Interviews or surveys?

I use these two in strategy work. These are the only two I’ve used. There may be other, hybrid, ways of getting your customers’ answers to research questions, but interviews and surveys are the tried and tested ones.

I think of interviews as a way to gather very rich, detailed stories from a select few customers. Less poetically, I have to rely on interviews when my client doesn’t have enough customers to warrant a survey.

Surveys are great at reaching customers en masse. Who has the budget or the leisure to run two hundred interviews? Sending a well-worded customer survey, on the other hand, is straightforward and useful. Surveys tend to get less detailed answers but have the potential to serve up patterns more readily than interviews.

So what do I mean when I say that the decision to go with one or the other is usually made for us?

How many customers we have is the defining point. # of customers = # of potential respondents, however, not every customer is an ideal one, so the actual number of people you want to reach is always smaller. It can get so small that you can’t hope to send them a survey and be done with it. You will get all the brevity of a Typeform response and none of the patterns you were hoping to see.

On the other hand, you can have such a faithful, eager customer base (great news) that your interview list grows unmanageable and you risk sinking all of your time into a massive interviewing project that ultimately yields the same insights as a good survey would.

These are general points, certainly, and each research project differs. Of course, we have the power to choose. Regardless of how many customers we are hoping to talk to, we can say: “Interviews only” or “Survey or bust”. But the tool you use must serve you, not the other way around.

I’m working on a project right now where I’m seeing very clearly the shortcomings and the strengths of both approaches.

Generally, my advice about choosing is this:

For a company with few customers or a very small pool of ideal customers, go with interviews right away. Go for nuance, context, really dig into your customers’ struggles and motivations. For a company with a large customer base, start with a survey that includes a question about a follow-up interview. If the survey doesn’t provide the depth of the insights needed, you can draw from the respondents for a round of interviews.

Ultimately, as long as you got the answers you need, you have chosen correctly.

This essay first appeared in my monthly newsletter sent to an audience of marketers and founders. Subscribe to be the first to read what I write next.

The post Surveys or interviews? appeared first on SMM Headquarters.

At the core of CLG, there are just three components:

• Targeted customer research;
• The top-priority customer’s Job-to-Be-Done definition;
• The top-priority customer’s experience/journey map.

Yes, just three. But pretty big ones, right?

Once you have them, you can use them to solve any number of business problems. Working through the CLG framework opens your eyes in a way—it highlights both the gaps and the opportunities that exist in and for your business.

A common one is customer acquisition. Addressing churn. Closing sales. Turning one-time purchasers into lifelong customers. Creating a referral program. And so many more!

“Customer-led growth” is a SaaS-inspired term coined by Georgiana Laudi and Claire Suellentrop from Forget the Funnel. Think “product-led growth”, “sales-led growth”, “marketing-led growth”—these are all popular models in the technology sector. Even though CLG is also “something”-led growth, it is not meant to replace these models, but complement them. I believe it can work in perfect tandem with a sales-led company and a marketing-led startup alike!

Customer-led growth can work in perfect tandem with a sales-led company and a marketing-led startup alike.

I’ll go even further and say that being customer-led lays the solid foundation for your company to make a conscious decision to become anything-first. And then rock it, own it and win at it.

CLG is not synonymous with marketing strategy but it is a great framework for developing a superb one. This is what got me interested and what ultimately sold me on CLG. This is also how I’m planning to apply it—by helping companies write and execute marketing strategies that are perfectly unique to their customers and their product or service. See my newly updated Services for more details.

CLG sounds straightforward—gather and analyze research, apply the Jobs-to-Be-Done theory to the findings, create a Customer Experience Map, then make decisions—and it is. But this doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s time- and resources-intensive, taxing and plain hard, which explains why many companies aren’t doing it. But it’s also incredibly important and rewarding to do!

And I strongly believe more businesses should.

Book a call with me to talk customer-led growth.

The post Customer-Led Growth (and why I believe it’s the way forward) appeared first on SMM Headquarters.