The battle begins with research.  Of all the marketing services I provide, research is the one my clients most frequently want to short-cut or skip entirely to save time and money.  As you will soon see, however, this can be catastrophe.  If the old proverb “knowledge is power”¹ is true, then I ask you what is ignorance?  I will give you a hint: it's not “bliss”.

Let's start with a story: when I was the Marketing Manager for NordexiFishing² we spent a solid year studying our new market.  We learned numerous profitable lessons.

For example, serious sport anglers (our target market) have their own entirely unique vocabulary.  Words like “action”, “strike”, “trigger”, and “finesse” probably have no special meaning to you beyond what is in the dictionary, but these words have a special meaning in the jargon of sport anglers.

They also prefer to be called “anglers” not “fishermen” and fishing a “sport” not a “hobby” or anything equally demeaning.

Now I Ask You Two Crucial Questions:

First: how could we have possibly known this if we failed to perform research?  And second: what would the consequence have been if we failed to use – or even worse – misused their jargon, including insulting them by calling them fishermen and their activity merely a hobby?

Do you think this would have killed our credibility?  Making us look like amateur idiots supposedly sells expensive, innovative, hand-made lures?

I am quite confident that the consequence of failure to collect this research would have been catastrophic; every cent spent on marketing an utter waste, and we would have never even known why!

The Marketing Moral of the NordexiFishing Story:

“Knowledge Is Power!”¹ – and knowledge of your customers, your competitors, your environment and yourself is the power to earn a profit; while ignorance is not only incompetence, it is ignorance of why you are incompetent, and is ignorance of your incompetence.

Once you understand the vital importance of marketing research, what naturally follows is to ask what information should be collected, how it should be collected, and by whom.