Lara Hazard covers seven mistakes product teams make with market research: skipping it entirely, doing it yourself with bias, asking the wrong questions, using only one research type, sampling too few people (aim for 500 in quantitative, 25-30 in qualitative), not tracking over time, and abandoning customers after purchase. Combine quantitative and qualitative research, hire someone without bias, and keep checking in quarterly.
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Hey there, product launchers. Welcome back to another Office Hours. This one is with Laura Hazard, our market research, consumer market research expert on all things quantitative and qualitative Market market research. Hi, everyone, this is Lara Hazard, your resident market research expert. And I want to talk today about the biggest mistakes I'm seeing in research, especially with people just like yourself who are launching their product, even their first product, their 10th product. I want to talk through it. That's how we're going to begin my first video past the interview. We are diving in quickly and hard. And here is my goal. This is going to be seven major mistakes I see a lot of people making. And in seven minutes. Okay, so we're gonna do this. I know your time has value. You are busy, so we're gonna roll through quickly. Okay, you ready? Listen, you can follow up to my blog after. So just kinda take it in right now. Number one, skipping research. All right, we're gonna talk about it because you're busy, you don't have a lot of money. You're like, ah, I just gotta get this to market. I'm so excited. I wanna build on the momentum. Stop, take a beat. Let's do some research. You can find out so much and save yourself so much money by just doing some research. Just start somewhere. You got to know what are your consumers going to think, say and feel about your product. Don't skip that step. Okay? All right, guys, rolling through quickly. Number two, doing it themselves. Don't do this. You can hire me if you want, but reach out to maybe someone you know, an acquaintance, someone in your LinkedIn who maybe works in marketing or advertising and, and get their eyes on it. Because what happens is you have a bias because you're emotional and we love you for it. And that's great, but you're going to bias the results, you're gonna bias the questions. Cause you want it to succeed, and trust me, we all do. And there's a ways to approach this and finding the way for it to succeed. But don't do it yourself because you're going to have some missteps from your emotion, your hopes and dreams and your desires. And you want good, real, honest data. Okay, guys, Number three, with kind of my last one, don't do it yourself. The other major problem I see in market research is asking the wrong questions. Okay, so what do I mean by that? So you can ask, what do you like, what do you dislike? Great questions. What are we missing? You're not talking about the why, the emotion? Give me the full picture. What are we feeling? What are we thinking? And also what a lot of people who are doing specifically product research is. You're forgetting that it's context. Do you know your consumers, what do they value in life? What do they care about? Is family? Most important is adventure. Most important. All of that goes into this product that's going to be fitting into their life and hopefully buying a lot or often or spending a lot of money on it. So asking the wrong questions can be a huge no, no, again, goes back to that professional or someone with a different lens, the non bias. You do not want to ask the wrong questions because then your research was a waste. Okay, the next piece that I see people screwing up is not doing all the different types of research. So what I'm talking about is competitive analysis. What's happening, what's missing? Prices, colors, the retailers, all of that. You also need your own quant data, your online surveys. You need a number, especially if you're going to investors. They want to know what percentage of people plans to buy your product. This is also a line in the sand, something definitive we can grip our teeth on. So later, when we're tracking, which I'll talk about in a second, how far did we come? How many people are planning to buy your product? And the third piece is qual. I know I'm going through quickly and I'm going to have videos on each of these, but qual adds the color to your quant. So 70% of moms will buy your product. Why? How do they talk about it? What's impactful about your product? How does it make them feel? You can only get that from quality. Okay, sticking with me, number five, not talking to enough people. So for quant, I want to see 500 at least. And I want it to be representative. All ages, genders, regions, anything that's relevant that may buy your product, we need to talk to them. And we need to talk to a lot of them because otherwise it'd be qual. And let's talk about qual. I recommend talking to at least 25 to 30 people and that can be in group setting, chat setting, phone setting. But you need different opinions, different values. You need again, well rounded Enough people to get all the opinions and for you to be really confident and sure of what you do next. Guys, another major problem I'm seeing, tracking people aren't tracking their data. Okay, remember when we started off, we're putting a line in the sand. Here's where we stand today. You need to follow up. Stop. You have to keep doing research because the market changes, celebrities change or influencers change, colors change. We have new colors every season. Weather change, politics change. That will change how people interact with your product, how they feel about it, what they're buying. The economy is changing. You need to track, continue doing research. Don't stop now. Once you've put the money in to start. Great. Get your product out there, get it distributed on the right shelf, your right brand message and then check back. I recommend checking back quarterly if you can't afford it. I get it once a year at least. And I'll have a whole video about tracking and things to think about and make sure to keep consistent. But the key is you gotta track. All right guys, last one. Number seven, being scared to follow up. Don't be scared. Sometimes I see people doing a bunch of research, the product's out, woohoo. We're selling and then not following up. Don't be scared. So many times people are like ah, I'm nervous what they're going to say. They're like under the rug and would rather just kind of wait to see if people rebuy again. No, no, no, no. Get ahead of the game. Send the follow up email. Even like how'd you enjoy your purchase? What'd you think? Did you love it? If so, leave us a review on Amazon. Didn't love it as much. Here, please take this survey and tell me why. And by the way, I'll give you ten bucks back. People will do it and they'll be honest and you need to know. So don't be scared. Okay, how we do? I think pretty close to seven minutes. I know I went super fast. I'm going to have tons of follow up videos about really digging into a lot of these issues. Check out the blog, you can read through everything. Send me an email. I'd love to answer some of your questions and really dig in with you. I think the takeaway is you need to do research. It needs to be well rounded and it needs to be non biased. Asking the right questions to the right people and to enough people. This will really help set a path forward for not just product development and usability, but also distribution, advertising, marketing and building a brand and ultimately selling more products and making more money. I'm here with you. We're alongside to each other and I'm excited to dive in and talk to you more about your individual problems and the things you're running into and to research. Let's do it. Okay, talk to you soon.
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