Know Thy Market Before You Plan – Understanding What The Market Wants to Buy Is a Lot More Valuable Than Figuring Our What You Want To Sell

By Tom Nixon
Chief Marketing Alchemist
Alchemy

This is the time of the year when most companies begin to plan their business, sales and marketing strategies for the coming year and beyond. It’s not uncommon for leadership to use the turn of the year to devise new service models, revise pricing plans, or launch fresh marketing schemes.

This work is generally done within the confines of the board room, with department leadership coming together to inform senior leadership about the state of the company and to brainstorm new ideas to move the company forward. Which leaves out a valuable — perhaps the most valuable — input: that of the market you’re looking to influence.

“What if we charged X for Y, but then included an up-charge for Z?”

“What if instead of being in the product business, we introduced a service-based model and monthly fee?”

“How can we convert this type of customer into the type of customer that actually makes us more money?”

While well-intentioned, this type of brainstorming begins and ends with the service or product provider’s interests in mind, and not the customer’s. As a result, what follows all too often is dismay and despair a year later (when it’s time to start the planning anew) in discovering the program didn’t go as planned. The up-charge never happened. The service model never connected. Our customer conversion plan actually repelled existing customers, rather than attracting new ones.

Now what?

Getting Into the Hearts and Minds of the Consumer

So how is a company supposed to know what the market actually wants, rather than simply guessing at what senior leadership hopes is the next big thing?

Answer: You ask them.

It sounds simple, intuitive and obvious, but very few companies take this seemingly natural first step before doing their year-end planning.

Perhaps they think it’s too time-intensive, and there’s no time to waste. (Funny, though, that — absent this approach — a whole year might go by before they understand whether their planning worked to begin with.)

Perhaps they think it will be too expensive. To which, a logical response might be, “How expensive is the trial-and-error approach?”

Perhaps others are afraid of what they might hear if they research the market’s drivers and de-motivators, or what the market really thinks about their product or service, or that the market prefers either the competition, nothing at all, or something no one has thought of yet.

No matter the inhibitions, it should be painfully clear that a company doing future forecasting and planning would want to know all of this stuff before they put their next plan into motion.

Taking some time to step back and respond to actionable intelligence actually (and naturally) saves time. Listening and responding directly to customer feedback intrinsically saves money. And, as for being afraid to hear what the market actually wants, wouldn’t you want to have that information before your competitor does?

But, of course, I’m open to other opinions. What do you think are some valid reasons for not working hard to understand your target market before planning your company’s next big thing?

Tom Nixon serves as Chief Marketing Alchemist for Alchemy, a Troy, Michigan-based brand strategy firm helping companies identify and maximize market engagement strategies. He can be reached at: tnixon@alchemygp.com.