- Circana
- Jan 16
- 5 min read
Table of Contents:
Ensure Your Surveys Are Aligned with Your Business Goals
Before launching any survey, it is crucial for a retailer or manufacturer to sync research objectives with the overarching business goals. Without this alignment, companies risk gathering data that is interesting but ultimately not actionable.
The design of a survey should be tailored to address key issues facing the brand or retailer that affect their main goals. For example, if losing buyers is a top concern, a lost-buyer survey can be fitting. However, an initial analysis of behavioral data might reveal that the core problem isn't customer attrition but a declining buy rate. In this case, a survey could be designed to uncover why consumers are buying less frequently, not why they are leaving the brand entirely. This kind of approach ensures that resources are focused on solving the correct problem and that survey results will directly inform the best strategic decisions.
Ensuring Actionable Insights from Survey Data
As survey design begins, an important challenge is to identify which insights are needed to drive strategy and growth for the brand or retailer. Prioritization of insights needed is key to avoiding wasted effort and resources.
Prioritization comes down to two key factors: ensuring that the right issues are being addressed with the right survey design and creating effective storytelling. Before diving deep into survey development, it’s important to understand the potential impact of addressing a particular issue.
For instance, a brand or retailer might discover through behavioral analysis that it is losing penetration with a specific demographic. However, if that group represents a very small portion of the total consumer base, even a successful effort to win them back may have a minimal impact on the overall business. It is crucial to quantify the "size of the prize" to ensure that a business is focusing on opportunities that genuinely move the needle.
Effective storytelling is another important component. Data should not be presented as a simple list of facts. Here, too, putting together what’s happening with why it’s happening will help prioritize informed actions. This integrated story provides a holistic view of the consumer and makes insights more compelling for stakeholders across the organization.
There are many examples of how this approach to prioritization can inform a successful marketing strategy. Segmentation studies, for instance, have been used to help retailers categorize customers based on a combination of attitudes and behaviors. By understanding the different consumer segments, the retailer is able to size and then prioritize the opportunity within each group. This allows them to allocate marketing resources more effectively, targeting the most promising segments with the most appropriate messaging and promotions.
Interconnected, multifaceted research can also lead to more prioritized, actionable insights. An initial survey might hint at an opportunity for a manufacturer, such as a potential product innovation. The findings could lead to further, more specialized research to help uncover complex drivers behind potential demand.
This is where an integrated data partner is helpful. The insights from one survey can lead to activation through other solutions like audience targeting, shopper insights, or innovation forecasting. The process doesn't stop with a single survey; it evolves as new questions and opportunities arise, creating a continuous loop of insight, action, and measurement.
How Can Brands Improve Their Perception and Mental Availability Based on Survey Data?
Mental availability — the likelihood of a consumer thinking of a particular brand or store in a buying situation — is crucial for growth. Survey data can provide a clear roadmap for improving it.
Insights from surveys can pinpoint exactly what consumers need and the specific occasions when they might use a product or visit a store. This information is vital for crafting communication that resonates.
To improve mental availability, a brand or retailer needs to be present with the right message, for the right people, at the right moment. Whether it's through in-store displays, digital advertising or another marketing tool, the goal is to consistently remind consumers of a product or store, why they need it, and what makes it a better choice than competitors.
Insights aimed at improving perception often overlap with other solutions. For example, understanding consumer attitudes from a survey can directly inform audience targeting for media campaigns. Similarly, insights into price sensitivity can guide pricing analytics, and identifying unmet needs can fuel the innovation pipeline. This data can also be used in marketing mix modeling to optimize spend and in media measurement to track effectiveness, creating a closed-loop system.
How Can Brands Implement Innovation Strategies Based on Survey Insights?
Survey data is a powerful method for identifying innovation opportunities, especially when it comes to engaging different buyer groups and reaching consumers across the many omnichannel touchpoints of a product. It comes down to ensuring that a product or solution is positioned to meet buyer needs and offers a clear point of difference from the competition. This directly informs choices around product development, positioning, messaging, and channel strategy.
Consider the non-alcoholic beverage market. A legacy juice brand might face competition not just from other juices, but from functional beverages, seltzers, and even coffee shop refreshers, as today’s consumers are looking for different benefits, such as lower sugar, fewer calories, or specific functional ingredients. A survey can uncover these shifting preferences, showing the legacy manufacturer where to innovate to remain relevant. The insights might guide the development of a new low-sugar product line or a marketing campaign that highlights the unique health benefits of a specific ingredient such as cranberries. This 360-degree market view, which includes CPG, general merchandise, and foodservice, is essential for identifying both competitive threats and innovation opportunities.
Turning Insights into Strategy
A common mistake brands make is being too broad. Trying to be all things to all people results in a diluted message that has little impact.
For instance, an alcohol brand that defines its target audience as "21+" is not being strategic. True success comes from focusing on a specific adult beverage consumer segment, like a group that is interested in functional ingredients or is keenly focused on bold flavor, and developing a deep understanding of their needs and motivations. This targeted approach ensures that activation tactics, from messaging to media placement, are precise and effective.
Another potential pitfall is using misaligned data sources. If POS data tells one story and survey data tells another, it becomes almost impossible to create a unified strategy. Working with a single source of truth, where all data assets are aligned, allows for a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the market.
Measuring and Optimizing Impact
Once a strategy is implemented, it is essential to measure its effectiveness and optimize it over time. That said, measurement is not a one-size-fits-all process.
The right cadence often depends on the tactic. For a new product launch, a manufacturer might measure repeat purchases monthly. For distribution changes, a business can see results almost immediately.
In general, it’s important to be realistic with measurement. Some metrics, like brand perception, take longer to move than others.
A key advantage is the ability to use multiple data sources for measurement. A company can track sales with POS data, monitor household purchasing behavior with panel data, and gauge shifts in consumer attitudes with follow-up surveys. This creates a more comprehensive picture of performance.
Improve the Value of Survey Data with Circana
Brands and retailers can partner with Circana to create unified, holistic strategies based on integrated insights from multiple data sources. These strategies can be optimized through expert storytelling that leverages many solutions in Circana's toolbox, from panel and POS data to custom surveys and advanced analytics and more.
