Stuck on analyzing your customer research data? Do this instead…

by | Dec 7, 2021 | Marketing, SaaS | 0 comments

The process of surfacing strategic insight relies on our team’s ability to do two functions fairly well at the same time:

1. Asking the right strategic questions — related to the customer journey, the business model, the product, the market, the competitors, and so much more.

2. Analyzing the customer research — noticing what interesting trends there are in the reports we’ve generated (especially after filtering out not-so-great customers)

On asking the right strategic questions…

If you’re going through any kind of strategic initiative, it’s critical that you know two things: what you want to achieve, and who you are as a business.

The “what to do to get there while remaining true to who you are” is what you’ll use this strategic process for.

After a round of customer research, here’s what we’re asking of the data we just acquired:

1. What is the customer hiring the product for?

2. Are they achieving that success?

3. What’s currently blocking the customers from achieving success?

4. What aspects of the business could be improved to help….

a. More customers achieve success? (increasing growth volume)

b. Specific customers achieve success? (improving a specific customer segment)

c. Customers achieve success faster? (decreasing the sales cycle)

d. More customers to expand their plans? (increasing expansion revenue)

e. More customers to recommend the product to others? (increasing referrals)

On analyzing your data set…

Next, let’s analyze. Assuming you’ve been making your customer research data-driven and turning what was once qualitative into something quantitative, you’ll have a pretty in-depth data set to take a look at.

Most teams will stop at just analyzing the main data set reveals without any adjustments to it, but thanks to the ability to filter data (yay, Airtable!), you can filter out various cohorts of customers to find patterns.

Try toggling filters on:

  • Customers with specific JTBD
  • Not-so-great-fit customers
  • Customers of a certain cohort combination — such as firmographics, plan type, or LTV
  • Customers with specific product requests or needs

This process alone will reveal a few hidden secrets. You might notice that dealbreakers or acquisition channels change for certain cohorts of customers. You may notice different challenges or needs based on LTV ranges or even plan type.

Document these observations and findings. Share them with marketing, product, and other stakeholders — they’re the start of your strategic insights. As you learn and discover more, the parts of your strategy that you need to pay attention start coming together.

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