New Voice of Customer research tools make it easy to access the needed insights to develop and sell product. So why aren’t more marketers and organizations buying in? Let’s look at the typical objections, and how to convince your organization otherwise.

As a marketer, it’s your job to get customer insights and base strategic decisions on those insights. Michèle Bédard, VP of Marketing at Sub-Zero Wolf, Inc., understood that. But competing priorities from customer support, ad spending, and technology investments sometimes made it difficult to commit new spending on market research.

Sub-Zero isn’t alone. Plenty of companies struggle to go from wanting the power of deep customer insights to actually spending the time and resources. They end up being asked to put a finger in the wind and take a guess at strategic direction. They don’t necessarily know which headline will speak to consumers. Elevator pitches get written and new products get developed without a lot of insightful customer research.

Fact is, doing Voice of Customer research can help you tie together all of your organization’s marketing and product activities. So what are your organization’s barriers for not acquiring and leveraging customer insights? And how, as a marketer, do you justify the ROI of obtaining customer insights?

Do any of the following five excuses sound familiar? Let’s get to the bottom of helping your company get to the top.

Excuse #1: “We can’t afford focus groups”

Many marketers still have this notion that focus groups are the only right way to do research, and it’s just too bad that it’s so darn expensive. But the tools you may be considering aren’t the tools that Michèle Bédard used when leading Sub-Zero’s successful strategic marketing efforts.

She found a faster, more economical path that also happened to be easier for her organization to manage — a path that allowed her to get the research she needed while overcoming budget limitations.

Excuse #2: “We have competing internal interests”

Even with companies that are customer-centric it can be a challenge to build customer focus into everything you do. After all, organizations have competing internal priorities — from product engineering to operations to finance.

In the absence of customer insights, companies do what’s right for the engineering team, or the finance department, or they follow the direction of the CEO. No wonder companies head down the wrong path, or in multiple scattered directions sometimes.

Michèle Bédard and her team at Sub-Zero found a way to become a more unified, customer-centric organization — and it was the voice of the customer that showed her company the way.

Excuse #3: “We use surveys for our research”

Surveys can be a great tool for validating a known direction. But, the limitation with surveys is that you already know the questions and possible answers. Yes, you’ll tabulate results and maybe figure out what tactic to try next, but you can’t easily follow-up on unexpected results, or build those survey results into the bigger picture: your strategic business plan.

Michèle found that she could still use a survey-like approach for quantitative data, but also mine new depths of customer insights. Find out how she did it.

Excuse #4: “We don’t have the funds for extensive market research”

Michèle had limited resources. She had a small marketing department without a defined product management function. She didn’t have a research department, and she had to rely on outside agencies to be her research experts.

No one was dedicated to research in the organization and yet, customer insights were needed to drive everything she wanted to do. Find out how Michèle overcame her resource restrictions, and discovered an economic and efficient approach to Voice of Customer research.

Excuse #5: “We can’t give you IT resources for online research”

Michèle was interested in using web-based research tools, and her company wasn’t ready to invest in a large-scale community platform. What she didn’t realize was that she had options that gave her a community experience without a large up-front investment.

Discover how she utilized an online tool that was both effective and user-friendly.

How Can You Replicate Michèle’s Success?

I admit, it’s tough to be the lone wolf that cries, “Hey, we should be investing in a new direction.” It’s even tougher to do that without some evidence or proof to point to.

Right now your own assumptions and beliefs about what customers are really thinking and wanting may be only a part of the story. And, your management team might not fully believe your strategy because they haven’t witnessed these insights for themselves.

Michele knew this. She knew the over-riding importance of Voice of Customer research. She wanted and needed both new ideas and verification of existing strategies. And she was bound and determined to use customer insights to unify her company’s marketing efforts. To do that, she had to overcome all of the typical VoC objections you’ve just read about.

Find out how she did it — and how you can do it, too. 

Learn how Michèle Bédard (VP of Marketing) and the lean marketing department at Sub-Zero Wolf, Inc. leveraged insights from Digsite’s online Voice of Customer research communities. Sign up to join our October 1st webinar, offered through the American Marketing Association. (Sign up even if you can’t attend; we’ll send you a recording after it’s done!)