From the course: Advanced Product Marketing

Research design methodologies

From the course: Advanced Product Marketing

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Research design methodologies

- What are the main types of research methodologies? The best way to learn the most important types of research is by using this model. To get a holistic picture of the market you'll need to attack research methodologies from each of the four quadrants, which in total represent user behavior, what people do versus what people say and type of problem, why and how to fix, versus how many and how much. Let's dissect each quadrant separately. As a frame of reference let's start in the top right corner, A/B testing. This type of testing is the most commonly used in a marketer's tool box, because it's the fastest and most effective way to iterate and optimize marketing campaigns. In this research methodology, you would introduce a set of micro variables to a randomized audience such as different call to action statements. Then assess the performance differences of each variable. The Obama campaign famously ran simple call to action tests on its landing pages comparing prompts like learn more, join us now, and donate now. This improved difference resulted in more than $47 million of campaign donations. This shows a true value of A/B testing which is gaining incremental performance improvements at scale. In the bottom right you have a great research method called surveying. You can use services like Qualtrics or Google Surveys to gain thousands of full survey completions by your target audience. When written well, surveys tell you where the market is and where it's moving. If the Obama campaign were to conduct a digital survey, they would aim to understand the current perception of Barack Obama, the perception in relationship to his competitors, the demographic breakdown of each perception, and primary values that would lead to votes per demographic. Interviews are the most impactful for product marketers. A research interview is a direct conversation between a representative of an organization and one or more research subjects of your target audience. It's a great supplement to the other two types of research because it uses qualitative information to validate and invalidate surveys and A/B tests. The Obama campaign's user interviews might look like dozens of 30 minute interviews asking questions about their voting values. Collectively, this helps product marketers understand the emotional associations between the target audience and the product, also known as Barack Obama. The most important tool in the top left corner is usability testing, because it's a way to literally see the target audience participate in the product, service, and business. Traditionally, the structure of a usability test has a couple main components. Objective, and user narrative. The user is given a very simple objective like donate to this campaign, and is prompted to narrate every individual thought as the task is being completed. For the Obama campaign this can unearth truly valuable insights about barriers standing between the user and the intended objective. Only by receiving a user narration, the Obama campaign researchers would understand language and design issues which might make the CTA hard to find and complete. Research is an incredibly important and labor intensive component of any product marketer's success. However, if you use at least one research methodology from each of the quadrants, you'll be able to have a solid foundation for any go to market strategy. And remember, premature optimization is the root of all evil.

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