Publishers are missing out on some remarkable tools to help them know and serve their target markets better. Why?
I recently went to Austin for the IIEX conference, which is for the market research industry. I quickly realized how many useful research tools are available, and how infrequently most publishers use them.
For example, one obvious and easy application would be a magazine cover test.
At one publisher I know, the art director did a cover test with the staff. She wanted to make the magazine (whose target market is mostly 55-70 year old males who have a high net worth) more appealing to women, so she wanted to make the cover pink. She asked the staff (very few of whom are in the right demographic) what they thought of two possible covers — one pink and one yellow.
Expanding the magazine’s reach to include more women is certainly a good idea, and testing a cover concept is also a good idea. But she was asking the wrong people, and the test wasn’t done very well. (There was clear pressure to choose the pink cover!)
Would her tactic work? Would a pink cover attract more women? Would it turn off men? How do you know?
There are lots of research firms out there with pre-built panels in many different demographics. They can quickly answer questions like that. Some of them use Tinder-like swipe up or down methods to measure people’s reaction to images. (Is it up / down, or left / right? I don’t know Tinder.)
Scott Axcell of GutCheck recently posted this to LinkedIn.
My career has been split nearly 50/50 in terms of B2B & B2C marketing and I’m amazed how little research B2B brands do by comparison to understand their target audience as real people.
His focus is on the “real people” part because that’s their thing at GutCheck, and they do some interesting stuff around sentiment analysis. My reaction was you could drop “as real people” and the statement would still be true. And sad.
My experience in publishing is that there’s a lot of talk about testing, but not a lot of actual research going on. It’s like we’re just dipping our toes in the water.
Is my perception wrong? And if it’s right, why? Is it a lack of awareness? A lack of time? Is it price?
