As a consumer, how many times do you change your mind or become influenced by the latest trends when making a buying decision? It’s true that consumer demands are always changing in response to a variety of societal, technological, and market influences.
As a digital marketing agency, it’s our job to take the pulse on the ever-evolving consumer demands and be able to turn those insights into winning strategies for our clients. We’ve asked our integrated team of marketing experts to share specific examples of how they took marketing insights and created successful campaigns. But before we dive into these examples, let’s first clarify what defines marketing insights.
What are marketing Insights?
Marketing insights are like “ah-ha” moments about your customers that come from analyzing data. They’re more than just stats or quick facts; they try to explain ‘why’ customers act a certain way, revealing their likes, needs, and wants. These insights come from different places – like market studies, customer reviews, sales info, social media stats, and more. They take all the numbers and turn them into useful information that can help shape your marketing plans and make better business decisions.
For example, you might notice that one of your products is selling really well. But a marketing insight goes deeper, trying to find out why this product is doing so well – maybe it’s in line with a popular trend, or it solves a problem that other products don’t. Knowing this can help you tweak your marketing approach and even guide what products you make in the future.
How We Approach Marketing Insights
Throughout the year, the COHN team collects surveys, interviews, testimonials, and any other form of data that can fuel our marketing strategies. We spend a lot of time digesting all of the latest trend reports, bookmarking the campaigns that keep us inspired, and taking a look back at the results of our earlier strategies.
Starting in 2021, the COHN team decided to host regular brainstorming sessions where our team could share examples of marketing insights. It could be as broad or narrow as they liked and speak to their personal feelings or a general sense of the world. We simply wanted to start a conversation and see what patterns or similarities we unlocked.
This exercise started as observing the world around us and turned into creative, strategic marketing campaigns that moved our world forward. Below we’ve shared three real examples of how this process led to some of our favorite campaigns based on the customer journey.
Project Hopscotch at Old Town Lafayette
Old Town Lafayette is a small, tight-knit community of artists, entrepreneurs, and passionate residents, all mixing together in one unique downtown district. It’s an eclectic destination with roots in organic, homegrown marketing, so we knew any campaign put forth couldn’t feel too planned or polished.
After a brainstorming session with the COHN team, we settled on the observation that consumers are craving the comforts of nostalgia, which led to our month-long experiential campaign, Project Hopscotch. This integrated campaign invited the community to visit 10 custom hopscotch courses that were designed by local artists and scattered throughout the downtown. Each course included a QR code that, when scanned, donated $1 to a local art student. This campaign successfully allowed our audiences to slow down, unlock memories, and embrace whatever adventures they happened to stumble upon.
Team You for Panorama Orthopedics
Panorama Ortho & Spine was growing quickly along the Front Range of Colorado. They wanted a campaign that speaks to the breadth of offerings and locations, depth of knowledge, and top-notch care they provide to their patients. COHN knew we needed to develop a strategy that was unique in the healthcare spectrum and true to our client.
After brainstorming, we found that across industries and individuals, people want an unfiltered lens on life. This was the perfect starting point for “Team You,” a campaign that used real-life patient storylines, photography, and content angles to showcase the unscripted, real side of recovery and preventative care to our audiences.
Lifetopia for Credit Union of Colorado
With an ever-growing and extremely competitive financial market, Credit Union of Colorado had to differentiate itself to grow its membership base, while also retaining current customers. With so many banks and credit unions to choose from, COHN needed to create a campaign that did more than just resonate with people. It needed to inspire people which led to our observation that consumers want to redefine and embrace happiness. We are adapting to an entirely new worldview which means that our joys, hobbies, and dreams are being rewritten. Lifetopia is a campaign that allows audiences to indulge in their blissful state of mind. It shows that Credit Union of Colorado supports all your ambitions at all your stages of life, without taking itself too seriously.
Methods and Techniques for Collecting Marketing Insights
We aren’t keeping our methods for collecting marketing insights a secret! Here are some other ways COHN collects information and ways your business can too.
- Data Collection and Analysis: At COHN, we gather data from a variety of sources – everything from sales figures and customer information to website interactions and the performance of marketing campaigns. Through careful data analysis, we discover patterns and trends. These reveal customer preferences and show us which marketing channels work best.
- Market Research and Surveys: We use market research and surveys to get data driven insights directly from our client’s customers. This method lets us collect detailed information on customer behavior, market trends, and who else is playing in the same space (the competition). The best part about surveys is that they’re customizable. Want to know something specific? Just ask! This approach helps us create a laser-focused picture of the market.
- Social Media Listening and Monitoring: In today’s digital age, social media platforms have become a gold mine for customer insights. Through social media listening and monitoring, businesses can keep tabs on customer sentiments, conversations around their brand, trends in their industry, and feedback on their products or services. This continuous monitoring helps businesses stay ahead of customer expectations and react to changes in real-time.
As we navigate the changing landscape of consumer demands, we stay agile and committed to our clients to always be listening and learning along the way. We’re not sure what the next great marketing insights examples will be, but if you believe your business could benefit from our full-service, integrated agency then connect with COHN and we’ll work together—as a team—to ensure a winning strategy for 2023 and beyond.
