Credit:Luke Chesser
It is easy to get caught up in measuring metrics at a company as a way to gauge success but the data is often not organized in a manner that allows a business to consistently forecast which tactics will be successful.
When you start up a new business, it's exciting to have data that you can parse to see which split test is successful, whether this is in advertising creatives, ad copy or product designs.
But, it's often taken for granted just how complex and layered this process is because it isn't just about delivering a satisfying product but a complete experience that makes buying from your company stand out from the competition.
Distinguishing Your Company From Others
Even the limitations of your product or service can be used as part of the unique selling mechanism. Take for example Twitter's 280 characters limit for tweets & calling a post a "tweet." (See last week's blog on the war between Trump and Twitter)
There are so many levels of a pain point your product or service solves, that it takes a very nuanced approach to address the gap filled. This means that just basing definitions of success on quantitative data will miss the elephant in the room, the customer's:
Credit: Sarah Kilian
Why a person buys your product or service is not always something so granular that it can be put on a spread sheet. This why can change at different times of the day, year or with a set of personal experiences of infinite variety.
Facebook's Metrics Fail to Measure Actual Data
When I worked at Facebook in the ads department we had scores that rated us on how effective we were at our jobs. The number one score was Customer Sat, for Customer satisfaction. The C-Sat scores determined the stability of vendor contractors that staffed for Facebook as well.
However, there was a huge hole in universally rating everyone, for every type of customer, based on one, very black and white metric. The amount of money a person had to spend on ads often was a big trigger on whether or not they were satisfied with the support from the ads department.
If you were too broke to spend enough money to both A/B test and retarget (or even understood what retargeting is) then it didn't matter how many help center articles you read --you'd be unhappy. It wasn't an accurate measure of job performance.
We didn't have conversations with management on understanding why customers chose Facebook over other social media platforms to advertise on.Or how Facebook products or services helped make progress in people's lives & which circumstances they were trying to make progress in.
How to Discover Multileveled Pain Points
Many organizations completely miss defining what the real reason is that customers hire them, and easily fall into the common trap of a one-size-fits-all solution that never solves the problem.
Diving deeper than the surface level metrics opens up new possibilities for growth hacking and innovating company structure, both B2B and B2C.
Taking the time to investigate a customer's multileveled why for consuming your business's offering helps uncover the real reason they buy. Before Volvo messed up their brand image, people didn't buy Volvos to get from A to B or for a flashy look. They bought Volvos to feel safe.
The Secret to True Innovation
One thing you'll discover when going beyond quantitative metrics is the reason why your customer does not purchase. This is often an even more important area to focus on.
If there isn't a product or service that fits a customer's needs, they'll choose not to buy anything rather than settle for a less-than-perfect solution.
Customizing a product or service to fill this need is where many entrepreneurs have made billions of dollars. If you've looked at a niche and felt like you don't have any room to compete because it's over saturated that's a big sign that you probably haven't defined your client avatar's Why well enough.
It's a whole range of experiences that create the need that you're solving. This goes far beyond the basic demographic information of age, gender, location and interests.
When you captivate the story of every day consumers in that split second of struggling to move forward and being stopped by not having what they need - this is the real gold.
Workarounds Offer Insight Into Product Development
Finding out what things your customer base is substituting for what they really want is another opportunity to growth hack. If they have a work around that's pretty "meh" because what they want isn't available you can become very successful by solving that trade off.
Start paying closer attention to the workarounds you use in your own life to get things done, digitally and physically. Being both the consumer and the entrepreneur at the same time can yield new insights because of the way you can think outside the box than just quietly suffering wishing for something better.
Take note of both your own circumstances, and social-emotional depths when faced with something you can't solve perfectly. Observe other people's buying habits and workarounds and discover if consumers are repurposing something it isn't intended for.
This will signal a new gap your product or service can fill. It's a story that mere metrics won't tell you about. This type of market research reveals the nature of pain points in a way that offers you a chance to stand out in solving them.
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