For a long time, businesses and brands have thrived on the idea that innovation is a necessity for their brands in the long run. However, a lot of brands focus so much on making that perfect product or offering that perfect service that they forget that like beauty, perfection is in the eyes of the beholder, in this case, the consumer.
A consumer can spot the flaws and what your brand terms ‘perfect’ may be below average. This just goes to show how important a consumer is to your brand. Overlooking the consumer when creating a product for your brand can cause more harm than good.
The best way to get through this is to integrate consumer insight which will act like a compass to what the consumer wants. This way, you know what new product, service or idea will survive in the market.
Before further explanations, it is necessary to understand what consumer insight is.
The interpretation of trends in human behavior aimed at increasing the effectiveness of a product or service for the consumer, as well as increase in sales is what consumer insight is. As a brand, it is necessary to take the opinions of what your consumers say about your brand seriously. These opinions may not always be positive but if there is one person who can sight a flaw or otherwise in a product or service, it is the consumer.
Since brands are concerned with providing the best offers and services to best serve the needs and wants of the consumer, it is necessary to take their insight into consideration when creating new lines of products and services.
As earlier stated, in order to create a new line of products or services for your brand and for it to be successful, customer insight is necessary. As a brand owner, do not at any point think that you can know more than the customer. Here the phrase that ‘the consumer is always right’ comes to play because they have the best insights to help move your brand from level 0 to 100.
It has become increasingly necessary for brands to understand that as the needs and influencing variables of customers change so do their insight, and what would have worked pre-covid 19 for instance might not be functional post-covid 19. It is therefore important to stay in the business of gathering insight to be used in fueling new ideas to move the brand forward.
A brand that has utilized customer insight to fuel innovation is the global sports apparel brand, Nike. As a brand, they do not just create things out of nowhere, their growth is powered by digital insights that it embeds into every part of their company. Nike is one brand that is hyper focused on their customers.
According to Forbes, Nike’s acquisition of a data analytics company called Zodiac allowed the brand to crunch together its data points from customers using the Nike app and other connected devices. This enabled the brand to know when customers are likely to buy shoes, channel their creation of new shoes towards these periods how to reach the customers to ensure purchase.
This insight has helped Nike to know what to create, when to create and cut down the excesses or waste for the brand.
In 2012, Nike ran a campaign when the London 2012 Olympics began to encourage everyone to excel as athletes, regardless of their ability and it was themed, ‘Find Your Greatness’.
The campaign was worked amazingly well and the message appealed to the audience it was meant for. The success of the campaign wasn’t because the brand was a popular one but it was as a result of the customer insight which showed that it was not just the championship athletes or record breakers that strive to push their own limits. With his insight, creating a new campaign was easier and they hit the nail on the head without missing important details.
Apple is another brand that has constantly grown through consumer insights. The insight has helped the brand improve itself while creating new features for their gadgets.
It is therefore important to integrate consumer insight into your brand to help you fuel innovations. Here’s how to do this:
This feedback could be face-to-face, through mails, through reviews or through comments on your brand social media platforms. A brand that doesn’t encourage feedback will work blind and end up losing customers to competition. Due to this, let your customers give their honest, undiluted opinions about your product or service.
The insight gotten isn’t just for keeps sake but should be used to improve what your brand is offering. This way, you have enough material to create a new idea or improve on an already existing idea.
Consumer insight changes as their needs and wants change and in order to satisfy these needs, it is important for brands to carry out research to uncover relevant consumer insight as often as possible so as to be able to meet customers at every turn.
Stories
