great thing is that it’s a business idea that you can grow. Not only that, but growing and expanding your stock market business is much easier than many other businesses. One thing you can do is hire some staff. Bring in some more traders, and you have more heads trading stocks and making money for the company. This is how you go from being a lone trader in your bedroom to a big company in a massive office on Wall Street! Success clearly doesn’t happen overnight, but you can slowly build up to it by bringing in more people as you become more successful. What’s more, the people you bring in can be experts in certain fields. One person could be an expert on the UK stock market, while another could know everything about the US one – and so on. This helps your business as you get more knowledge aboard the ship, which helps you sail towards more successful trades and higher profits.

Grow your business and get an office like this! Source

Start Offering Trading Services

Another way you can expand your original business idea is by offering different trading services to individuals. Remember way back at the start when I said most people see trading as a hobby or investment opportunity? Well, it’s time to cater your business to them. As well as making your own trades and earning money that way, you can charge a fee to invest for other people as well. Essentially, you act as a broker and help them spend their money in the best way possible. They pay you, and then they end up with profits thanks to your trading expertise. Why don’t you do this in the beginning? For me, it’s better to focus on trading on the stock market to earn money for your business at the start of this idea. You’ll be new to the scene, and you may struggle to find success at the beginning! So, if you took on clients at this time, then you could have a lot of unhappy people knocking on your door after you lose their money. But, as you become more successful, then it only makes sense to branch out and create dual streams of income. Especially as you now have employees to pay as well!

Admittedly, this business idea isn’t for everyone. However, if you want to get involved with the stock market, then it can be a great way of making money. One of the main reasons to start this type of business is that you pretty much control the growth of it. If you want it to remain a one-person operation, and you’re happy with the money you make, then you can do that until the end of time. But, if you want to grow and create a massive company, then there are easy ways to expand and do just that. What’s more, it’s a rare business idea that doesn’t depend on finding customers – at least not until you offer brokerage services. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about marketing your company or reeling in leads, all you need to care about is the stock market itself!

How to do Market Research: Align Your Business with Current Market Conditions

February 9, 2018February 9, 2018 / nancyrubin / 1 Comment

“The companies that do the best are the ones that do their homework.” – Donna Barson, president and owner of Barson Marketing Inc.

What homework?–Market research.

When done right, market research allows you to strategically align your business with current market conditions. Giving you the best possible chance of meeting or beating revenue goals.

In this article, you’re going to learn how, and what, information you need to ensure your sales process is aligned with your market.

What is Market Research?

Look, I have no idea when market research was invented. And I’m going to make a wild assumption–neither do you.

However…

What we can both safely say is this: sensible business people have always researched their market.

Why wouldn’t you ask your potential customers what they want or if they’re satisfied with their current product/service?

It makes logical sense.

Your customers are the most important part of your business, without them, you have no business. Therefore, market research is the yang to your business’s ying.

Yet, market research is more than just keep your eyes and ears open for information, it’s structured and goal-focused–it’s a systematic and objective collection and interpretation of data so you can reduce risk when making business decisions.

You’re not a doctor prodding your patient to see where it hurts. You have a clear design and plan in the hope to uncover the truth behind bias and assumptions.

Market research gives you a deep understanding of:

And helps you to:

And the best market research? Well… the best market research doesn’t stop once the data is collected. The facts, statistics, and opinions need to be converted into actionable information telling you something.

It needs to help you make smart decisions: linking your internal strategies with external market conditions.

When done right, you’ll be able to allocate your resources (people, money, and time), to give you a better chance of succeeding.

Why is Market Research Important? Strategic Alignment, It Starts With Market Research

Your market strategy will inform your corporate strategy, and your corporate strategy will inform your functional strategies. Break, or leave a link out, your whole system falls apart.

Market research is the first link in your chain.

Here’s what you need to answer:

What information do you need to develop your corporate, product/service, marketing, sales, and talent strategy?

Remember: strategy is the allocation of people, time, and money. Start here, and you’ll know your objectives of your market research.

What You Need to do Before Market Research

Before you do any research: HOLD SOMEONE ACCOUNTABLE.

Identify someone within your business who will be accountable to this process. If it’s everyone’s responsibility, then no one owns it.

Here’s what you need to remember:

Holding someone accountable isn’t just about them taking the blame if something goes wrong–it’s about delivering on a commitment and taking initiative with thoughtful, strategic follow-through.

Here are five areas Harvard Business Blog recommend you provide clarity to ensure a smooth accountability process:

Clear expectations
Clear capability
Clear measurement of success
Clear feedback
Clear consequences

For a more detailed explanation, you can see their article on accountability here.

As for who you should choose, It doesn’t matter, as long as they have the resources and it gets done.

The Four Main Points of Your Market Research

These four phases are where you want to be at the end of your market research.

Market Segmentation

You need to take your broad target market and divide them into common sub-sections of buyers who have common needs, priorities, and solutions.

When you’re segmenting your market, you need to answer the follow questions:

Obvious, right? Yes, it is. You need to understand the potential of your market. If you don’t already have this information, there are a number of ways you can research this (we’ll get to it further down).

Account Segmentation

Here you want to understand which accounts in your market will generate the most revenue in the shortest time.

Ideally, you want a lower cost per customer and a higher lifetime value (how to calculate).

Buyer Segmentation

You should have a clear understanding of how your target market make their buying decisions.

User Segmentation

Gain an understanding of the problems different users in your accounts face.

Important: If your selling multiple products/services, your go-to-market strategy will likely be different for each one. There’s likely going to be different user problems, buyers, and buyer decisions.

In order to do this, you’re going to need to understand the different research techniques used to gather the information.

Understanding Data: Difference Between Quantitative and Qualitative Research

Before we discuss the types of market research techniques, it’s vital you understand the roles of quantitative and qualitative data.

Qualitative Research

Exploratory research, it’s used to gain a deeper understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, motivations, and problems. Use this approach to uncover trends in thought and opinions, and delve deeper into your audience’s drivers and motivators.

You’re able to obtain insights in order to develop ideas (or hypotheses) for potential quantitative research. Sample sizes tend to be small, and your participants are selected to fulfil a given quota.

You need to put emphasis on the natural setting and points of view of your participants. As well as giving special consideration to whoever the researcher (you or a hired 3rd party). And what I mean, is behind your research is the biography of your gendered researcher: who speaks from a certain class, racial, cultural, and ethnic community perspective.

For example, do not consider what you’re looking for to be red instead of blue, black instead of white. Don’t discount information because it doesn’t fit your theory–it will inhibit progress.

Methods can vary using unstructured or semi-structured techniques. Including:

These qualitative methods examine the why and how of decision making, not just the what, where, when, and “who”. Because of this, analyzing the data can take longer to interpret than quantitative.

Quantitative Research

Used to quantify your problem by generating numerical data, or data which can be transformed into actionable statistics. You can use this technique to quantify attitudes, opinions, behaviors, demographics, and other defined variables.

Sample sizes tend to be much larger, and can be an excellent way to identify the size of your maker, how much it might be worth to your business, and discover areas for sales growth. You can use the data to formulate facts, trends, and uncover patterns.

Some methods include:

You can’t rely solely on quantitative research because it doesn’t allow for your participants to explain the why behind their choices. However, it is very useful for testing and validating your theories, and because it’s based on measured values, it can be checked by others as the data is less open to misinterpretation.

Types of Market Research Techniques (Secondary Vs. Primary)

There are two types of research techniques: Secondary and Primary. Let’s take a look at each method and the techniques you can use to uncover market research data.

Secondary Market Research

Also known as “desk research” (can be done sat at your desk), this research technique involves the analysis of existing research and data. It’s information already collected for purposes other than your market research, but, has relevance and utility.

For example, you’re able to obtain data from studies performed by government agencies, industry and trade associations, labor unions, media sources, chambers of commerce etc.

Secondary research is simply seeking existing information. You

I know–not particularly glamorous. However, it’s an excellent place to start because it’s often easy to find, and tends to be free or low-cost.

You can split this technique into two categories:

Internal sources
External sources

Internal Sources

This is valuable information hiding in plain sight. It’s the information you knowingly or unknowingly have already obtained. And it’s highly valued because you’re able to evaluate market trends, capacity, and capabilities.

Here are some examples:

It’s recommended you look to internal data sources first. It’s cheap, easy and fast to obtain useful data exclusive to your business. And, other rival companies can’t benefit from it.

External Sources

These are market research sources of data which have been collected by organizations outside of your business. Ideally used if the amount of data you’ve collected from your internal sources are not sufficient.

Examples:

When you perform market research using external sources, you must take a focused and controlled approach. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a large amount of pointless data. Focus your time on looking at highly relevant and credible sources.

Examples of Where to Find External Secondary Research

www.proquest.com – Find information on companies, you can filter the information by industry, location, and size. You’re able to request company profiles, pre-addressed mailing labels, and telemarketing reports.

www.marketingpower.com – American Marketing Association offers information to members on industry topics.

www.thinkwithgoogle.com – Obtain insights into how consumer behavior changes in relation to seasons, holidays, and other events.

www.sba.gov/ – Get free access to information on business and economic conditions, as well as indicators collected by the U.S. government. The site include data and statistics on income, employment, trade, manufacturing, and more.

www.census.gov – Contains a quick and easy-to-navigate monster database of information. Enter a city and state to see multiple options for viewing social, economic, household, and demographic data. This site also includes a cool interactive map, showing you a mash-up of economic and demographic statistics.

www.economicIndicators.gov – Releases daily economic indicators from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau. You can find briefings of retail sales, durable good, construction, new homes sales, manufacturing, and more.

www.fedstats.gov – See data on a wide-range of topics, including crime, education, aviation safety, energy use, health care, farm production, economic and population trends.

More tools you can use

Why Secondary Research Alone is Not Enough

It’s true, secondary research tends to be cheap and easy to find information. And although it can be fantastic for understanding your market growth, conditions, and industry trends. There are some big downsides.

Secondary market research is not customized to your needs. For example, you may find out how much companies pay for a SAAS product, when they’re more likely to buy, and how much they spend. But, what your not going to find out, is why they decided to buy a particular service or product.

It’s unlikely you’re going to find data specific to your objectives.

You’re dependent on others researching efforts. You could be getting inaccurate or out-of-date information. You may not also know the limits, parameters, and assumptions by the organization collecting the data.

Because of this, you need to perform primary research.

Primary Market Research

Tailored to your goals and objectives, it’s research conducted by you (or a third-party company on your behalf), without using any information available from other sources.

Primary research allows you to investigate the why. Giving you a deeper understanding of your target market’s values, psychology, attitudes, lifestyle, and interests.

You can investigate specific areas of interest, obtain feedback, assess demand, gauge responses, understanding consumers buying decision, and more–helping to to align your business with current external market conditions.

Although you’re able to obtain accurate and valuable information, primary research is expensive and time-consuming.

5 Common Types of Primary Research Methods

The following are the five most common techniques used to obtain primary data:

Focus Groups

Often one of the main ways company’s conduct primary research, focus groups are a way to gather information from selective people in a planned discussion. The idea is to understand consumer perceptions on a particular topic or interesting in a non-threatening environment. And allow members to interact with each other.

Conducted as a series, where the participants vary but the topic is the same, several focus groups can help spot irregular group differences (e.g. one group does not get on with on another).

Designed to identify the feelings, perceptions, and thinking of consumers about your product, service, or solution, focus groups have four key characteristics:

People

Typically made up of five to ten people, your group needs to be small enough to allow everyone to speak; but large enough to provide a diversity of experience and group interaction.

Common Levels of Experience

You need to have specific requirements (depending on your topic), for who will be in your focus groups. You should identify who can give you the information you’re looking for.

For example, if you want to understand the buying journey for companies looking to purchase a SAAS product, it may be better for you to recruit members who are involved in the buying process.

Depth of Information

An effective way of obtaining qualitative data rich in depth (not numerical), you (or your researcher) needs to guide the group to engage in order to uncover ideas, perceptions, experiences, and feelings about your topic.

Topic

You need to prepare a discussion guide for the moderator to use to ensure a logical flow of discussion surrounding your topic and provide clear focus.

Serving as a way to get people talking and feeling comfortable, questions should help to produce more information without putting pressure on the group to change their views. What you need to do, is focus your attention on understanding to views throughout the process.

For more information on conducting focus groups, you can check out these two article here and here.

Surveys

A broad term, covering questionnaires, forms, in-person surveys, telephone surveys, online surveys, mail surveys, and survey interviews etc.

This straightforward research method can help you understand if customers are satisfied with your business’s existing services or products, and if they’d like any changes. The larger your sample, the more reliable your results will be.

If you’re unsure whether doing a survey is right for you, surveys make sense when the following is true:

Surveys do not make sense if:

You can use the following tips to help create a concise, straightforward survey:

The problem

Why are you researching? What problem are you attempting to solve with the data you want to collect? And how is it going to benefit your product/service, company, and/or customers? When you can answer these questions, you’ll be able to ask the right questions.

Research Objective

This is your goal–what you’re hoping to achieve with your market research survey. You could position this as a question: “If we alter A, how would customers/prospects react?”

Set Timelines

Establish the best time for your to send survey, and how many times you’ll send it. The key here is to not annoy your audience. A good time to send your survey could be after they’ve visited your store, bought your product/service, or have been using a freemium version of your product.

Who and How Much?

Determine who you’re going to send your survey to and how much data you need. You can use SurveyMonkeys sample size calculator to help you figure out the best sample size for your survey.

For more information on conducting surveys, check out the following articles:

In-Depth Interviews

Face-to-face or telephone interviews can be effective due to the depth of qualitative data you can obtain. You’re able to conduct a semi-structured discussion (can be tailored during each in-depth interview based on the discussion), where your interviewee is treated as an expert in the field or situation they represent.

They’re useful for understanding the story behind a prospect’s experiences, and can be an excellent follow-up to a quantitative market research study.

Pro Tip: In-depth interviews are best used in place of focus groups when having a group of people with similar characteristics/experience is unnecessary. Use this method when you want to really dig into a specific issue.

The style of the interview depends on you (or your interviewer), and successful interviewers will listen more than they speak.

Advantages:

Can provide you with rich, descriptive data about your audience’s behaviors, attitudes, perceptions, motivations, and buying processes.
You have more opportunities to ask follow-up questions, dig for additional information, and circle back to key questions later.
Fewer participants are needed to obtain relevant and actionable insights.
No distractions or peer pressure dynamics which can sometimes emerge during focus groups.
You can establish a rapport with your participent, making them feel more comfortable and at-ease.

Disadvantages:

Observation

Coming in different shapes and sizes, observational research can be very interesting. Responses to surveys and focus groups can sometimes be different to how people really behave.

The ultimate benefit of using this method is you’re able to measure behavior–a direct representation of their “real life”. Giving you a more accurate picture of your audience’s habits and patterns.

However, as great as observational research is, there are some downsides.

You have no control over the situations and environments. It’s time-consuming, and you must have great patience to devote time to watching individuals or settings to obtain the information. You (or your researcher) may get distracted during the process, altering the results.

This method can be categorized into six major subdivisions:

Here are some examples of observational research:

Usability Testing

You watch your subject using your product, service, or solution (with or without intervention).

Eye Tracking

An excellent choice if you’re selling from a website. You’re able to track people’s eye movements to create a “heat map” of where they look. You can then use this information to optimize the design of your website.

Image Source

Contextual Inquiry

This method involves both interviewing your subject and watching them as they play or work in their natural environment.

Mystery Shoppers

You, your research, or a regular person you’ve hired go into a store and be an everyday shopper. They’ll then report back on their experience.

This can also be adapted to online businesses. You could simply fill out a competitors form, join their mailing list etc. and observe how they sell to you.

In-Home Observation

Watching someone go through their daily routines in their home could help you uncover some insight into certain pain-points.

Trials and Experimentation (Field Testing)

Utilizing scientific testing, you can test specific variables and hypotheses in controlled environments or out in the field (natural settings like shops or websites) to get quantitative results.

There’s a lot of cr*p online at the moment about experiments and field trials, but there is a simple example to help make it clear.

Let’s say you have a new product, you can use A/B testing to optimize your sales page. Some visitors will see one version of the sales page; others will see a different one. After some time, you can analyze the sales to see which sales pages performed the best.

This is a classic representation of testing specific variables in order to get quantitative results.

Which is The Best Market Research Method?

None of them and all of them.

Look, high-performing companies are more likely to have used a variety of secondary, primary, quantitative, and qualitative methods.

Cintell’s research shows organizations who use more research methods exceed revenue and lead goals.

Your next step is to then use these techniques in order to uncover the right intelligence.

Market Research Methods: How To Obtain The Right Intelligence

Let’s not forget the main goal: market, user, buyer, and account segmentation. You’re attempting to gain insights into each of the segments of the market you’re playing in.

In order to do this effectively, you’ll need to use the research techniques to do:

Let’s take a look at the secondary and primary research techniques you can use for each one:

How to do Customer/Prospect Research

Although customers and prospects are different, I’ve put them together here because many of the research methods you use can be crossed over between the two.

The key here is to gain insights into your customer’s/prospect’s drivers and motivators in order for you to create customer personas.

Your first step can be to look at internal sources:

Prior Research

Seems obvious, but it often gets forgotten. However, previous market research projects may contain useful information on buyer personas, segmentations, competitive messaging, win-loss analysis, and customer analysis.

Customer Interaction Databases

If you’ve got a database with a large percentage of customer/prospect interactions with your company, you can mine these effectively to gain insights on their behaviors and interests–from their first interaction with your funnels and sale cycles.

Here’s an example:

Web Analytics – You have two main types to consider: Traffic source and navigation history.

Traffic source includes referring sites, inbound link anchor keywords, and inbound keywords. This data reveals the topical interests of organic visitors to your website, many of which would be prospects and customers.

Navigational history is about tracking your buyer’s movements on your website. If you can, filter your web analytics data to a segment representing your buyers, then trace the path they took. This can reveal insights about the content they prioritize when deciding whether to buy your product/service.

Marketing Automation Software

This can provide useful information. Here’s how:

Lead Information: Marketing automation systems tend to have rich data on individual leads. Including lead capture form data and interactions with your marketing campaigns.

Prospect Interaction: By seeing how prospects interact with different marketing campaigns and content, you can build hypotheses on the needs and behavior of buyers.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Now, the usefulness of this information can range from ‘kind of useful’ to ‘extremely useful’, depending on the level of detail in your database.

CRM systems are usually organized as relational databases, with records of customer organizations and contacts, info on individual deals, activities and interactions with each contact related to sale opportunities.

Using this data, you can extract data about your customer companies based on their:

Employee Interviews

Interviewing your employees about their interactions with customers and prospects will uncover additional information you won’t find from CRM data.

Here are the internal role you should interview, and some general questions you should seek answers to:

Remember, every question is directed to your employee about your customer/prospect.

Sales Team

One way to take this further is to also spend a day in the field. Don’t just concern yourself with selling time, but also think about non-selling time.

When you spend a day with your sales team, and see how they interact with customers during selling time, you’ll get excellent market data.

But… during non-selling time, you’ll gain valuable insights into the behaviors of your sales reps:

You’ll be able to see, first-hand, how prospects are responding to your product/services, messaging, etc.

Marketing Team

Product Team

Customer Service Team

Once you’ve completed your internal customer/prospect research, you can start to do external research.

Here are some methods you can use:

You’re able to use all of the standard primary research methods I’ve discussed with you in this article:

Because I’ve already covered these methods (if you want to re-read this section, click here), I’m going to discuss two more methods I think are fantastic and rich in actionable data.

Win-Loss Interviews

These are excellent sources of data.

Why?

Because you’ll uncover more about your alignment with the market than anywhere else–if you lost a prospect, why? If you gained a customer, why?

Here’s what you don’t want to do:

Have a conversation about the features and benefits of your product/service.

Here’s what you do want to do:

Identify where your alignment is with the external market conditions: Are you solving your prospects problems and helping them to achieve their goals?

You can start by deciding who’ll conduct the interview. If you decide to have someone within your company do the interview, make sure they weren’t involved in the sales opportunity. For the best results, hire a third-party.

Third-party interviews will produce the most unbiased, in-depth information because your prospects and customers will feel more comfortable.

After this, you’ll need to build a list of interviewees. Here are some tips:

Keep it Balanced

If you have too many current customers, you’ll skew your buyer insights towards the messaging and value proposition you already provide. And away from what current buyers want or think.

Vice-versa, too many lost prospects and you’re results will be too negative.

No Warm Prospects

Contacting warm prospects can disrupt the current sales cycle and maybe threaten your deal. And even if they did participate, it’s unlikely they’ll give you quality information. In their mind, you could be relaying this information onto your sales team to be used against them.

No Sales Activities

Keep this whole process away from your sales department. If a participant thinks you’re trying to sell them product/services by telling them you’re doing market research, it will undermine the credibility of you, your company, and the data collected.

Pro Tip: When reaching out to buyers and lost prospects, it’s vital you get proper permission. This can be as simple as getting an OK from your VP of sales or customer service, CEO, or clearing each participant with the account executive.

Win-Loss Interview Questions

There are three main types of questions:

1.Validation Questions:

Ask a few quick questions to confirm the participant is an appropriate interviewee.

You’re also looking to identify if their a reasonable target and unearth what the interviewee’s involvement was/is/would be in the buying process.

Keep in mind, these tend to be boring questions, so if you’re able to obtain this information through more open-ended questions, don’t ask them. If you haven’t got the information by the end of your chat, ask them.

Here are some examples:

Open-ended Questions:

The point here is to get your participant to tell their buying process for your (or competitor) product/service. Open-ended questions gives your interviewee an opportunity to reveal insights that direct questions may not.

Example:

Hypothesis Testing:

Remember when I discussed internal interviews? During that process, you’ll amass a lot of knowledge on how your buyers operate. If you don’t cover these areas with open-ended questions, you’ll need to address them.

It’s good to list these questions after open-ended ones if they haven’t been answered, or you need more detail.

Example:

If, from your internal interviews, you learn ‘A’ is a key objection to your product/service, and your participant hasn’t bought the subject up, you could say: “How about “A”? Is it a vital obstacle?”

Look…

…in most interviews, the best (and most surprising) information comes from your participant telling their story. Don’t get bogged down over covering every specific question. When you create your list of questions, think of them more as a reminder of what information you need to obtain.

Social Media Listening

Do you hang out where your prospects and customers hang out? What are they saying? What industry forums do they belong to? What about LinkedIn groups?

This is very easy for whoever is accountable for your market research to be doing.

Monitoring social media can supplement the traditional market research because the information gathered during those methods are time-constrained, selective, and skewed.

Your participants may not tell you what they really believe. In fact, they may not even really remember what they were thinking at the time. You or your researcher may even ask the wrong questions or misinterpret what they’re saying.

Social media listening is:

You’re able to gain insights like:

Let’s bring this back to strategic market alignment and how you can use this information.

For example, you’ve done research and uncovered Pinterest is “hot” for you right now. But, you look at your marketing budget and see you have almost no dollars in your social media budget.

Remember, this is all about your allocation of time, people, and money.

From your social listening, you know you need to get money into that area because you have proof it’s a valuable way to spend with the current market conditions.

How to do Employee Research

Your employees are a valuable internal resource, it’s likely some of them will have been in your industry for many years, have worked for competitors, or worked in markets you’re trying to penetrate.

The key here is to look internally to obtain market feedback.

Use their knowledge to ethically obtain competitive intelligence and market insights. And don’t discount employees who have worked in other industries–they might be able to help you implement best practices.

Here’s an example:

If you owned a service company, and a you have an employee who previously worked for a SAAS (Software as a Service) tech company. They might have a suggestion on how you can optimize your customer engagement.

You have multiple ways you can obtain this information:

How to do Competitior Research

The aim of competitor research is to gain an understanding of their strategies and how they win. Is it product, price, customer experience?

Here’s how you can do it ethically:

Obtain secondary data from websites like:

You could also use paid subscription services like Hoovers, which provides in-depth descriptions of companies, or Dun & Bradstreet, which sell company reports containing information like history, directors, customers, employees, and recent developments.

You can gather a wealth of publicly held information on your competitors through these sites in order to gain an understanding of your market size, growth rate, and trends.

When it comes to primary research, you can use the Mystery Shop method I previously discussed to gain insights into how they market and sell.

If your competitors have physical shops, you can send some in to report back on their experience. If they’re online, this can be as easy as filling out a form on their website or signing up to their email list.

When you do that, here’s what you need to take note of:

This is valuable information you can easily obtain to get insights on their strengths and weaknesses. You can take this further and link it back to the win/loss interviews I previously discussed.

If you lost a prospect to a competitor–why? Why did they choose them over you? Or vice-versa. Was it messaging? Experience? Etc.

How Often Should You Conduct Market Research?

Consistently.

Continual market research will allow you to quickly track sales, spot trends and product or service issues, determine market size, and stay aligned with the current market conditions.

I know, it may not make financial sense for you to keep conducting interviews. However, social listening and competitor research can be done easily and cheaply.

This article first appeared on CustomLogoCases Blog

AI Is Building Brands, Right In Front Of Our Eyes

April 5, 2017 / nancyrubin / 2 Comments

It seems as if artificial intelligence is never out of the news. Practically every single day, there is some new breakthrough that promises to change the world. Just in the last month, for instance, Google Deepmind announced that they had created AI with a memory – meaning that their systems could learn something, remember it, and then learn something new straight after.

In other news, AI is now able to take a photograph and recreate it in the style of a painting. For instance, suppose you’ve got a photograph of your mother-in-law. This new AI will allow that photograph to be re-imagined in the form of a Picasso or Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

Given that branding is all about visual imagery, it makes one wonder whether AI could be used to improve how companies do their marketing. After all, if AI is able to understand a company’s visual characteristics, it could presumably come up with a bunch of marketing materials automatically.

AI-Curated Content

Pexels

We already see this kind of technology being deployed to help companies choose stock photos. On most business websites, stock photos are pretty generic and don’t really do anything to enhance the appeal of the company. But now, thanks to AI, it’s possible to automatically classify photographs according to their brand relevance. In other words, you don’t need a digital designer on your team to tell you whether a particular photo will work or not; you just need to run some software.

AI-Assisted Audience Targeting

Another way AI is helping companies is through audience targeting. Using conventional statistics and data, companies are able to track their customer’s preferences and make predictions about their behaviour. But without a thinking system behind the analytics, there’s only so far they can be taken. Often, analytics appeal to the average, rather than the specific customer, based on their specific tastes.

Pixabay
The good news is that smart algorithms are a lot better at parsing data than people, allowing them to make branding more personalised. Companies will soon be able to offer customers banner ads that speak directly to them, rather to their audience in general. This could lead to a world in which companies are able to offer customers prices on a customer-by-customer basis, depending on their overall spending patterns.

AI Brand Generation

Artificial intelligence isn’t just combining art with photos to create strange chimeras; it’s also coming up with its own concept art. The first example of this was Google Deep Dream, a strange algorithm that tried to invent new images based on animal images in its database. What it ultimately produced looked like something out of the seventh layer of hell, but over time, the ability of computers to come up with their own artwork has improved.

Wikipedia

For many marketers, this is a promising development. What it means is that it will soon be able to generate photorealistic content without having to go to the source. New content from the brand could be created every day at virtually no cost whatsoever. Does that sound like something you’d be interested in?