Marketing Research: Trust the Data or Go With Your Hunch

Teri Hoffman: 0:00

Big companies do a lot of this work. It’s called simulated test, marketing concept testing, forecasting sales for new launches. They do a lot of pre-launch work to really try to prove it out before they go to market. For two reasons. One is big investment just like anybody would try to validate their idea from a garage fiddle or founder working on a new invention to big, huge companies. But the reason big companies have to rely so much on that type of research before they launch is primarily because Welcome to the Natural Products Marketer podcast.

Tina Smith: 0:37

I’m Tina and I’m Amanda, and we’re here to make marketing easier for natural products businesses, so you can reach more people and change more lives.

Amanda Ballard: 0:49

So, Terry, I’m excited to have you on the podcast because you went through the whole story brand training process around the same time that I did and that’s where we got to meet. So I know that you know about how to tell stories to help market products and services, which is awesome, and at the same time, you are a data geek. So you started a company around data research and whether or not that you need to use it, whether or not it works well. So tell us your story about starting your company, what led you to do that and what led you to decide to get into the field of marketing as well.

Teri Hoffman: 1:28

Yeah Well, my career has primarily been yes, formally in marketing research, primarily in, I’d say, either innovation or renovation, so new products going to market, or revamping the brand message, so clients who have new ideas in either realm and primarily big corporate lands. So I’ve worked in big companies. I’ve worked in big service companies doing marketing research to go to market strategy, which is a lot of consumer testing along the way. So marketing research has really been what would be my primary kind of specialization, if you will. As far as the data geek part, using data that comes from potential customers, getting feedback, doing research with customers to try to hone and refine and prove out new ideas Before they go to market, and also, once they go into market, it’s seeing how they’re doing, course correcting that sort of thing. So that’s what I’ve always done. For about 10 years, I worked in a big research company specializing in new product launches and we had a model that we would use that would include inputs from potential customers. So we get feedback to new ideas along the way of developing them, as well as inputs about how you’re going to go to market. So what kind of marketing are you going to do? Are you going to advertise or not? Are you going to be on TV or not? Where will this be sold? All those things impact how many you’ll sell and if you’ll sell as many as you’re hoping. So big companies do a lot of this work. It’s called simulated test, marketing, concept testing, forecasting sales for new launches. They do a lot of pre-launch work to really try to prove it out before they go to market. For two reasons. One is it’s a big investment, just like anybody would try to validate their idea, from a garage fiddler founder working on a new invention to big, huge companies. But the reason big companies have to rely so much on that type of research before they launch is primarily because it’s not easy to prototype. It can cost millions of dollars to create a tangible thing to see if people will buy it. So we have to try to figure out can we attract people to this? Do we have the right offer? Do we have the right features? Do we have the right message? Get it as tight as we can. And we have to prove out to the moneyholders that this thing is going to at least meet our expectations for what we need to pay back our investment. So that’s what big companies do and that’s kind of work I did. It’s primarily 20 years, but 10 of my years were really really specialized in that arena and we had all the rigorous approaches. We did what you call concept testing, which in the startup world is more like idea validation, so getting feedback from potential customers. Users want to have a prototype. But we did this at a much more scaled level Lots of big sample sizes with lots of people in our research and we have very proven out, accurate, very proud, very accurate ability to predict sales, down to how many products you’ll sell in year one. So we had to constantly refine our models and break them apart and see if they’re wrong and that sort of thing. So that taught me a lot about launches, but nonetheless. So I worked. We’re all about the rigor, but I always loved the little things and the nuances you get from actually talking directly to potential customers or actual customers, the little things they’d say, the context of how they use a product. I mean there’s so much you can learn just from having a few conversations and that was always more exciting to me than the big numbers and forecasting the sales and putting the sales in front of the CEO and getting everybody to buy and to launch a new product. So that was kind of how I always felt. So I always liked the more nuanced part of marketing research that we do, but nonetheless we were all about rigor. So we did all the things for about a year. For just to back up a little bit, there was a particular project I worked on with Procter Gamble for the Fabrice brand. Fabrice was on its way to becoming a billion dollar brand. It was hot and growing and they were looking for new products to launch for that brand. And there was a particular AirFresher project that they were working on. That really was different from what they’re used to launching into the market. It was more expensive, it was big, it did all these, it was a cool gadget and we did all the research and it proved it. On paper it looked great. We did all the concept testing. We passed all of our metrics and benchmarks and thresholds. We did the sales forecast. Everything looked good on paper, right, but I just could tell something wasn’t right. This once good idea felt like it was veering onto the path to market. That just didn’t feel right for the idea and I could get into all the nitty-gritty about it. But long story short is it was one of the most epic flops in the history of the company. I was getting ready to run a 5K with a good friend of mine who worked at P&G he worked on the Febreze brand or in the same division and he kind of made a joke. Hey, your name came up in a meeting the other day. I’m like, oh really. He’s like yeah, they said to fire you. Like well, that’s not funny, chuck. He said yeah, yeah, you know that debacle. Febreze said stories. He said they asked what consultants, what’s your research supplier, pass this thing? Who said we should take this to market? Fire them right. And I’m thinking something is broken about our process, because I could tell this thing was going in the market. All wrong, it was just the channel it was going into. The idea that it used to be became something else just didn’t feel right. But I didn’t have any ammunition at all in my hands from the research, no signals or clues. So I went back and dug it to the research, which we had to do anyway as part of our process, to really prove out our fix. Where we missed right Was something that we were responsible to do. But I was also super hungry to dig in, because that’s why I named my company now Hunch. Since the first time I really realized, gosh, if you have a hunch, you have to figure out a way to explore it, follow it, hone it right, not ignore it. All the signs were there. Once I dug into more of what we would call the color commentary or the qualitative, open-ended, contextual stuff, like the conversational type of data from the consumers that were participants in our research was so telling. All the little clues and signals were there. They were all there. This was a very bulky product, right. So that was coming up. It’s like, well, I’d rather just let a candle At the time that Shania Twain, the country music singer, was going to be a spokesperson for the product and it looked like a CD player at the time, the old-style CD player, and so people were saying, oh, it’s a play music. It’s all the little signals of the distraction, confusion that you could expect one would experience the first time they encounter this new product, the new message for this new product, were there, but we didn’t bring them to surface, nor did we have good techniques to help us really bring those things to the surface. They were the fluffy stuff, right. All the hardcore numbers looked good and this could happen. I mean, the more new to the world or different or abstract the thing is that you’re working on. If it’s a marketing message or a product to put in the market, the harder it is to rely on traditional methods of research. Talk with customers to get feedback. It’s the harder it is to do traditional research if you will, or trust it at its face value. So, anyway, that debacle, as I like to call it, really led me on a quest to get beyond only looking at the hard numbers, the quantitative data or the standard metrics, as we say in the corporate world. There’s got to be a better way. And it also felt like overdubbed, and I’ve felt this for years working on the corporate side of the fence and the product, innovation and marketing. We do so much research and the little things are right in front of us and they really are best realized just by talking, to hearing natural words from potential customers, from your actual customers. The hard part is you can’t just talk to a few people sometimes and feel confident that you’re on the right track or you have the right version, and that’s where all the more higher sample size split testing comes into play. Then you start testing lots and lots of things and relying a little too much on the research. So I’ve really spent the last 10 years studying launches in parallel to doing marketing research, go to market strategy with clients like crazy, because I just was so passionate about finding the framework, if you will, or the ingredients of a really successful launch which led me in the latter. I guess the last 10 years spent a lot of time working on new campaigns, new messaging for established brands that want to reboot the foundational story that would feed into a new advertisement, and all the same principles apply for trying to really nail that core story of what this thing will do for the customer and then to work that into the messaging and the offer. But really it’s that story of doing all the rigorous research and still something going to market pretty all wrong and you can’t just blame the research. But it’s in part like leaning into, I would argue, too much research, too much rigor is, I would say, I would say with full authority a bigger risk than just doing going and talking to friends and family and a few people when you’re working on a new idea. I say your better bet is to follow your instincts, not ignore them, not ignore getting feedback and getting input when you’re working on something new. But the rigorous stuff I couldn’t stand behind it anymore, which is why I went LMIN.

Amanda Ballard: 11:50

So when you’re doing research for these new product launches or a rebrand or reboot, are you talking to customers every time Like, what is this? You’re saying that data is great, but sometimes it’s not enough, or sometimes you just have a gut feeling that things are wrong. What’s your process around this hunch?

Teri Hoffman: 12:12

Yes. So definitely talking with either potential customers or current customers depends on the situation or users. If you have already at least a basic version of what you want, if it’s a product development initiative and you have a prototype or something in the startup world they call it MVP, a minimally viable product, it’s something that you can put in the hands of people to see if they’ll buy it, to see if they like it, just help you refine it. So in any of those scenarios whether you’re in the early stage of I have, I know I want to do marketing, do advertising, or I know I want to revise my messaging, or I have a new product offer or new product In any of those scenarios we certainly are I would never say don’t, ever test it out and try to refine and work, do some research along the way. And just I would never advocate going straight to market and just seeing what happens. I’ve never talked with anyone who has done that and been successful. In fact, people who claim that’s what they’ve done when you dig in, they’ve actually done quite a bit of early stage validation, refinement by talking with people, using, getting reactions to their initial idea, kind of refining it, getting reactions to their initial product. So our process is essentially it’s very simple, like we are going to my company. We start with ideas, so we come in when someone has an idea for any of those scenarios. Let’s call it a product, a new product offering, and they’re either sure or not sure of one of two things. The key authority points are elements, the lead, the core idea itself and how they would describe that in one line, or the customer story, which is what’s the problem. And then what’s this, what’s the we call it the pain to gain script. So it’s similar to a one liner right and in the story around world, where it’s like there’s a problem in the way of something somebody wants right and our solution is going to remove that. So if you’re not, wherever you’re unsure is where we start. But we always start with what we call a Hunch Lab, which is essentially I want to hear the orange and story behind this idea, because there’s always a lot of really good clues in that story. Oftentimes they have been a little bit forgotten or muddied, because once you start getting into moving toward going to market, a lot, one idea becomes many and you’re getting a lot of advice. Then you got to think about how you’re going to put in the market and it’s sort of like let’s get back to what. Yeah, you fired up initially, so it’s exploring. You know what’s your special sauce, what’s your plan, all the things you about your brand or your product, right, and then we flip the script. We come back In another session. We really have found that you have to iterate and not try to do everything in one session. Flip the script, call it a power hour this is just our names for it and this is where we really go. We’re going to flip into customer mode. Let’s do a situation dump. Let’s think of all the situations that would prime somebody, make them, put them in a situation where they might need a want or where you’re going to have a good solution for them, and then you know that leads us to what we would call a concept or a piece of stimuli that we can actually put in front of potential customers and get their reactions. When we get reactions, we always do it. It takes two minutes, it’s an initial reaction, it’s open-ended. That’s how we do it. We have abandoned asking, a lot of asking why, asking if they’ll buy all these things. Our big corporate clients still like to ask us questions, but we can do it later in the interview or in the survey, whether it’s a live interview or a survey. But I always tell people who are doing it themselves, like lead with a pitch of some sort or an idea or the thing that you want to get a reaction to, typically the piece of the, it’s either the idea or it’s the way in the positioning of the idea, and oftentimes you shouldn’t try to shove them too much together and put too many things in front of people. You don’t want to get a reaction and see where people go with it on their own. I mean, does it make them excited? Are they confused? Are they silent? Never a good sign. You know if they are getting tripped up. That’s always that lead. You know. You find out what’s tripping them up, right. So, yes, we typically iterate with we always iterate with potential customers. How many just depends on the situation. Could be a few, could be 150, it could be 300, depending on if we have multiple versions.

Tina Smith: 17:00

But short answer. So what advice do you have for people that are in these decision-making? You know roles where maybe they are kind of lean one way or the other, they’re maybe hyper analytical, where it’s like I need the data to tell me every little thing, or else I can’t pull the trigger. Or they are the other side, where it’s like if my gut says no, like I will never change my mind. How do you kind of balance the two? Because it sounds like there has to be a balance, like we can’t ignore data but we also can’t fully rely on our hunches.

Teri Hoffman: 17:42

Yeah, well, I think you should ignore bad data and flaw data, and that’s where I can help people, I think, if you’re hunched so I just love the word hunch, I like the casualness of it, right but if you have an instinct, people who have strong instincts about how to like, if it’s a marketing message or a product, like they have a strong instinct that they’re on to something right, like that is not just out of the air and typically the piece that people closest to I’d say, the heart of the customer they’re trying to serve are the closest to the problem they’re trying to solve. The person who’s been, you know, is close to the customer is their instinct. This is not some guess, right, like. So my instinct is to lean into someone’s instinct and start there. If you’re that strong and you’re, and why you know, you think A or B is better, if that’s you know, or if we should say yes to this or no, you know, whatever the decision might be, let’s start there, because what’s behind that is a whole load of clues on my ability and even someone’s own ability, like it’s like kind of stepping back and thinking what it feels, just strongly. Well, let me go back to where we are now with this new product or this new marketing campaign and let’s look at where we are with it and where is the gap between the two? And as far as data goes, I mean, I think it depends what the data source is. I’m not an anti-data person, but I think it depends on what the data source is. You know, I think if there’s that much of a disconnect between the data and someone’s instinct and if they’re instinct, once I dig like I personally dig into that’s where I start, feels very convicted and sound, and I hear elements of an alluring message or what we call an alluring vibe like this. They’re going on and on about what they know, which is how much easier that this is going to make life for somebody, and how the competitors are creating a problem and they’re convinced that the way to go to market is to actually nullify a competitor, which we would usually be a little bit watch out about that. You want to be careful. You’re basically giving away impressions for the competitor. I think Subway once ran an ad all about their freshness with M’s McDonald’s M’s. That quickly was taken off the market because you’re essentially just selling McDonald’s. She’s Burger’s right, like when you do that. Anyway, I think it’s a matter of 100% agree on the balance piece, but you should never. Instincts are where you should start. I especially feel so passionate about this because I spent so much time in the corporate world working with people on innovation teams and marketing teams, specifically consumer insight specialists like marketing researchers like me, who are knee deep with consumers. Right, they are hearing their pains, seeing what their life looks like, and then they are the ones that are seeing the disconnect between that and then what the company feels like they need to do. We need to get this out in the market because we need to catch up with the competitor. We can’t do it this way, we have to do it that way, and there’s often a conflict. And so I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten on a phone call with a client and they’re excited about a new idea and they tell me about the idea. We do our initial session, we review the idea, we talk about the game plan for what we need to do to fill in any gaps that they have as far as moving to the next stage with any research they need, and, lo and behold, they go off and work with the team, and then I come back and say all right, here’s the here’s, we’ve put it into a concept. This is a concept. In the corporate world is essentially like a customer pitch. Right, you’re putting it on a piece of paper so that you could serve it up to people and see how they’d react to it. And I’m like where did that good idea go? What is this? It’s all watered down. There’s like, instead of one specific problem, one kind of prime customer mindset, there’s like 15 things in there. They have no idea how it’s going to go to market at their slapping a price on it. I’m like whoa, it’s kind of jumping from early to all the way over here and I don’t know. I mean, obviously there are limitations and you can’t ignore them in terms of how the execution is everything right In terms of how you go to market if you’ve got this idea. I’ve talked to many startups, where one in particular comes to mind, where this really amazing idea for seniors and their family isn’t there Caregivers, their kids to help them. The idea was to augment someone’s television so they could. You know, an older person who’s not had a lot of tech experience isn’t really savvy on smartphones, but you could augment their televisions so they could video, talk on video on their TV without having to do anything, you know, with their loved ones. And he was so passionate about this idea because he had experienced this problem. And I’ve been talking with a lot of people whose parents are aging and they can’t get over there enough and they can’t see them enough, but they can’t get them to use FaceTime and all the things, and it was just. It was just such a poignant, worthy problem to go after. But you know, then he’s meeting with investors and they want an ability that the marketing just feels too grandiose. You know, like, oh my gosh, the marketing plan, how maybe you should sell this to nursing homes instead, you know, and have them put it in the patients’ rooms. And you know, okay, well, the hardware issues started coming into play and there were real issues like there’s the hardware we have to make for this, we can’t get it in time. So then it becomes like I had this problem I wanted to solve and I knew I validated the heck out of it. I mean, have people crying telling me they want this thing right, like, but then how I need to take it to market to satisfy the people who are going to invest in this and how I need to retool the product based on the hardware limitations pretty much change what this could be. So it’s like, instead of giving up, you have to think about all right, could there be a new go-to-market model? And if it’s going to be selling to nursing homes now you got to go. What’s in it for them, right? Like no, there’s much what’s in it for, you know, the daughter or son of their aging parent who’s sitting alone in their house anymore. It’s now what’s in it for the person in the nursing home who wants to buy this, you know? So just, I think, an example that’s a little bit veering away from your question around data versus gut, but I think that particular story came to mind because I was thinking about what happens to so many good ideas when they go into market as the execution. There are real blockers that can occur and you always have to go back to your story that you’ve started with. If I call it a story script in the story-run world, they call it the long-form brand script, the short version of that. Whatever it is that you call it, we have many clients who call it a manifesto. But the pain and gain story what our solution will do for somebody in a pretty specific and poignant situation to get them to transition to success. If you have that script in hand, and that’s what you’re marching forward with, you have to recognize when you have to either go back to the story and find a new one or you have to find a way to make your launch plan match what it is, your ideal customer, the mindset you’re going after, the specific problem that you’re solving. If you want to stay convicted on that path, then it may be that it’s a consumer product or consumer offering and not B2B and not digital. It starts small before you go big. How grassroots and small can you go into a really small test market? It’s not like you’re trying to raise money from investors, but this has to be a stepwise process. Going DTC marketing is very, very expensive. You’re not going to go from prototype to advertising during money in a football overnight. It’s usually a very stepwise type of go-to-market plan. Those are the ones that succeed. I mean, it’s one of the biggest brands that feel like they have a huge, wide, expanded product line and they’re for everybody today started in a very, very hyper focused, specific, grassroots, door-to-doors we used to say type of launch plan. Yeti is still my favorite example, tina’s like. I’ve heard this story but I love it. These two guys were two brothers, son of an angler, their professional fishermen. It’s called an angler. I’ve learned in my outdoorsy years they would have coolers that they put their fish and their drinks in, but they would beat those coolers up. There’s a picture online of one of the brothers standing casting on a cooler. They just were like their dad, I think. He built boats and there was the material that was used for boats. I’m giving the story right as far as where the material came from. They knew that they could make a better cooler that would keep things cold but also be really, really durable and would stand up to a day out on the boat. The product that’s in every soccer mom’s hand in America and every party on every boat and every backyard today started as one product, going after one specific problem, which is not even keeping things cold. It was durability, this thing super durable. Look how we can beat the heck out of it. Stand on all these things. Who did they talk to? Initially? They talked to the very same people they knew would feel their pay and wish for other fishermen, fisher women and outdoors people. I think it took years before this was in every REI and that sort of thing. There’s a lot of good stories out there. There’s no such thing as an overnight sensation. Now, with the digital world, I think when that happens, or seemingly happens, it’s very serendipitous. But these launches that become a lot of things for a lot of different kinds of people typically start with one person or one very hyper focused type of problem that they knew they could solve, that they were passionate about solving. The initial launch plan was very grassroots, was not immediately jumping to, going too broad. What we’re helping people do is not water down their product concept before they go into markets, that they’re not fiddling to death with new messaging and split testing with real live people and real live platforms spending real live advertising money. You’re not going to get it perfect before you go live and you certainly your first product is not every product you’ll have, but feel like you got to love it before you launch it, feel like you’ve nailed it. That feeling one of the questions, tina, you sent me that you might ask today you had asked about how do you know? You know when you take a test, the standard, like whether it’s the ACT or whatever test where it’s a standardized questions. I always think back to like taking a math question on maybe the ACT and you know when you know you got it right. You know that feeling oh yeah, it’s C, I know it’s C. That feeling you aren’t 100% sure you might be. I mean there are times when you might be. You just know you’ve nailed it. It’s that feeling right. It’s not about perfection, it’s not about the only thing you’ll ever launch into the market, but it’s that feeling. Pia Silva she’s amazing. She wrote the book Bad Asher Brand. How I stumbled across her years ago. I’ve worked with her. She’s been a mentor and a business coach for me. She’s awesome. She talks about it feeling like your favorite pair of jeans, like when you know. You know Mainly talking about the kind of messaging and knowing your ideal customer target and getting real niche with your message. She always says like your favorite pair of jeans. That’s how it should feel. It’s hard to feel that way with just numbers. You’ve got to go beyond the numbers.

Tina Smith: 30:38

I’m curious though, like with your experience with these massive companies, because I see this, you know we’re in the natural products business. I see this all the time with brands that have been really successful with a product. It could just be kind of like a standard product, like a protein powder or something like that. Then they do really well with it. They’re like oh well, let’s just add new versions of the same product. We’ll just sprinkle dust, whatever extra things, like oh, this is a stress protein that doesn’t exist. But it’s like let’s try to hit these trendy stress or hydration or weight loss or whatever. It doesn’t really alter the product all that much. I’m curious what the process looks like for some of these larger companies where they maybe feel like they have that like well, we need to hit these trendy things, even if it’s not necessarily an effective product. How hard is it to stop that train from the time of like oh, we have this idea, let’s just reformulate ever so slightly to create this new product. Then they bring it to market. In our case, where we work with a lot of retailers and they’re just like this is crap, we don’t want to sell this. It’s like stick with what you know. You had a really great flagship product and now you’re just adding stuff that doesn’t need to be there and trying to be something that you’re not. I’m just curious is it almost better for them to go to market, even if they have, like poor research, once they’ve kind of started that process of the formulation, the packaging? I know it’s expensive is it better to take it to market and let it fail once it gets there or to stop it in its tracks?

Teri Hoffman: 32:26

Ooh, that’s a loaded question. I laughed initially. I was like PTSD laughing, I think Gosh, in the bigger company world there are often times when the reason for launching or extending so adding offerings or extending is to actually satisfy the retailer. It’s for shelf space, it’s for making sure we stay ahead of the competition. That’s often the reason and that can go. Bigger companies have the ability to, of course, correct pretty quickly or to recover, I would say, more easily than a smaller company. That’s where, I would say, in the situation where a retailer is saying we don’t need this, sometimes you have to learn the hard way, unfortunately. I want to save everybody from that. We all do. That’s what we want to save our clients from A couple of sprints, easier said than done sometimes, when you have your own thing, pitching the retailer before you make the thing would be key. Okay, right, like we have this idea. What we can do is and so this is a common thing that we have done with bigger companies that I think could be really useful as far as advice for smaller companies that are emerging and trying to grow would be creating, like, what we call a concept or the idea, without creating the product, getting reactions to it getting a validation from consumer excitement, right To be able to show, to pitch that to the retailer and doing your diligence before you’ve gone through with the effort of all the R&D right Like it often is the reverse that happens. Right, like the R&D no, they’re onto something, they’ve got this formulation, they were pitched by some shop that has some unique ingredient or something that they’ve like. I mean, the exclusion would be when you truly do stumble onto something that is technology or is an ingredient or is a combination of ingredients that you know can solve a problem that nobody else has been able to crack the code right. Or an example would be there’s a dog food brand called Badlands Ranch. It’s actually Catherine Hegel who was the actress on Grey’s Anatomy and she’s a big animal advocate, all about natural foods and cooking and all these things that she’s real passionate about that. And she has a farm in Utah somewhere and they live on the farm and cook all their own food and live off the land mentality right and is very passionate about trying to feed our animals something that is food that is less processed but recognizes like it’s not that easy to make my dog’s food or if it’s all of like farmer’s dog and all these awesome brands that are out there. Now it’s frozen, so it’s like creates okay. Well, what do I do when I have to travel with my dog? And now I got to let it fall, or it’s like I got to keep it cold, so her? If you go to their website, look at their messaging for their product. Pretty quick into the messaging you’ll find them talking about technology, which is not usually what we advise. Like, people don’t want to hear all about your brand and all about what it does and all about the science, but in this case they’re actually come up to you. It’s like hey, we’ve come up with a way to slow cook the food so that we can still make it dry, so that it’s still easy, just like we know you want it, but also retains a lot very minimally processed. So it’s just an example where we know this is a pain point. Like we know, people wish they had a better solution than feeding dry dog food and they feel guilty about doing it. But it’s expensive and not easy to go to all natural dog food. So is there a middle ground? And the technology itself speaks volumes, even if it’s like all you have to do is tell me about this technology and I’m like, yay, it feels believable. So in that case, because that’s a good, that’s a strategy that’s rare, I think, that works. That’s rarely the way these brands that are adding new products, are expanding or et cetera, like to lead with the science, the ingredient or the tapping into a trend. These are be skeptical about that Anytime that you know you’re following a trend or you’re just throwing in an ingredient that sounds trendy, just so you can have another product on the shelf. If it’s not truly tapping into a problem that’s unsolved, maybe hold.

Amanda Ballard: 37:17

Yeah, terri, this reminds me of you said earlier. The people closest to the customer are the ones who have the hunch that you should definitely pay attention to and in our world. So we work with natural products retailers and natural products manufacturers, and what keeps coming up over and over again is this advice of you use the independent retailers, with these small audiences who are very connected to their local community, who stand in the aisles and consult with their clients. You use those as test markets. They get all your new ideas and you can even come and just have some training with their employees and you’ll get feedback before you launch a product or before you try something new. So there’s a number of things like there’s a wealth of information and all that you’ve brought to the table. And it just reminds me over and over again, both for the retailer owner, because to be talking to the people who are talking to the customers. A lot of times the retail owner is the person on the floor, but many times they’ve got a lot of employees who are interacting with their customers Perfect time to flow to new idea. If you’re going to bring a new product into the store, the people who are walking those aisles will know if people in that community are going to be excited about that thing. They’ve heard about all the problems that you’re still not able to solve yet, so they’re the people that you can be talking to to get that feedback. And the same with the manufacturers. If you’ve got a distributor in the area and you’re thinking about a new idea, great time to have conversations with the people who are working those floors. That is closest to the customer.

Teri Hoffman: 39:02

Oh yeah, 100%. And that reminded me of a project that I worked on, gosh, a few years ago, one of my favorite clients. They actually make cat litter. It’s called World’s Best Cat Litter, by the way. They’re very special people, the very special products, so there’s a plug for them. It’s all natural cat litter and they’re building the brand, looking for new ways to build the brand but also extend the brand and create new formulations, that sort of thing. And we did some work at the early stage of a new initiative and the sales team was involved and it was such a reminder that these people are out talking and they were talking like the feed stores. They had all these insights, as we like to call it. I think insights come from us, not from data, but they were. It was so insightful because of just the things that they would say they’ve heard from being out on the floor talking to their customers and then happening upon somebody shopping the cat litter aisle and then they’re talking to them and then the person shelt to shock in the cell chimes in and it was that moment when I realized, gosh, we have to get this is like grassroots right here. Right, you can get feedback if you’re already on to If you’re looking for a new way, if you’re kind of in the more early stage of like I want to just learn more about my customers. My gosh read reviews, find a few friends who’ve used your product. Right, go talk to them, especially, like you said. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s an advantage in this space that they have, whether it’s the retailer, the manufacturer, there’s such a tight relationship with these more boutique, local, smaller distribution channels because there’s just interaction happening. And I’ve always said the salespeople, the big companies marketing in sales, it’s sort of like you know, they feel like they’re supposed to be aligned but they’re often feel like they’re working at each other sometimes and I get it. But, like the sales folks are out there, like you said, they’re out there on the ground talking with people while things are being bought and sold and gosh customers asking questions. I mean what an opportunity, right, like when people are like asking questions because they can’t find something or they think something’s not available that they think they want when it really is. I mean that’s a big clue, that’s a big opportunity if, like all these brands think they’re communicating something and consumers don’t think they can find that anywhere.

Amanda Ballard: 41:36

Yeah, Well, terry, this has been great, like you’ve given so many nuggets for people to use to launch new products. But really, I mean, I feel like the heart of this interview has been around staying in touch with your customer, because I think that’s where the gut feeling comes from is that interaction, the conversations and hearing feedback, because you’re right, products don’t make it if you’re not solving a problem, and the only way you’re going to know what problems are out there is personal experience and feedback from other people. So I love all the information that you’ve given today and I know that people are going to be able to use it to sell more product in their stores and launch new products and sort of innovate in their markets in a way that is less expensive for some of our smaller companies. You don’t need all this data. Data is great, don’t ignore it, but you don’t necessarily need it if you’re in touch with your customer, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. So we always ask our podcast guests the same questions to end the interview. Oh gosh, yes, amanda, do you want to do that, or you?

Tina Smith: 42:53

want me to. Yeah, I’m watching Loaded, I’m ready to go, all right, okay. So, terri, who do you like to follow to kind of stay up to date with all things marketing and kind of stay at the top of your game?

Teri Hoffman: 43:07

Oh, wow, of course, donald Miller, jj Peterson, the story of Brown folks, I you know it was pretty life-changing when I stumbled upon, actually, somebody locally recommended, I read, building a story brand, when I was actually launching my own company, because it’s hard to do you know create, clarify, you know figure out your own messaging and your own offers for yourself. And so I realized really quickly oh my gosh, this is so practical. Well, of course, it’s based on a 2,000-year-old, proven framework, a stinkin’ good story, right? So that is a big one for me. Gosh, there are so many For behavioral like, there is a book called Influence, which I think is the foundation of persuasion, influence, consumer behavior by Rappacciadini, and he recently launched a newsletter on LinkedIn. I’m like, oh wow, look at this. You know, I was just surprised that he did that and it’s really really good and it’s one of those things where it’s a lot of social science experimentation, a lot of social experiments, but they’re very easy to like. He’ll do like a little slide. You know, if you follow him on LinkedIn, a couple slides share, you know, carousel, if you will. And it’s really easy to get the lesson from it and apply it somewhere very distant from the actual experiment itself. So those are probably my two favorites. I have a bunch my gosh.

Amanda Ballard: 44:47

Yeah, cialdini is one of the best. So if you guys want to get that book, he’s done several presuasion. And who’s working with them? Bass Wooters actually wrote a book called Online Influence and I helped them do their marketing when they were first launching that. And now they’ve sort of brought these two brands together. And that’s Bass is the practical guy. He’s from the Netherlands and he is like out there running the tests with his crew and then bringing the data back and Cialdini is talking about it. So I think that was a perfect like match.

Teri Hoffman: 45:25

And so far, oh, I didn’t know that I have to check it out. I have a personal. I was at a conference. It was actually all about behavioral science and he was one of the speakers. I got to meet him. He’s just, he just has this aura about him too. He just feels like good people, person, right. But he was talking about writing his book Presuasion and I’ll never forget he said he put a picture of his grandchild or grandchildren inside of what he was writing because he wanted to make sure what he created would be something they’d be proud about. And I feel like I try to remember that all the time. I mean, you have to. Everybody wants to feel proud about, they’ve had an impact on in some way, even if no one knows it. But you right, like that you had, you were the reason that this went to market this way or you helped do whatever it is, and I thought that was so neat too. So I have an emotional like pull for him. But yeah, his stuff is just. There are many others right Out there that are good reads, but there’s a problem with my two favorite. I could go on and on on this question. I do I do a lot of skimming. I’ll tell you I’m a big doer, probably to a fault. So I, you know, I’ll get into a book and my brain’s like, get something, you need all this. As soon as I get I’m like, oh, I’m going to try that, I’m going to try a new idea. And then it’s like, oh, put that on the shelf, let me try a new one. I think another really good one just it’s a little bit outside of the norm, I think, in the marketing world is Hit Makers by Derek Thompson. He’s actually a writer for the Atlantic and it’s all about you know why things go pop, what makes, what makes, what really makes things go viral. You know what makes big ideas take off, and it’s called Hit Makers. It’s really, really it’s just. It’s just. It’s not for somebody who’s looking for. Give me 10 examples and 10 exact tips to use today. It’s more about like, here’s what really goes on in terms of why things take off, why new ideas take off. He talks about how modern music, you know, is all based on the same chords and you know, there’s something subtly familiar. There’s newness and subtle familiarity and the balance of that. So it’s a really good one too, especially somebody who’s thinking about growing their brand and trying to attract customers quickly with a really strong message, or wanting to put a new product into the marketplace, or sell a new product right. Like retailers, care too about messaging and so forth.

Tina Smith: 47:55

So awesome. What do you think is the single biggest decision you have made in your career that’s led to your success?

Amanda Ballard: 48:07

No pressure, just the single biggest.

Teri Hoffman: 48:09

Yeah, I like that.

Amanda Ballard: 48:15

I wrote these questions by the way, this is not.

Teri Hoffman: 48:18

Yeah, tina, I get it, don’t shoot the mess here. Okay, decision. Okay, there’s a few. I was trying to decide. There are like three different stories. Interestingly, they all tie into two things One, feeling pulled to work with somebody who I sense could teach me a lot, who’s moving and do or could teach me a lot, or being able to hack my way and try new things. So making decisions to do either of those two things and walking away from taking the road loss traveled, but I would say probably the single biggest one was when I was working at Ipsos, which is a big marketing research company I think it’s the second biggest in the world now. I was there for 10 years and I was working on a business unit and the company acquired a new business unit or a new business from another company and they came in to pitch us because we were kind of the generalists and they were specialists and we would need to pull them in on certain projects and so forth. And the person who runs that business his name is Jason Brown. He’s now head of the client organization at Ipsos. He was probably the first person that in my world of designing, selling marketing and doing marketing research who really would talk from a business results first standpoint and he was super casual and just like there was something about. I’m like, wow, I could learn from this person. I was really new in the industry at the time and I was really attracted to this person who was talking about business results first. I’ll talk about design and gadgets and data and our livelihood is designing and all these things it was more about. This is what the business context is and the kind of business strategy that we want to. It was all about results and I just had to go work for him. I knew that and serendipitously, a job came up and I got on his team and I jumped ship, probably earlier. I was doing really, really well in the job that I was in at the time so well. I was having a really amazing year so well. That became a little bit of a oh, you’re poaching her from one division to the other, but it was like knowing I had to work with that person and that job was kind of everything for where I am now. It gave me all of my ideas. It taught me all the foundational basics about helping people really be more about good market strategy first, research second. So long went, a way to say knowing I wanted to work for him and then working for him because I’ll never have a boss. Everybody works for him says the same thing, so that was amazing learning experience.

Amanda Ballard: 51:17

Well, I love that too, because, talking about business context and what’s the business result of this, versus just having a great idea, people come to us and say, hey, I want a new website, and I’m like, okay, maybe.

Teri Hoffman: 51:33

Right, oh gosh.

Amanda Ballard: 51:34

Right, because I don’t know if it’s going to give you the business results that you’re looking for, but I think it’s a great goal, like what are we trying to accomplish? And then let’s talk about the path to get their website might be the right thing. So I love that. I love it when marketers and this is a big watch out, a big red flag If your marketing team that you’re going to is just like fulfilling your requests or they are not in touch with what your business goals are or what the context is around, how you can and kind of get there because of regulations or like whatever it is that’s contextual to your business, your marketing team better be aware of it, because you can have a new website and it can be a really great one and it might not get you where you want to go.

Teri Hoffman: 52:21

Oh yeah, so great. My world as well. You know it’s like you want to give them what they think they want, but you know they need probably something else. So you need to get the context from them and dig in a little. But I just I’ve found if they’re not willing to talk through, like let me dig in with them a little bit first, then it’s probably not the right fit for what we do. You know I need to have, I know you think this is what you need, this is what you need me to do for you. I have found that, like, all they need is for them to want to have a session with me to let me dig in and ask questions. And if they’re open to that and they’re excited about sharing context, I usually know that I can help them. See that it’s their idea to not immediately jump into building the website or, in my world, immediately jumping into the research or immediately, you know, whatever it is. Yeah, they need to want to. I mean, I’m sure there are situations when people look I’ve written the copy, tina, I want this website bill, right. Like, maybe there’s that rare case, but I think it’s pretty rare, right.

Amanda Ballard: 53:24

Yeah Well, and I do think some hesitation around sharing some of that information from my perspective has been we’ve done this a million times, like sometimes I think that with business coaching, if you make me write one more vision or mission statement, or like I have to map out what my three year plan is one more time, what I really needed someone to get in the trenches with me and help me get things done. I think that’s some hesitation because they’ve been burned in the past by people who go through this long drawn out process. They’ve done it a million times. It’s gotten them nowhere. So first red flag is that you’re not asked. Second red flag is it doesn’t matter what you say, they’re still going to offer you a website or like whatever it is. But I understand hesitation sometimes with, like going through this rigorous process again.

Tina Smith: 54:12

Yeah. So, terry, what do you think is some low hanging fruit that would give people in the natural products industry some quick wins in their businesses?

Teri Hoffman: 54:24

Well gosh, tina already mentioned one, which is, if you haven’t, If you haven’t talked with users, customers recently talk to a few. It’s so stupidly simple A few conversations. Read reviews. I know it might sound silly to many business owners, because they business owners and founders do tend to do these things more so than you know. A bigger company got other things going on and you start lose touch with those types of activities. But like simple right, like just conversations. Don’t even worry about the structure of the conversation. You know, if it’s really just want to know how you’re doing, have some conversations. That, to me, is the lowest of low hanging fruit there is I’ve worked with. So I come from a big corporate land that I spent several years working with startups as well. When I started my company intentionally, you know, and I’ll never forget. A guy had an initial kickoff session with him and he had a new product that was already his first version, was already in the market and had sold. He was selling. He wanted to improve it, build it out, scale it, all those things. Before he did that, he wanted to make sure he had really nailed what he was going to scale. And one of the first things he said to me is like he knew that I have, you know, doing the research is a big part of my livelihood and expertise and I come from you know, corporate world. And he said it was almost like I was going to tell you I haven’t done much research. He was almost like embarrassed because he felt like he hadn’t done the right, all the valid, all the things that you’re supposed to do that we probably do over here in the corporate world, that he just he just went for it as a founder and I said, okay, well, let’s talk a little bit about your product, what you know now. And he started telling me about this hunch, obviously the theory that he has that he thinks it’s an umbrella. It’s a. It’s actually a huge umbrella that’s called Humbra that you put on the back of a truck that is really sturdy and creates shade. Okay, and he. This came upon him as he was out in the Death Valley desert under the sun baking and he couldn’t get enough shade under the tent or the pop of tent that he had. So he had said, like I really think the problem that I’m really solving is the wind, it’s sturdy, it’s about shade, I think it’s about sturdy. I was like, well, how do you know this? He said, well, well, first I looked at my sales and then I looked at where they were coming from and they just happened to be coming from like windy areas. So your question about data, that would be a good, that would be a clue, right? Data should be about clues and signals and not proof, right? I’m like, oh, that that’s a good theory, right? And then he said, then he says, keep in mind, he tells me that he has not done any. I’ve really not done any, really, customer, I really just went for it, I haven’t done much research. I said, okay, well, and then I said what else? How else do you know that? And he said, well, when I talked to all the customers, I’m like, wait, wait, wait, maybe, and talk to all of them, he was, yeah, I call every single customer that has bought my product and I just basically, he was basically journey mapping, right, he was asking them, just, you know, hey, how’d you hear about this Kind of what, what you’re experienced so far? I mean, I’m like can I hire you to do our research for us? You know, I was like can I just stop you for a second and let you know that please don’t assume what you’re doing is research, right, like you are doing the things to keep in touch with making sure your customers and their needs and making sure you’re solving the right problem. And before you go big with this thing, wanting to really nail a problem that you suspect is a little different than what you started out with, I just, I was so like that’s a long-winded story, I’ll have to figure it out. I edit this one down. Maybe we’ll retake it because it’s a good one. I was like he’s telling me that he doesn’t do any research and then feeling kind of embarrassed by it. And then he proceeds to tell me he talks to every customer and I thought if I could get every one of my big clients to talk to one, to want to talk to one, you know, just go talk to one you know, wow.

Tina Smith: 58:28

So that’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, terri. If people want to get in touch with you or, you know, do a consultation with you, how would they get in touch with you?

Teri Hoffman: 58:38

Yeah, gohunchcom is our website. There is a button right on the homepage to book a call. So that’s the first. That’s where we always start, just to hear a little bit about where you are. If we can help you always get something out of that call, because we will review whatever you have at the moment whether it is a working idea, whether it’s an established brand message. We’ll review it together and give you some tips right on that call. So that’s the first step. My email is terri T-E-R-I one R at gohunchcom. I had to make the emphasis about the one R. It’s like a joke with my friends and I. You know everybody puts two Rs in it and I have to. Nobody on this podcast knows about that inside joke, but they have now they do, it might put a Y on it too. Oh listen, that’s the boy version. Terri Bradshaw shirters.

Amanda Ballard: 59:32

Very funny. Yeah, thanks so much, Terri, for being here and doing this, and we’ll have links to your website and your email address in our show notes so that people can find you easily. And if you’re looking for some sort of guerrilla marketing research, I think Terri’s a great option to go with. So book a consult and learn a lot of things about whether or not your hunch with your customers is right.

Teri Hoffman: 1:00:04

Aw, thank you, it’s been super fun. Thank you for having me on.

Tina Smith: 1:00:08

Thanks so much for listening to the Natural Products Marketer podcast. We hope you found this episode to be super helpful. Make sure you check out the show notes for any of those valuable resources that we mentioned on today’s episode.

Amanda Ballard: 1:00:19

And, before you go, we would love for you to give us a review. Follow, like and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you’re listening today, and make sure you join us for our next episode, where we give you more marketing tips so that you can reach more people and change more lives.