Marketing Insights - The Power of Curiosity

In this episode of the Business Builders Podcast, we explore the role of marketing insights in driving business growth. We discuss the significance of curiosity in unravelling valuable insights that shape decision-making and customer-centric strategies. Our hosts, Brenton Gowland and Ron Tomlian provide actionable advice on leveraging curiosity to improve your marketing approach.

The key in this episode: 

1. Understanding Marketing Insights:  We explore what makes a marketing insight and how it differs from mere data. It's all about asking the right questions ("So what?" and "Why?") and understanding your customers on a deeper level. 
2. Developing Insights: We discuss practical strategies for developing insights, starting with your existing knowledge, verifying them through qualitative research, and testing hypotheses with quantitative research.
3. Insights & Decision Making: We highlight the importance of sharing insights across an organization, particularly with leadership, to influence decision-making and better meet customer needs.
4. Actionable Insights: We stress the need not just to collect data but use insights to modify your products, services, and marketing strategies. It's all about being more effective at solving customer problems.
5. Curiosity & Customer Perspective: We underline the importance of curiosity and bringing the customer perspective into your organization. This means asking questions to understand their problems and experiences and making customer needs a priority in your thinking. 

Notable Quote:
"An insight is where one of your friends might come and tell you what's being said about you behind your back or give you their perspective about your behaviour, or something that's going on in someone else's life that makes you realize you should act differently around them." - Brenton Gowland.

So join us for this episode as we discuss the profound impact of curiosity in marketing and how harnessing the power of insights can help us make better strategic decisions. 

Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review to let us know your thoughts!

Adapt_CO
Helping businesses find their new shape.

SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

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Transcript

Brenton Gowland: 0:01

Hey there Business Builders. Have you ever wondered how you could use market insights to drive your business growth? Well, in today's episode, we're exploring the value of marketing insights. We'll be discussing our top strategies for gaining these insights and how to utilise them in your business to make better strategic decisions. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian: 0:26

And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland: 0:27

And, Ron, we've been covering marketing for a while now. So I think we've almost done every aspect of marketing, do you think?

Ron Tomlian: 0:34

Well, marketing is a big subject, and I think we'll have to revisit it when we get some feedback about what aspects we haven't covered. But I think today, I'd like to cover an area of marketing, or role of marketing, there's often not considered or forgotten about.

Brenton Gowland: 0:52

Okay, what area is that?

Ron Tomlian: 0:54

Here's the thing most people think about marketing is taking the organisation or taking your products and services out to the marketplace. And that's a very important part of marketing. But I think as important, if not more important, and certainly a more fundamental aspect of the role of marketing is to bring the customer into the organisation. Some people call it the customer advocate. And I certainly know that in roles that I've had, that's been the harder part of the job.

Brenton Gowland: 1:25

Customer advocates?

Ron Tomlian: 1:26

Is to bring an understanding or realisation of what's important to the customer, into the organisation because it let's be fair, whether you're a one man band, or whether you're a large organisation, you start to get a perspective, that's your own, you start to, you know, the Americans talk about drinking your own Kool Aid, you start to believe your own perspective on the world. And it's not often the perspective that is important to your customers.

Brenton Gowland: 1:55

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian: 1:56

So bringing that perspective in is really important.

Brenton Gowland: 1:58

That's interesting. I've been listening to I must admit, here, a few of the Jordan Peterson kind of things that he's been saying. And one of the key thing that stuck with me out of his book, I know this is a strange insight, but it takes a tribe to form a mind, right? Because it takes multiple perspectives to bring balance to us as individuals,

Ron Tomlian: 2:18

And you've just hit the nail, right on the head. It's insight.

Brenton Gowland: 2:22

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian: 2:22

And at the moment, it's easier than ever to get data, we're inundated with data. And it's easier than ever to analyse that data, you can even get AI to do that sort of stuff. But the important thing is not to focus on the data, I think it's in order to bring the customer in, you need to understand what the data is telling you, you need to have what I call marketing insight. And nice definition of what's a marketing insights, your capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of your market and the players in it. But when we were talking about this before the show, that's a nice definition, you talked about a much more understandable version of what an insight is. So tell me more about that.

Brenton Gowland: 3:10

Okay. Firstly, I'll say I don't think it's not understandable what you're saying. Obviously, an insight is based on learning what's going on in the market so that we can change our behaviours or our activities accordingly, based on having an insight. But I like to, and we've talked about this a bit, we like to put things in a terminology that makes it really clear to understand to a four year old, but you can't explain it to a four year old is saying that, well, you maybe you don't know the subject. But I often look at things like business is like a person. It has a personality, we talked about branding a lot. Branding is what people say about you, when you're not around well, with your group of friends, people talk about you when you're not around daily. So if you imagine if you go to a barbecue, and there's the conversation you're having, but then there's the conversations people have had, where they think about you in a certain way. Now an insight is where one of your trusted friends might come and tell you well, I've got to tell you, this is what's being said about you behind your back or this is what's going on or your friend might pull your sight or you might be at the barbecue and someone might not just tell you about your behaviour, but something that's going on in someone else's life that makes you realise something about how you should act with that person. For example, somebody in your friendship circle might have been acting really strange lately and behaviour that you might think God, I don't know if I want to spend time with that person anymore. And then someone tells you Well, do you actually understand that their mothers become really sick and they're having to care for them and this is happening now I'm making this up. This is fictitious, but you've then got an insight into that person that means you go you see them in a different way, right? And then you act in a different way towards the insight, modifies your behaviour or might affect your behaviour is a better way to say it. And if it's in insight about yourself, it might help you become more effective in that group more liked, because being liked is really good because if we liked, and we know that people in our group are able to do things, we can get more done, because we can tap a few people on the shoulder and say I need to do this, you get the point, though, you can influence the Insight is learning something you didn't otherwise already know, outright, but you get it confirmed. And that insight gives you the ability to change, modify your behaviour, or develop a way of doing things that makes you either more effective, better liked, or able to understand someone that you're interacting with more, the Insight is incredibly valuable. And that comes from friends.

Ron Tomlian: 5:38

And it's the same with organisations. Yes, the end point of all this, doing things in the marketplace, or marketing is to be more effective at influencing customers and getting them to change their behaviours towards your product versus others, really to solve those customers problems more effectively. Yes, that's what we're all about. So how do you do that you need to have insight into what those problems are? What's influencing the behaviours of customers at the moment. So you need a deeper understanding of those customers. And that's where the whole idea of insight comes from. It's not just the raw data. It's what the data tells you

Brenton Gowland: 6:22

There's that saying, How many times have you heard someone say, I just wish I had a crystal ball?

Ron Tomlian: 6:26

Oh Yeah. See the future.

Brenton Gowland: 6:27

See, I think that's again, what you're saying, because it's like being able to see the road ahead in more clarity than you can now.

Ron Tomlian: 6:33

What's interesting, is it the developing marketing Insight has a number of advantages. One of those is I understand my customers now, what they want. So what their needs are, they're different, and what they think about my product and products of other people, so a deeper understanding of what's going on what their problems are. But it's also about anticipating the future. What are the trends? What will be problems that customers have in the future, so that I can see whether I can do something about solving those problems with what I have to offer, and solve problems that maybe people haven't even identified at the moment? And here's the thing, people often go out to talk to people in the marketplace and say, what solution are you looking for? Yes, it's the wrong question. The question should be what problems you're having in this area, because people can very easily identify what their problems are. And you talk to somebody, they love to talk about their problems. That's true. Yeah. The solution serves problems are more elusive. And they might not even know what the potential solutions are, or what could be solutions into the future. They're not experts in that area. All they know is their problems. And they can articulate them, well, they can articulate their perspective. Funnily enough, there's some famous examples of things like the iPod, the development of the old iPod, before the iPad, they didn't say, hey, what solution are you looking for in terms of playing your music? The people at Apple talk to their customers about what problems you're having? And they were having problems with the Walkman and the disc Walkman? Because the shuffle problems and things moving around, and not having enough of a selection and one CD, or one in the old days, one cassette, so people were articulating, these are the things that I problematic about what I've got at the moment, they weren't talking about solutions to that problem. They maybe haven't even thought about them. It was when the people at Apple understood what problems people were having this insight, they they got an insight. They said, well, there is actually technology that we can employ to do something about this. And in fact, it wasn't even the technology. It was the first mp3 player was actually developed by another company altogether. But the people at Apple were able to see the benefit of that technology to apply to the problems that people had. And that's an insight.

Brenton Gowland: 8:58

Yeah. So we talk about the four P's of marketing, right? People product, place price, and we've talked about in past episodes, that product is often influenced or should be influenced by the marketing department. But the marketing department is often as Tony was saying the other week the colouring in department might be seen internally. Yeah, or it might be seen as just doing promotions and so forth, but influencing product and I shared a story which really illustrates exactly this apple scenario you just talked about, but that was the coffee pod machine. So the way they worked out or develop that product was by filming people and talking to people as well but filming them in their kitchen environments and noticing that the key thing from the coffee machines because Why did people not buy a coffee machines in such a vast quantity? Oh, I stopped using them while I stopped buying coffee and they found out that after watching people over time it was the mess that the coffee grounds create that was causing people drama, always cleaning up coffee grounds, coffee grounds, coffee grounds, and To be honest, I'm a perfectionist a bit. So I've got an actual coffee machine here with the plunger and the lever and all that kind of thing because I like to be like a little in house barista, but I'm always cleaning up coffee grounds. But they observed this work that out. And they develop the coffee pot machines, or don't, there's a coffee pod, machine not have his mess, mess and coffee grounds. Yeah, that's right, your new way of having to clean up but that's how they develop the product. They got an insight, and it's been massively successful. Every second business I walk into has a coffee pod machine.

Ron Tomlian: 10:31

It creates his own problem in terms of disposal of the pods, but you got to buy the pods all the time. Yeah, that's another problem. And people are coming up with innovative ways like compostable coffee pots. Yeah, but that's another problem. But it solves the first problem.

Brenton Gowland: 10:45

Well, it's created a product, it's had a lot of uptake. So that's a huge thing.

Ron Tomlian: 10:50

We often talk about return on investment for marketing. And the whole idea of marketing is not to talk to everyone. It's to talk to the people who need a one product and service you have. So how do you focus your marketing efforts in particularly marketing promotion efforts? That's understanding what the mechanisms that the customers use the most effective channels to market using a marketing jargon term, the media that they consume the most effective touchpoints, the type of messaging, you don't get that you don't get those insights, by just guessing that's correct. Or you can by trial and error. But boy, that's an expensive way of doing it.

Brenton Gowland: 11:32

But you have to trial and error is a valid thing too, though.

Ron Tomlian: 11:35

It is if you're able to do it, if you do it quick and you do it cheaply.

Brenton Gowland: 11:40

Well, if you use insights to do trial and error, it ends up being a better scenario.

Ron Tomlian: 11:44

Absolutely. Absolutely. So anticipating future trends, optimising your marketing, understanding what makes you different? Yeah, under the eyes of your customers and potential customers. That's an insight, that's an insight you should be looking for

Brenton Gowland: 11:59

All of these insights are important, but the one thing people might be able to relate to better is because you know, we will often want to sell our products quicker and find marketing campaigns or ways of doing things. Do you remember that campaign from the states got milk? Have you ever seen that? Yeah. So the whole thing with that is milk sales were going down in the states in a big way. I've watched some documentary on it years back, if I can remember all the details properly. But anyway, the key thing I understood from that is when they just came up with this campaign, it was simply got milk, and they had different scenarios where they use that slogan, and they made it a bit funny as well. But people in the house opening the fridge, no milk, got milk, all that kind of stuff. But insight was that milk was one of those things when you ran out of it, you kind of go, oh, I should really have milk in the fridge. Even myself last night, I had to work late, I went to the fridge to make a cup of tea and open the fridge and there was no milk there. I was like, Ah, I forgot to buy milk. And it was just based on that simple insight. And it turned their sales around. Incredibly. But would they have thought about that right from the get go? I milks better like this i milks better like this will advertise this health benefit. Oh, it's a to milk is there's no simple got milk.

Ron Tomlian: 13:08

And that comes back to an insight into what is the fundamental problem that our customers are having.

Brenton Gowland: 13:14

Correct? And it might not be the thing we think it is.

Ron Tomlian: 13:17

This is I think we're really important. And we're going to talk about it later. How do we get these insights? It's worthwhile using the knowledge you have at the moment and differentiating between what I think and what knowledge I have. And what I mean by that is, knowledge is something that you can know and is a fact. Okay, your opinion, or your perspective might be useful to lead you towards that knowledge. But at the end of the day, unless it's verified, it's not really knowledge. This is a scientific approach. So I think a good starting point, or how do you develop these insights is to ask yourself, what do I think is going on around me? So start off with a start off with your framework of how this market operates? And don't rely just on yourself, use the people in your organisation? What's important to customers? What are they thinking at the moment? And then verify that?

Brenton Gowland: 14:14

Yeah, okay. That's almost a testing method.

Ron Tomlian: 14:16

Yeah, well, it's exactly what it is. People often talk about all you have to jump straight to market research. And when they think about market research, they think about surveys. And there's plenty of mechanisms you can use nowadays to do surveys and, but surveys are the second step surveys should be used once you have a hypothesis of what's going on. And your apotheosis of what's going on. It might be that you really don't understand the situation. So you need to talk to people. Now there's various ways of doing that. And but qualitative research is often what market researchers will suggest you start with so that you can then once you've got this hypothesis, this is what's going on. Let's test it.

Brenton Gowland: 15:00

So let's just define Firstly, there's two types of research that we talk about. Right? And that's qualitative, like you've just said in quantitative, and quantitative is all about numbers. So numbers are easy. That's a survey on a scale of one to 10. What do you think of this? That qualitative is a little bit harder to define in that it's asking potentially specific questions, but giving the participants who you're talking to the opportunity to say anything?

Ron Tomlian: 15:27

Yes, it's more about asking open ended questions. Yeah. What do you think about tell me your perspective on

Brenton Gowland: 15:33

because you're wanting more about that? Because you're wanting to explore what they think exactly.

Ron Tomlian: 15:37

It's exploratory research is another way that it's described. It's qualitative, because there are modifications, but you can start to see, some of our customers are saying this. Yeah. It doesn't have to be done for research. I think for smaller organisations, who will say I can't afford research. And I've been in those sort of organisations, I remember going to one organisation, we had 15 people in it. And I'd come from a very large organisation with 6000 people. And the first thing I asked having been a marketer. Now, the CEO, I asked about what our research budget was, after people pick themselves off the floor laughing. They said, it's about as big as a marketing budget, which is zero. Yeah, so we had to have innovative ways we didn't have the money to go out and do research, like I'd been used to before. We had to find innovative ways to get that information, get those insights. And that means talking to people.

Brenton Gowland: 16:33

But can I just say as well, we started at the start of this episode, talking about the fact that we've been talking about marketing for a while. And we're talking to business builders, people who want to develop themselves in order to develop their businesses, et cetera, et cetera. But the reason we talk about marketing for so long, everyone who's listening is it's so important. And the thing that I'm passionate about, is saying marketing finest place. So when you talk about the marketing budget being zero, really hoping and the research budget and really hoping that people see this in a different way as we progress, but massively important, what you've said, because let's take Australia, what percentage of businesses are under 15 people.

Ron Tomlian: 17:12

I would say probably 90% of business. Yeah,

Brenton Gowland: 17:14

it's really, really high. I can't remember the exact figures, I used to remember them. But businesses that are 234, or five people are 30 40% of the businesses in Australia, five to about 15 is probably the next 20%. And then 15 to 50 is probably the next 10%. And then as you go higher towards having businesses that are 1000 plus people, they're in the 1%.

Ron Tomlian: 17:39

So either the important thing is that people often think I can't do this stuff, because I can afford to hire a researcher and, and that's valid. But it doesn't mean you don't do it.

Brenton Gowland: 17:53

But what is research? Let's go back to the barbecue scenario. Yeah, it's asking someone, what do you think of this situation is just talking to your clients. So any business can do it, a business of one can do it, the business of five can do it. There might not be a budget with a business of one, there might be a small budget with a business of five, but it's about talking to people and then going down and away and writing the key things you've learned

Ron Tomlian: 18:15

Absolutely. And having a place. And we've talked about this before having a place to a repository for that information, yes. And using it to have discussions within the business about what's important to customers. Yes, and as I said before, an important role of marketing, whether it's someone's responsibility or a group's responsibility, an important role for your marketing within an organisation is to bring that information into the core of the decision making for the organisation, into the core of what's important to us, what's important to the customer has to be what's important to us. So how do we get that information? How do we get that knowledge?

Brenton Gowland: 18:54

And the interesting thing is, why is it important to us, it's because it's important to the customer. And that's what you were starting to talk about at the beginning that that aspect of marketing that we haven't been talking about is bringing the customer into the centre of the business and what they think making it about what they think more than what we think

Ron Tomlian: 19:11

because the purpose of any business is to do something useful for the customer to help solve their problems. Well, you can't do that unless you know what those problems and their perspective and insights.

Brenton Gowland: 19:22

So it's massively important to gain insights and constantly be looking for insights, so that you can act upon them and not be blind.

Ron Tomlian: 19:30

We started this whole conversation by talking about how ubiquitous data is, and it's so much more available. It's so much easier to gather, it's so much easier to analyse the as it was before. I think one of the things that people forget is that having all this data and being able to do all this analysis, if it doesn't lead to an insight because it does cost you to get it maybe less than it ever has before.

Brenton Gowland: 19:55

It's like having a marketing plan sitting on the table and doing nothing with it. If absolutely a bunch of you Information sitting there and you don't do something with it. Well, what's the point?

Ron Tomlian: 20:03

So a really important technique, I think, in all of this, and it's the simplest technique, but it's usually beneficial is to be curious. Yeah, to ask simple, clear questions, like, so up. Okay, we've got this information. 34% of people think that so what does that mean? What does that mean? Does it mean we have a deeper understanding and insight, because we have this knowledge? Can it lead to something? Is it an opportunity? Why those are really important questions, and that they are questions associated with genuine curiosity? Yeah, about the marketplace, we need to understand this better. And so the data we have what does that mean, for us? There's a trend in a B being saying 34%? Well, what was it last year?

Brenton Gowland: 20:56

So you're talking about the fact that we as businesses, we as business owners need to constantly be asking questions. Now. I'm actually while you're talking, thinking that a good trait of a marketer then should be curiosity? Yes, absolutely. Not some I know it all kind of attitude. I'm not saying that's what market is, like, I'm just talking about individual kind of scenarios. But if a marketer doesn't have the ability to ask questions, or in fact, this is a message to all you marketers out there. If the market is don't go out and ask questions, that's probably a sign that something may right.

Ron Tomlian: 21:25

And this is getting back to that fundamental idea that we started this discussion with. Yes, one aspect of banking is all about taking the organisation out, communicating effectively having the right products and services. But another aspect is bringing that in the understanding of the market and the customers and their problems into the organisation. And letting giving other people those insights or exposing other people to those insights. So that they can affect their decision making about products and the way we offer services, and the way we interact with customers, etc. And that's a I don't think it's so much an educative role, as you could argue that it is, I often thought of myself, as a marketing educator within the organisation. If I was in charge of marketing, that I my part of my job was to get other people in the organisation to understand what it was like to be a customer. This is where Tony was talking about the customer journey, the customer experience, and a person in the campus department, they might not be interested in that. But they still need to have that understanding of what's it like for a customer? Why is that important? Because what you do in the accounting will affect or, you know, accounts receivables, will affect why people think of you the way you interact with the customers and the way people think about your organisation. Everyone has responsibility in an organisation to think about what what is this trick to the customer.

Brenton Gowland: 23:01

That's where we get the insights. But if you want to think about it, I think about it, as always, you've got some sort of hunting party or you got some sort of posse, it's like having a Ford Scout, like someone who goes way ahead and comes back and says the road up ahead is looking like this fantastic way of thinking. It's like having a Google Maps device in you can look at Google Maps and go Well, I know I'm going this way and up ahead. You know how it's got the traffic sensors now because it reads everyone's phones and goes all the phones are all bunched up, there must be traffic problems. So you can look and go, well, the road up a heads got traffic problems, I might need to take this course instead,

Ron Tomlian: 23:35

I was wondering how they did that.

Brenton Gowland: 23:37

I think it's because they track your phones. Was the phones all bunched up not moving? It's like the cars aren't moving.

Ron Tomlian: 23:43

Well see there's an insight. I don't know if that's an insight. Well, no, it is an insight for me. So the other thing about all this is, okay, you've got marketing insights, you've developed them, you've disseminated in the organisation, what do you do with them? Well, you discuss them first off, absolutely. You use them to help with decision making within the organisation about how you can tell your offering to better service the customer.

Brenton Gowland: 24:08

So here's why. Another reason Remember how I talked about the start about marketing finding its place in the business. That's where those marketing insights they should be talked about at a board level, not just the board level, but a sea level? Because that's where the insights have the most value. Absolutely not getting up to that level. They're not getting into that decision making framework.

Ron Tomlian: 24:27

That's right. That's right. It should be affecting the way the organisation modifies itself over time changes to be more effective in servicing the customer, because that's the reason the organisation exists.

Brenton Gowland: 24:41

I'm working with one company at the moment. And I've mentioned this before they've decided that client health is really important. That doesn't mean how healthy the clients are. It means how healthy the relationship is with the provider of the service. I want to encourage everyone who's out there if you're a business of five Business for 10 business of whatever, you can actually put this into practice just by at your board meeting or at your strategy meeting or your weekly monthly meeting, you could have, let's say, maybe let's go one question, let's go, the simplest one you can possibly go. We want to ask every customer who comes to us one question, and that is, and you hear about us, and you find out about us. And then once a month, you go, what have we learned this month, How'd they find out about us, that's the very most basic way you can put an insight or create an actual way of realising insights and actually put them into action. So what I'm getting at is, if you have your meeting, whether it be weekly, monthly, or whatever, and you say, actually, we want to learn these things. So each week, we're going to talk about what conversations we've had with our customers. And you just bring the three key things you've learned Mr. BD person, or Mr. Accounts person or, and you can do it that way that's doing it at the very simplest level.

Ron Tomlian: 25:59

You know, it's interesting that when we were talking about strategic planning, before I go out and help organisations with their strategic plan, yes. And really, it's about the process more than anything about the process of planning. It sounds about the document you end up with,

Brenton Gowland: 26:14

What's the thinking framework that you create? Yeah, and I know that because we've done this together.

Ron Tomlian: 26:19

Yeah. What's interesting is the first time you do it with an organisation, yeah, as far as salmon organisation says, We've got to develop one of these things. Why? Because everybody else has one. Instead of saying this is really important. Yeah. But the first time they do it, there's a sudden realisation. There's a whole bunch of stuff we don't know. Yeah. And always at that point of realisation, one of the actions that should be in your planning for the future is how do we get this information? Yes, not waiting until the next time you revise your plan and go, Oh, shit, we still don't have that information.

Brenton Gowland: 26:51

And if you're a larger business, it might be market research, as you talked about before, if you're a smaller business, it might be getting your marketing people to run studies and do surveys and all that bit of it. And if you're a smaller business, it might be just getting your staff to ask your clients a certain question, or just talking about what you've learned just by interacting with clients, making it a part of the conversation.

Ron Tomlian: 27:12

And as I said, before, you've got a whole bunch of data, it's almost inevitable that organisations no matter how small, or they have data available to looking at that data and asking the question, so correct. What does this mean?

Brenton Gowland: 27:25

So as we wrap up, Ron, what are our three top tips for everyone who's listening, including ourselves, that we should do to actually make use to create or to find and make use of insights in our businesses?

Ron Tomlian: 27:39

Number one, be curious, don't accept that you know it all, like you said before, don't accept so that be curious, be looking be hungry for this information. Number two, is bring the customer into the organisation, right? And make sure that conversation is being had at all levels, but certainly the senior level at all levels of the organisation that have a programme of what insights are we looking for? What information do we need to complete this picture? And building our framework of how this market or how these people work?

Brenton Gowland: 28:13

So start with the end in mind, what do you want to know? So what questions do we need to ask that's what you're doing, and then organise the way to find that out whether it's, as we said earlier, to ask your staff, or your people to ask a question, or just what they're learning around those topics.

Ron Tomlian: 28:27

And then number three, yeah, do something with it. So don't just leave it sitting there. If you've got an insight, it should be affecting the way you modify your offering to be more effective in solving a customer's problem.

Brenton Gowland: 28:41

So you should write that insight down in some fashion and either have it presented to your board or presented to your management, in some way recognisable, because then it enters their thinking. And what's number three, number three, do something with it. So don't just leave the data sitting there.

Ron Tomlian: 28:57

Don't just leave the data sitting there. The insight that you develop, should be modifying the way you offer your product to the marketplace. Okay, it's so that you are more effective in solving your customers problems. But all they are. But I would argue that when I say use the insight, make sure when you're presenting it to the board that you have not only had the insight, but you've verified that insight. Okay, you might think, Oh, we put all this together. This is the insight we have.

Brenton Gowland: 29:25

So I've got feeling is this. So let's go ask some people if that's true. Yeah, absolutely. It's an iterative process. So there's a little bit of a rigour to define what an insight is for your business? Yes, absolutely. It's a supposition that's been proved. Yeah. in some fashion. And look, this has evidence to support it.

Ron Tomlian: 29:41

The smaller the business, the more you can go with those feelings. Yeah. But certainly as you get bigger, you're spending other people's money, it's not your own, then you've got to verify using techniques like market research.

Brenton Gowland: 29:53

So that's really good. And one thing I would say is using those insights can be as simple as once you know what they are writing in down, and including them in your strategy meetings or your board level meetings or your if you're a smaller business, in the discussions you have with your management. So here's what we've learned in the last bit. This is a thing, what are we going to do about that? What do we think? And if it becomes part of the conversation, it starts to get into your head, and you might subconsciously act upon it.

Ron Tomlian: 30:20

Documentation is really important. And I say that because as your organisation progresses, you need to understand what were we thinking back then. And having those insights written down, those insights will modify over time, because you make it modifies over to the changes over time. So being able to say we did this because this was what we thought about the marketplace that's now been modified. So what do we do from here makes it that much easier to be agile, there's a word that people love to Bandy about the place. But being agile means you have a better understanding of the way the market works. So your organisation performs American than anybody else. And being nimble about that means we can change quickly because we have that understanding.

Brenton Gowland: 31:07

Yeah, that's fantastic. And in today's environment, we got to be able to adapt quickly. So look, that's a great episode, Ron, really good conversation. And I think I found that useful, even in some of the things that we discussed, and we really hope that everyone who's listening found it useful. So we will be back in a couple of weeks with our next episode. We don't exactly know what's coming up yet. We were starting to get into new territory. We're going to move away from marketing for a while. Yes, I think we've cooked marketing from a few different angles. So if people listening don't think is important at the moment, we've failed run.

Ron Tomlian: 31:37

Oh, absolutely. But I also would love to hear about the type of marketing topics that people would still like to have covered. Because this I mean, you can you could go on forever. If you'd like to find out some insights from our audience. That would be fantastic. And look at look at what we just did there.

Brenton Gowland: 31:55

So we would love to hear from you. We know that some of you have reached out to us on places like LinkedIn. So that's a great place to do it. Hit us up post some stuff in our channel or just direct messages. We'd love to hear what you think. What do you like to hear from you? And we will bring you an update.

Ron Tomlian: 32:13

So it's goodbye from m

Brenton Gowland: 32:14

and goodbye from me. See you soon!