Stop Testing Your Products on Strangers

The universe obviously wants me to have more money. Why else would I have been invited to make $300 just for sitting in a cold room sniffing dry erase solvent and talking about my hopes and dreams for a new CRM application?

The universe, however, did not want the CRM company to do a particularly good job on their focus testing, because If I am any indication of who they are inviting to this discussion, they are about to flirt with Stranger Danger. 

Here’s how it will go: they will herd a bunch of us “decision makers” into a room (there will follow an ironically lengthy process of not deciding what to order for snacks) and then the moderator will tell us about this new version of some product. They will ask why we would or wouldn’t buy it. They will ask which features we think we’d use most. They will make us find pictures of how we might feel when our teams are generating pretty reports; they will show us some pricing plans and ask if we think we might be willing to spend that kind of cash on that kind of product.

Assuming the solvent buzz doesn’t make us too aggressive, we might even be asked to evaluate some taglines or creative. All of which will deliver very little of value to this company and the universe too.

The people they should have in that room aren’t people who might make a decision, but the ones who already have: their existing customers. It’s understandable why they would look outside to prospects for input on the new product; after all, it’s our accounts they’re after, and the existing customers will be upgraded whether they want to be or not. But here’s the thing: all the strangers can do is offer speculation. Customers show up with evidence.

For example, a customer does not have to guess why they bought your product; they know why they bought it. They remember the problem they were trying to solve or the opportunity they were trying to exploit.  This gives you, dear marketer, evidence-based insights on why others will buy it and what you ought to be telling them to pry that purchase order from their tight little fists.

Prospects can theorize about which features might or might not be useful, but customers can actually tell you which ones they use and which they don’t and why. These insights are what helps you figure out the pitch deck, the sell sheet, the content plan and the demos you build. As an aside, your product managers should already know this, but in case they aren’t having conversations with users, you might want to invite them to the focus group or, if they are going to eat all the licorice, share the report with them.

The same goes for benefits. Customers can point to actual received benefits instead of mucking about with photos of trees that might illustrate an anticipated benefit. This discussion is a biggie. Most marketers make lots of big assumptions about benefits, precisely because we mostly make educated guesses about what they ought to be, based on the list of features. For example, where is it written that a simple interface necessarily saves time? Maybe it’s actually really confusing? On the other hand, a real customer telling you the simple interface actually does save time and has value is evidence. We like that because that creates or validates our tagline and positioning statements.

The final reason you ought to be testing your stuff on existing clients is the chance to ask what else you could do to make your product even more valuable or more beneficial. That’s your next two or three iterations, again based on evidence, not a combination of fatigue and bad coffee.

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Here is a great article about some hidden design features you may not have noticed in your favourite logos.

Donald Trump’s appalling popularity can still remind us of a few things about branding. This piece by Jeff Goldstein in AdAge offers these lessons and some insights into why The Donald continues to have momentum.

BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams,
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
Or follow me @bizmkter