What are the top questions that people want answers to in social research?
Well funny you should ask. The nerd in me just spent several hours analyzing the work we have been asked to do so far in 2011. I looked at each engagement to understand the specific types of marketing questions that we had been helping our clients answer. I then counted everything and added it up (actually Excel did the adding up). Here is the result:
This data can be further broken down into broad categories – see the pie chart.
We see that marketing people most often are focused on comparing themselves to the competition (37%) and then exploring what their customers care about most in the category (27%). This is followed by interest in media planning (24%), questions about communications strategy (i.e. how should I position my brand) and new product development (3%).
I was particularly interested in this analysis because it is at the heart of our own innovation process. We have always designed software tools to answer marketing questions. It is fundamental to our DNA. We always start with a simple question like “How can I better engage my customers on Facebook” and then explore the best ways to use data, software and analytical frameworks in order to answer that question.
It is my beef with much of the “big data” software development taking place in the category right now that seems to focus more on the question “How can I wrangle big data into a pretty chart?”. I see it causing a lot of marketplace frustration when people are looking for answers to marketing questions. In fact, I was talking to a dashboard using friend yesterday who opined, “I wish they would lead me by the hand through the steps that I need to take to answer my question, there are so many tools and choices!”.
They are right of course. Great social software should be like great photo developing software. It should already understand the steps you need to take and then lead you by the hand through the process to get the best end result. My photo software feels like I have an expert developer at my side showing me the way. Social software, at least social software that wants to answer marketing questions, should do the same.
is the CEO of MotiveQuest, a social intelligence company.
Prior to starting MotiveQuest in 2003, David was the youngest ever account planning EVP at Leo Burnett. David has also worked in marketing and strategy positions at IBM (UK), PepsiCo (Aus), Saatchi & Saatchi (UK) and McConnaughy (US).
David enjoys sailing, racing cars and travel (he once rode a motorcycle from Sydney to London). He spends his spare time wrangling his two boys, James & Hugh.
Discuss - 3 Comments
David,
Good breakdown of the reasons that brands listen. Some of these numbers are a bit surprising, but very informative. Thanks.
Thanks for posting. We had nerdy fun doing the analysis!
[...] MotiveQuest, a social intelligence company (and client), has compiled a list of the top 30 questions marketers ask of their social media research. [...]