In this episode of the Forget the Funnel podcast, Gia and Claire talk about the consequences of not understanding what really matters to your customers and how product and marketing teams find themselves in this situation way too often.
They talk about the signals that show your team has less insight than they need to make good decisions and how you, as a team leader or founder, may be making the problem worse.
Finally, they share a real-world story of a team who went into the market with one understanding of their ideal customer - only for shifts in the market to force their hand and reevaluate everything they thought they knew about their customers, marketing and messaging.
Discussed
- Signs you and your team don’t know who your best customers are (or enough about them), including slowed and inconsistent growth or trying new tactics that aren’t moving the needle.
- Why A/B testing and experimentation is valuable, but only if it comes after building a solid foundational understanding of what matters to your best customers with research.
- A great example of a team with an early mover advantage who was suddenly in a saturated market and needed to go from one understanding of their customers to another quickly.
Key Moments
[3:48] The typical a-ha moment for founders to know they need customer research.
[6:13] The consequences of companies not understanding their best customers.
[9:25] An example of the failure of not knowing your target customer
[12:02] these failures bubble up due to legacy knowledge, poor documentation, and resistance to research (even if you know it’s critical to your success).
[17:45] An example of a company whose business was negatively impacted during COVID, new companies entering their category, and how Gia and Claire helped them navigate back to success.