In your brand's early development stages, you likely gave much thought to the idea of a buyer persona.

You researched who you expected to purchase your products, how they would interact with your brand, and which factors would influence them to choose your brand over a competitor's. You painted a picture of what their needs are, what they do, and how their key motivators would align with your offerings. 

Now, it's time to see that journey in action. 

The path to purchase describes the journey that your target buyers take from the moment they first discover your product or service until they ultimately decide to buy it. The better you understand this journey, the easier it is to connect with them at key milestones and decision points to convert them from awareness to consideration to purchase, and then to repeat purchases.

Today, we're sharing how to conduct this research effectively and what to do with the results you uncover. 

What Is the Path to Purchase?

Put simply, the path to purchase encompasses all of the steps that your users take as they convert from a prospect into a paying customer. This can include multiple different channels, touchpoints, and platforms. 

While each person's brand experience will be nuanced and unique, most leads take a few central steps as they travel along this journey. These include:

• Becoming aware of the offering
• Reviewing the offering and considering possible alternatives
• Making a first purchase decision
• Making a repeat purchase decision

Also known as a customer journey or buyer journey, the path to purchase can be a valuable part of your audience analysis. It allows you to climb inside the mind of your prospective buyers, and current buyers and understand why and how they're engaging with your brand. 

Let's break these stages down a little, explaining the important aspects to research and analyze. 

The Awareness Stage

The first step in the path to purchase is awareness. This is the moment that your prospective customers first learn about your brand, and it sets the tone and the stage for the rest of your interactions together. 

Years ago, mass marketing campaigns were more effective than they were today. Modern buyers want customization and personalization at every turn, and 80% are more likely to purchase from a brand that offers tailored experiences. This means that gone are the days when you could send out one e-mail blast or a generic postcard to your leads and expect them to convert. 

Now, the most effective ways to reach your target audience include: 

• Online advertising
• Social media advertising
• E-mail advertising
• Organic search results
• Direct mail marketing
• Word of mouth and customer referrals

Not only should these outreach measures be personalized, but they should also include a call-to-action (CTA) that encourages users to take that next step. Do you want them to check out your website, sign up for your e-newsletter, contact you to set up a consultation? Remember to make the CTA clear, actionable, and easy to follow.

How to Gather Research

Once you've initiated the path to purchase, you can track your marketing efforts, e.g., engagement and response rate, to understand how effective your chosen tactics were. For instance, with inbound marketing campaigns, most website analytics platforms, such as Google Analytics, or CRM systems, such as, HubSpot, allow you to easily monitor the traffic going to your website, the number of views each blog gets, or the success rate of your paid online ads.

Regularly review these numbers to understand which channels are the most successful. Then, fine-tune the most profitable ones and look for ways to eliminate or phase out the ones that aren't as fruitful. 

For larger brands with national distribution, you can also conduct advertising and brand awareness tracking research to understand the percentage of consumers who are aware of your advertising and brand, pre vs. post the execution of your marketing campaign or in regular intervals such as, one or two times per year. 

Key questions to ask at this stage include:

• How are target buyers becoming aware of your brand?
• What channels are they using most frequently to learn about your brand
• How long do they spend reviewing your advertising and outreach materials? 
• What percentage of viewers respond to our CTA?

The Review and Consideration Stage

Piquing the interest of your target buyer is only the first part of the path to purchase. Next, the prospect will consider all of the features that your company or product offers, comparing them against others in your same space. They're looking for differentiators that set your brand apart, such as price point, quality, speed of delivery, product features, and more. 

To perform this competitive analysis, they may perform the following steps:

• Read online reviews
• Ask for feedback on social media
• Review product specification sheets
• Check out peer referrals
• Watch webinars and videos
• Speak with different retailers, distributors and dealers

At the core of this step is the buyer's need for information and insights. If you can provide this intelligence about your solution better than anyone else can, then you're more likely to move them from this phase of the buyer journey to the next. 

How to Gather Research

In this step, you'll need to research and manage your online presence and reputation. Do you know what your target buyers will see when they search for your brand name online?

There are reputation management tools that can help you uncover and respond to your company reviews. In addition to the reviews on your website or Google Business Profile, remember to also check common and industry-specific third-party review sites. 

Another area to research is how well you've explained and demonstrated your product or service. If a prospective customer wanted to learn more about how your solution works, are there online descriptions, manuals, sheets, videos, or in-store signage that make this step simple? The more transparent you can be, the easier it is to compare your solution against another. 

Key questions to ask at this stage include:

• Where do our target buyers go to find and compare offerings? 
• What information do we need to provide to stand out in our competitive market?
• What are the critical deal-breakers for our buyers? 
• How do our buyers weigh different pros and cons for each solution?
• Is this stage a delightful experience or a pain point for buyers?

The Purchasing Stage

After a lead discovers and researches your brand, they may decide to take that next step and make a purchase. To help them get there, you'll need to provide information that reveals why your company or offering is the best fit for their needs. 

Depending on the solution you offer, this could require the buyer to make a significant investment. They'll want to review all of their options and compare top features to make sure they're making a wise decision. 

How to Gather Research

This final stage of the path to purchase is all about sealing the deal. Research your company's current methods for engaging prospects and moving them along the sales funnel. 

Some companies with “Business to Business” (B2B) offerings might use this time to perform presentations, pitches, and demos to share how their products work. Others with “Business to Consumer” (B2C) offerings might use advertising, on-package claims, third-party endorsements and in-store signage to demonstrate their benefits to prospective buyers. . The nature of your business and the type of audience you serve will dictate the exact strategy you deploy. 

Key questions to ask at this stage include:

• What are the most important criteria in our buyers' decision-making process?
• Where do they make the purchase?
• Who is involved in the buyer's decision?
• Do buyers need to test our products before they buy?
• What questions will our buyers have about buying and implementing our offering?
• How does the purchase make the buyer feel?

How to Gather Customer Insights Effectively

At each stage of the consumer path to purchase, you'll have the opportunity to gather insights into buyer behaviors. As you do, it's important to know what metrics to track, when to dive in, and who to involve. Here are a few tips to help you make the most of the data you obtain. 

Combine Qualitative and Quantitative Data

As brands seek to improve their buyers’ path to purchase experience, most are focused primarily on hard numbers, aka quantitative data, about the purchase, including volume, amount and frequency of sales, who and where purchased, percent of repeat purchases, etc. While this type of behavioral data is extremely important -, but don't underestimate the value of qualitative insights about the buying journey. 

The ultimate goal of each phase is to understand the mindset of your buyers, and you can't get there with quantitative measurements alone. You need to understand the emotions that your prospective buyers are feeling, as well as what's behind their concerns, hesitancies, and excitement. 

A few of the ways you can capture qualitative feedback include:

• In-Depth Interviews
• Focus groups
• Mobile Missions
• Observational studies, such as ethnography studies
• Expert opinions

Not only are these insights helpful in directing your current and future campaigns, but they can also motivate your internal stakeholders. If you can share direct quotes and client feedback with your C-suite and marketing teams, it's easier for them to understand the human side of their work, in addition to the technical and economical side. 

Consider All Parties Involved

For some B2C companies, there is a primary shopper involved in each brand interaction. However, most B2B transactions involve other, behind-the-scenes decision-makers and influencers. 

As such, resist the temptation to consider the path to purchase as strictly linear and one-dimensional in nature. In reality, it's more multi-faceted and complex.

Try to learn about the key stakeholders involved in buying decisions, as well as their specific roles. It also helps to understand how they interact with one another, as well as when each one enters and leaves the buyer journey. While some will be involved from start to finish, others may join and leave at different times. 

Start Earlier Than Expected

To get the fullest view of your path to purchase, don't start your research at the first time the buyer and seller interact. Instead, go back even further to the pre-shopping stage. Increasingly, this means analyzing how buyers live, work, and how they find and compare offerings to meet their needs. 

Today, most buyers are hopping online to discover new brands. In fact, in the B2B sphere, the average customer performs 12 different searches before deciding to engage with a specific brand. While it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly when a buyer first discovers your brand, spend time exploring different purchasing triggers to understand how to optimize these interactions. 

Your Source for Expert Customer Insights 

As you research and learn more about your customerpath to purchase, you can customize and fine-tune your offerings and marketing communications to appeal precisely to those who are interested in them the most. 

At SIVO, we're dedicated to helping our clients understand their buyers' needs, beliefs, and behaviors. We can help you gain visibility and address challenges by asking the right questions directly to your target audiences. Then, we'll work with you to turn those insights into actionable steps that can drive conversions, improve engagement, and build brand reputation. Contact us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com or go to SIVOInsights.com today to schedule a discovery call and connect!

 By Julie Rose

As someone who has spent over three decades in the market research industry, I've seen firsthand how technology reshapes our professional lives. The advent of online surveys, the rise of internet scraping and text analytics, opportunities coming from big data mining, and the now the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) all represent significant milestones in the Digital Age intersecting with the Market Research Industry.  

AI isn't just a new tool; it's a game-changer. It's capable of automating repetitive tasks, processing and analyzing vast amounts of data, at speeds previously unimaginable.  It is an exciting time to once again, adopt new ways of working that will advance our mission to understand people and deliver insights that drive business growth.

New Heights in Market Research Analysis

In today's fast-paced world, the volume of data generated daily is staggering. AI excels at sifting through this data, identifying patterns, and providing preliminary insights. This capability is invaluable in market research analytics, where the first step is often labor intensive to comb through a variety of data sources to identify patterns, anomalies, outliers, consistencies and inconsistencies.  

Here are a few examples of where AI analyses can advance market research:

• Survey Analysis: AI can process and analyze survey data quickly, identifying key insights and trends. Automated tools can generate reports and visualizations to present findings effectively. 

• Visual Content Analysis: AI can analyze images and videos to extract relevant information about consumer preferences and trends. This is useful for understanding visual content's impact on consumer behavior. 

• Customer Segmentation: AI can analyze consumer data to create detailed segments and personas, creating the opportunity for unprecedented personalization on a mass scale and ensuring that marketing efforts are precisely targeted. 

• Sentiment Analysis: AI-powered sentiment analysis tools can scan social media, reviews, and forums to gauge public opinion about a brand or product and decipher consumers’ values based on the information. 

• Competitive Analysis: You can use AI to monitor competitors’ activities, including pricing, marketing strategies, and product launches. This can provide valuable insights into market positioning and strategy. 

• Predictive Analytics:  Machine learning models can predict future trends based on historical data, helping businesses make informed decisions about future business endeavors. 

Practical Considerations 

AI takes data processing and analysis to new levels, providing speed and pattern recognition that was unheard of even a few years ago. That said, the storytelling aspect of market research - translating data into a clear and inspiring story with actionable insights that will unlock new growth opportunities - is where human expertise shines.

• Creative Analysis:  AI tools can quickly and easily identify themes and patterns in qualitative transcripts and quantitative data sets.  It provides a great first pass, however, interpreting these findings and crafting a compelling narrative requires human intervention, to ensure creativity and business relevance in the final deliverables.  

• Ethical Considerations:  As we integrate AI into our workflows, maintaining ethical standards in data collection and analysis is crucial. Human oversight ensures that AI applications adhere to ethical guidelines and respect consumer privacy. 

• Bias and Synthetic Data: AI models can sometimes perpetuate existing biases present in the training data, leading to skewed results and insights. Additionally, the use of synthetic data to train AI models can introduce its own set of challenges, as it may not fully capture the complexities and nuances of real-world data. Human oversight is essential to identify, mitigate, and correct these biases, ensuring the analyses remain fair, accurate, and representative of the target population. 

Embracing the Future of AI in Market Research 

As AI technology continues to evolve, so will SIVO’s approaches and techniques. We view AI as a powerful augmentation to our workflows and capabilities and will continue to experiment and adopt new ways of working that drive our effectiveness and efficiency. At the same time, we believe that it is the combination of the AI tools and experienced, empathetic market researchers that skillfully identify the nuances of consumers perceptions and behaviors that leads to actionable, strategic insights. We will continue to invest in both resources – artificial intelligence and human intelligence. 

Join us on this exciting journey

At SIVO, we are committed to blending the best of human expertise and AI innovation to deliver insights that drive your business forward. Contact us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com or visit SIVOInsights.com to schedule a discovery call and explore how we can help you take your market research to new heights!

by Kerry Juhl

Consumer Personas are a great tool for bringing your consumer target to life for your organization, to inspire growth ideas, new brand experiences and product innovation.  It is a representation of your target segment based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data.  It summarizes your consumers’ lifestyle, values, needs, challenges, and preferences, so that it can be easily shared and digested across the organization.

At a high level, here is SIVO’s guide on how to build consumer personas: 

• Collect quantitative data via consumer segmentation: Start by identifying the market your product plays in and divide this universe into consumer groups that have similar characteristics, such as demographics, psychographics, and behavioral patterns.
  
• Identify patterns within the segment: Analyze the segments to identify common patterns, trends, and preferences among the different groups. Look for insights that can help you understand their interests, pain points, and buying behaviors. At this point, teams can narrow their focus by choosing one or a few consumer segments that are most likely to need and have the potential means to purchase the product or service that you offer.
  
• Dig deeper with qualitative research: Once the consumer segments have been identified, conduct qualitative research, to delve deeper into the consumer mindset and better understand what makes them unique and relevant to the business. Using techniques such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, in-store shop-alongs, or in-home ethnographic research, you can uncover the underlying motivations, emotions and values that drive consumer behaviors and purchase decisions. This deepens the teams’ empathy and intuition about the consumer segments.
  
• Create consumer personas: Develop distinct personas that represent key segments that are important and relevant to your business. The personas should not portray one specific consumer but should be a semi-fictional representation of an ideal customer within a segment.  Overall, the persona should include a name, age, job, hobbies, mindset, goals, challenges, and a brief back story.  Note: Psychographics, goals and purchase motivations are most important in understanding what problems the persona has that your company can solve.  
  

Building your Consumer Personas 

Key information that should be considered when building consumer personas includes:   

• Demographics: Age, gender, location, marital status, education, income 
• Psychographics: Interests, values, attitudes, lifestyle, personality traits
• Goals and Motivations: What they aim to achieve, what drives their decision-making 
• Pain Points and Challenges: Obstacles they face, problems they want to solve that are related to your market
• Buying Behavior: Where and how they shop, preferred channels, factors influencing purchase decisions, in relation to your industry or category
• Media preferences: Preferred media channels, social media usage, favorite websites, online communities

Check out these other SIVO blogs on consumer targets and  consumer segmentation, to better understand the inputs and context for consumer personas. 

Making Consumer Personas Interesting

The goal is to bring the consumer to life in an interesting and inspirational way. This information needs to be interesting and easy to read so that it gets internalized by the organization. Here are a few tips: 

Keep it Brief:  A good persona should be 1 to 3 pages in length.  Ideally, there would be a 1-page summary and if needed, 1 to 2 follow-up pages with actionable details and insights. 

Use Visuals: A persona should be visually interesting.  Use photos, graphics, or infographics to bring the consumer persona to life and make them feel more tangible and relatable to your team. 

Use Narratives and Quotes: Storytelling is an important part of building your persona. Use the data to create a short 1-paragraph narrative that describes the consumer persona – who they are, what they need, and their underlying motivations.

Include a Key Consumer Insight: It is important to include a one-sentence insight that describes the underlying motivation that would make them potentially interested in buying your product or service.

With the data summarized and visualized into clear and succinct personas, it is easy to understand and empathize with your consumer target, i.e., the segment of consumers that will inspire your growth ideas, marketing communications, promotions, distribution plans and new product innovation. Your team can now tailor brand messaging, content, and product offerings to align with the needs and preferences of key consumer targets. It is also easy to socialize the learning across the organization and agency partners in an efficient and effective way. 

Maintaining Relevance of Consumer Personas

Consumer personas are foundational marketing and insights deliverables that will inspire your teams’ growth ideas and guide your agency partners for years. For this reason, you need to invest in ongoing maintenance to ensure continued relevance to your organization. Depending on the volatility and competitive dynamics within your market, you will want to: 

The success of your consumer persona profiles depends on the quality of your research, the depth of your understanding and getting it to land within your organization and with agency partners. Regularly leveraging the personas while also iterating and improving upon them will help you stay in tune with your consumers and maintain a competitive advantage in the market.  

Your Source for Expert Customer Insights 

At SIVO Inc., we are dedicated to helping our clients understand their consumer targets by designing and executing consumer segmentations, following up with qualitative research and building consumer personas. We can then facilitate activation sessions with your team to develop action plans and strategies that leverage these insights.  

Reach out to us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com or go to SIVOInsights.com today to schedule a discovery call and connect! 

By Marilyn Weiss

In the evolving landscape of market research, methods that leverage technology are continually being developed to gain deeper insights into consumer behavior. Mobile Missions are a straightforward approach that has proven successful for SIVO clients. This approach allows researchers to tap into consumers' real-life experiences in a natural and engaging way, collecting meaningful data in the form of open-ended responses, photos and video footage.  

Understanding Mobile Missions

Mobile Mission research is an immersive approach that leverages mobile technology to engage participants on their own schedule and in their natural environments. This involves prompting consumers to complete a series of activities and questions via their mobile devices, capturing their experiences, thoughts, and behaviors in real-time.  

Benefits of Mobile Missions

Mobile Missions offer several advantages over traditional research techniques:

Real-Time Interaction: Participants receive prompts and tasks on their mobile devices, allowing them to respond in real-time as they shop, prepare, or use products.

Natural Environment: The method captures consumer behavior in real-life settings, such as their homes or local stores, ensuring more genuine participation and deeper insights.

Engagement and Comfort: Participants can complete tasks at their own pace, allowing them time to reflect and encouraging more thoughtful and honest responses.

Remote Observation: Researchers can observe and interact with participants remotely, making it easier to conduct research in environments where in-person observation might be challenging or restricted.

Applications for Mobile Missions

Mobile Missions are versatile and can be utilized to achieve various research objectives. Five common applications that we see at SIVO include:

1. Shopper Insights 

• The First Moment of Truth:   Collect data at the moment consumers encounter a product in the retail environment to understand if the product stands out on the shelf and how it communicates branding and benefits via the package design. You can also capture initial reaction to features like size and pricing relative to competitive options.

• The Second Moment of Truth: Gain real-time reaction on how the product meets consumers’ needs, what it replaces in their current routine, the functionality, ease of use, and overall experience during use.

2. Customer Journey Mapping 

• Experience Mapping: Track the entire customer journey from initial product discovery to post-purchase evaluation. This helps in identifying touchpoints and areas where the customer experience can be improved.

• Service Interactions: Capture experiences with customer service or support, providing real-time feedback on service quality and responsiveness.

3. Brand and Promotion Engagement 

• Brand/Advertising Interaction: Gauge how consumers perceive and interact with a brand in various contexts, such as online browsing, social media engagement, or in-store visits.

• Promotion/ Event Feedback Effectiveness: Capture real-time feedback on promotional events, displays, special offers or discounts that may impact purchase decisions.

4. Behavioral Insights 

• Daily Habits, Routines, Lifestyles: Understand consumers' daily routines and how products fit into their lives. This can include topics like morning routines, parenting styles, health and wellness efforts, or fashion preferences.

• Cultural or Regional Context: Conduct research on how cultural or region-specific differences impact product use and perception, tailoring strategies for different regions or demographic groups.

5. Competitive Analysis 

• Comparative Shopping: Compare products from different brands during shopping trips, providing insights into competitive positioning and consumer preferences.

• Switching Behavior: Investigate reasons behind switching from one brand to another by capturing consumers' experiences with both products.

By utilizing Mobile Missions across these diverse areas, companies can gain a holistic understanding of their consumers and their products, leading to more informed decisions and tailored strategies that resonate with their target audience.

Executional Details

The execution of Mobile Missions typically involves the following specifications:

• Pre-recruited: Consumers or customers are pre-recruited to participate in the mobile mission for a specific time commitment

• Sample Size:  Because this is qualitative research technique, a sample size of 6 -10 participants to represent a specific customer segment is sufficient

• Duration: 2 to 7 days of activities, with daily prompts delivered to participants' phones

• Time Commitment: Approximately 30 minutes of activities each day for participants

• A Series of Questions and Tasks: A Discussion and Activities Guide is pre-programmed into the Mobile Mission platform to guide participants through a series of questions and tasks so they can easily provide written responses, video responses, video or photos of their tasks to capture their perceptions, observations and feedback.  

Your Partner for Progressive Solutions and Actionable Insights

At SIVO, Inc., we are on a constant quest to identify innovative solutions that lead to meaningful insights for our clients. We have had great success in utilizing Mobile Mission technology to capture consumer perceptions and behaviors in a natural and engaging manner to achieve your learning objectives.  

Contact us via our website form or email us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com to schedule a discovery call to discuss your business and market research needs.