 often a lack of connection is to blame for marketing and brand under performance why is that well think of brands like people some you associate with on a very shallow level some you interact with regularly but dot really feel a connection and some you just really love like people we want to engage with brands that share our values perspectives and opinions we become loyal to them when we know they understand us and make us feel good but as a brand owner or leader how do you find these insights and build these emotional connections successful brands invest in really understanding their customers they undertake fit for purpose qualitative research to ask their customers questions and gain their insights into what they are thinking and why they behave the way they do too often this step is overlooked by a lack of understanding or a short term view of objectives and budget customer insights are the gold nuggets of wisdom that dot just give rise to effective campaigns they transform the businesses too last year we undertook 20 in depth online interviews for a tech company wanting to know how their customers felt about them the phone interviews all following the same discussion guide and conducted across the world clearly showed that while customers were loyal they were hungry for greater innovation these insights gave the leadership team confidence to fast track some of their more ambitious projects we recently interviewed 20 potential current and lapsed customers for a business management consultancy our client learned more about the life cycle of their customer businesses and how their needs change at each stage the insights from these interviews helped us shape the consultancys approach to introducing a new product stream to a wider audience earlier this year we undertook 15 in depth interviews and six focus groups for a tertiary institution aimed at understanding the emotional drivers for enrolments enrolments had been waning slowly for eight years and key demographics had switched around too through our insights we were able to show that while students were still true believers in the brand alumni and referrers were noticeably less enthusiastic this was affecting the quality and number of referrals the detail in our insights is fuelling a brand and marketing strategy aimed at strengthening connections fit for purpose customer research at new word order we undertake this step as part of our wider brand development methodology every time we find research yields valuable input into our client business strategies on top of feeding their brand strategy our qualitative research is a formative contribution that tells you how your customers perceive your brand and what they need from you we then use quantitative research to test that these views are representative of the wider industry and your customer base research can be expensive but it doest have to be theres an art to asking customers questions we can find out the true deep feelings of your customers ones theyll never tell you no matter how close the relationship you share we can help you build deeper emotional connections and loyalty with your customers 