Using Big Data in Tandem with Survey Data to Grow Your Brand

There are so many challenges a company faces when trying to grow its brand. Building a strategy that offers the best opportunity for growth and understanding their current market position and how much they can grow are just two of them. Creating and refining the relevant messaging by knowing who to target to achieve that growth can be just as big of a challenge.

While market research is frequently used to address these issues, it generally covers the why and the what. Big data, on the other hand, adds an additional layer of understanding around the who and the how. We’ve found that combining these two sources of information can provide an incredibly deep understanding of your audience – an understanding that can be tied into a marketing and communication strategy. Additionally, this approach is scalable and agile in nature; it doesn’t require multiple phases or studies – by leveraging big data to fill the gaps in survey research, you can create one cohesive, actionable research report.

Identifying and Understanding Opportunities

A critical part of identifying the next opportunity is ensuring that it’s the right move for you, and this can be accomplished by looking at your brand’s audience and category together through one holistic lens. Once again, big data and survey data can work together to solve this need. Insights from data management platforms (DMPs) can be appended to survey data in order to build that connection between audience and category.

One thing we’d like to call out here is that survey data can provide insights into consumer preferences when it comes to a specific product, while big data can provide the actual purchase behavior of the entire product’s category. Using this approach, brands can conduct research with specific objectives in mind but still look at higher level insights to understand the context of their findings within the broader marketplace.

The ability to gather and contextualize audience and category insights helps brands understand what, who, and how much to go after for brand growth. For example, GutCheck’s big data solution can derive brand equity (from survey data) of multiple brands and compare that to the actual market share (from big data) to understand which segment or segments of audiences to pursue and how much market share is available for growth opportunities within those segments.

Businesses often know what their goals are or where they need to be, but don’t have a means of figuring out how to get there. Big data can demonstrate a more comprehensive picture of how to apply survey insights. It eliminates the need for additional studies and, in most cases, helps garner enough understanding to move forward confidently with a strategy. Traditional segmentations are unable to provide this level of insights, especially in one study, as they typically incorporate self-reported feedback specific to a single brand’s audience.

But combining big data with survey data isn’t just about identifying and understanding opportunities. Sometimes it can be a way to evaluate opportunities and minimize the risk of making assumptions based on insights that may only be telling half of the consumer story, especially when it comes to messaging.

Translating Findings into Effective Messaging

DMPs often include more information than just category level insights. In fact, data on social media usage, television viewing habits, and browsing history can be provided. This information, combined with demographics and feedback on specific brands or product concepts, provides an unparalleled level of depth and understanding of an audience.

In fact, we use big data in order to learn more about audience personalities by leveraging “The Big 5” model, a common taxonomy of personality traits. These traits include:

• Openness: People who are open to experiencing a variety of activities.
• Conscientiousness: People who have a tendency to act in an organized or thoughtful way.
• Agreeableness: People with a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative toward others.
• Extraversion: People who have a tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others.
• Nervousness: People whose emotions are sensitive to their environment.

Without having to ask more questions or conduct lengthy interviews, market researchers can leverage these traits to understand who to target and how to do so more efficiently. And since these personality traits can be used to extrapolate additional characteristics, they’re incredibly informative when it comes to messaging tactics. By combining consumer preferences, behaviors, and personality insights, brands can better execute upon the findings. A more holistic picture of actionable insights can be generated with little to no impact on timelines, making this a perfect solution for those looking to implement an agile market research strategy.

For an example of how this works in action, download our case study and see how we helped King’s Hawaiian grow their brand through an international expansion strategy.