While I was on YouTube I came across this survey from Motorola on the probability I will be purchasing a “DROID RAZR MAXX” in the next month. I voted that I “Definitely Will Not” be purchasing one since I have an iPhone, I’m pretty happy with it, and I’m not currently in the market for a new phone.
Viewing the resultes were pretty jaw dropping, however I feel I shouldn’t be surprised that 89.1% of the people that took this poll will most likely not be purchasing this phone in the next month. Soon we’ll talk about how you should avoid making marketing mistakes like this but lets do some more digging into Motorola’s current scenario.
Now my next thought on this is to think of what the marketing department of this company does next. Do they take this information back to the team and tell them the bad news or do they bury the results and hope no one really finds out and try another tactic? Either way I feel like this survey was destined to fail from the beginning.
Lets take a look at how this was executed. This seems to be a pretty general post to random Youtube visitors. I couldn’t find any information suggesting they are looking at any of my personal info when this survey was served to me. Lets look at some stats:
- Roughly 50% of Cell users have Smart Phones
- iPhone owns roughly 32% of that (Per Nielsen Report March)
- Android Owns 51% however Motorola only owns 11% Marketshare (Nielsen)
Something else to look at is you’re really looking to reach people in what is called the Window of Dissatisfaction. As Craig Elias notes in his book “Shift Selling,” buyers are in one of three stages:
- Status Quo – They are happy with the product or service
- Window of Dissatisfaction – They are unhappy with the product or service
- Searching for Alternatives – Actively searching for a new solution
You need to reach out to people while they are in the Window of Dissatisfaction to make sure you’re a contender in their decision when they decide to make a purchase.
This is true for EVERYBODY trying to sell ANYTHING. You need to think of where your future customers may be while they are dissatisfied. A few areas you may look into are:
- Google Ad Words – Purchasing Words for comparison searches and competitors
- Connect with groups that don’t like Apple or the iPhone – Plenty of them out there
- Work with cookie based banner or text ad programs – I searched for a GoPro camera in Google once, and banners for it were showing up in my general blog readings and facebook page as ads for a few days after
To really sum it up, you need to research where your customers are and try to pull some basic information about them before you waste hundreds or thousands of impressions.
For example, knowing that people who own Mac Computers are 2X more likely to own an iPhone than any other phone, I wouldn’t offer this survey to anyone on a Mac! Boom, some savings.
There are a lot of small things you can do to hone in your ads by some quick market research to make sure you’re really reaching the people you need to. Remember to think of yourself. What catches my attention and where am I online when I’m getting sick of a product or service that I own?
How do you handle preliminary market research before a campaign?