Love Letter to Marketers and Agencies

As an entrepreneur with a company which frankly most folks haven’t heard of (yet), one would think I would have trouble getting people to sign up to use our product.  Well, that isn’t even close to being the case.  I am often on the road these days meeting with marketers and agencies whose feedback I value, and frankly, whose pocket books I cherish.  I have been amazed how gracious these folks have been with their valuable time, awesome feedback after using our application, and their overall assistance with building our company.

As I write this, I am returning from Cincinnati, the marketer and market research mecca.  One of the groups I met with is Coho Creative which was founded by an awesome guy named Jon Shapiro.  I met Jon through a friend of a friend.  However, Jon has been willing to help me as if I’ve known him forever.

We sat in his conference room where I provided a live demo to him and his team.  After which, Coho showered me with some feedback goodness.  Here are just a few examples (I paraphrase below…these guys speak much more intelligently than I write):

Value proposition – Yeah, the thing is affordable and timely, but the flexibility of being able to change things (e.g., the demographic and psychographic screener, interview guide, media) on the fly is a biggie compared to other traditional methodologies.  No more being stuck at a focus group facility where your interview guide is off, you recruited the wrong folks, and/or your concept is off.

Getting the MR group on our side – There is a lot of debate in the market research community about products like ours and their value in the research ecosystem.  Coho’s take is this tool gives the MR department (especially a smaller one) the ability to get the voice of the customer where in the past they would have had to go without it because of budget and time.  They can also get in front of the research project by controlling the interview guide development and the screening criteria, and then have marketing field it.

Other groups we ought to consider targeting – I have been in several meetings where the “innovation” title was brought up.  These are the folks who come up with all the new, cool products at companies.  Unfortunately, a lot of these folks don’t have the budget the marketing folks have to test out their early stage concepts in front of the customers.  Gutcheck can be their low cost, easy way of doing this.

We covered a lot of other ground, but this is the kind of help I am getting on a day-to-day basis, and I love it.

Thanks to Jon and the many other folks like him who are making GutCheck a reality.

3 Responses

1. GutCheck Demo - See for Yourself | GutCheck says:

   November 5, 2010 at 3:38 pm

   [...] Love Letter to Marketers and Agencies [...]

   Reply
2. albert marshal says:

   October 23, 2010 at 3:58 am

   very nice article.
   thanks,
   albert.

   Reply
3. GutCheck Demo - See for Yourself | says:

   October 1, 2010 at 1:41 pm

   [...] Matt has been talking about in his most recent posts, the demos we’ve been giving to marketers, agencies and anyone else who will listen [...]

   Reply