Marketing researchers are quick to go all in on the campaign, the creative, and the research. However, the most important factor can be overlooked, and that is the decision.
Before running surveys, interviews, or focus groups, the real question should be: what decision is this research supposed to help us make? Because if you don’t know that first, you’re just collecting information for the sake of collecting information.
Marketers already have enough dashboards to work with without a purpose.
Start With the Decision, Not the Data
Designing research with the end in mind ultimately means that before you run a study, it’s imperative to have a clear research objective, know who you need to hear from, and understand what types of questions will actually answer the business problem (Tanenbaum, MR Process Step 2 lecture).
The four ingredients that can make the study easier once these pieces are clear (Tanenbaum, MR Process Step 2: Design the Research Study):
- the research tool
- the audience
- the concept you want to learn about
- how it will be measured
With these ingredients, the questions become sharper and the data becomes more insightful.
When planning a campaign, start with the conversion goal, not the ad.
When creating content, start with the reader takeaway, not the word count.
And when building a website, start with the user action, not the layout. In another piece I wrote, “Your Website Is a Conversation, Not a Canvas: Site Architecture”, I talk about why websites should guide people toward decisions instead of simply looking good.
What This Looks Like
This idea shows up all the time in the world.
Imagine a fashion brand preparing to launch a new campaign. Before investing in production, the team might run qualitative research, like small focus groups or interviews, to see how people react to the concept, visuals, or messaging.
Is the campaign meant to feel empowering?
Is it supposed to feel luxurious?
Is it supposed to feel rebellious?
Qualitative research helps marketers understand whether people actually feel those emotions, not just whether they remember the ad.
For example, brands often show early campaign concepts to small groups of consumers and ask open-ended questions about their reactions. These conversations reveal things numbers alone can’t, like whether the visuals feel either authentic or completely off-brand.
Design the research around the decision you need to make.
In this case, the decision might be simple: Does this campaign communicate what we think it does?
AI tools were used to assist with refining this article, as well as generating the first illustrative image included in the post.