AI Market Research Protocol: 2x College Enrollments and Deep Customer Understanding #004

Mihaly: 0:16

Welcome to Disruptor Digest, the top disruption business show. We dig up the secret playbooks used by first movers, featuring the latest tools, technologies, and science, ensuring you won't fall behind or succumb to fomo, to Singularity and beyond. Hello and Dr. Mihaly Kertesz and joining me is my longtime collaborator, Viktor Tabor. Today we're going to demystify the research-based marketing strategies that we've employed across 21 industries and inserting languages. These strategies have allowed us to double the enrollment of new students at McDaniel College and to sell out a classical music concert in a large arena. We guide you on how to know your customers better. Our method focuses more on watching how they act than asking them directly. We use a simple but super effective formula to understand the motivations of your customers pay and gain job, also known as the jobs to be Damn framework. You'll learn why things like finding the right words people use. Studying your competition and secret shopping are so important. Also, we'll show you how A G P T can be your secret helper for understanding the market. This can give you a huge advantage over your competitors. Have you ever heard of dog footing? It's the practice of using your own product or service to refine it. We'll provide you with behind the scenes case studies from Facebook and beehive.com. We also share insights from our research interviews, examining location, dependent memory, respondent behavior, and by conducting interviews in people's homes, we make their responses more real and more honest. We'll Del into practical applications, setting examples from McDonald's, Disneyland, and app, and we'll explore marketing techniques like the fig door experiments. You present a protocol for conducting marketing research when your target audience is as small as 100 people. By the end of this session, you have a fresh perspective on marketing research. You can find detailed show notes, links, and the transcript of this episode on disruptor digest.com. Let's embark on this journey of exploration together. So Viktor, you and me, we have been working together for more than 12 years and, we have worked in 21 Industries helping clients and also started our own businesses, to be exact eight of them. And I would like to show the audience an example. One of our research that we conducted together, and after that we analyze why do we think it's, it's good? So this is a story of of McDaniel College. You remember that client?

Viktor: 2:33

Yeah. Viktor. Yeah, sure. It's an American college in Budapest. And they looked for expansion because they were shrinking and they didn't find a way how to. Go ahead and turn things around. Yes, exactly.

Mihaly: 2:46

So, so the exact term is satellite campus. So they give American degree in, in Europe, in the capital of Hungary, Budapest. And yeah, they had some problem that, this liberal arts education warrant that sexy and that, attractive to young people. So they approached us, what should they do? Fortunately we told them, okay, let's start with a research. Don't start with a website. Don't start with setting up a Google ATS campaign. Target audience is global, and if you want to start a global campaign in any kind of business, it's magnitudes more complex and harder than starting a local campaign. Start with the research. What, which we do is start to talk with their students. And also talk with their teachers, professors. And actually it was me that was conducting that interview. It's not a big campus there. And, at the end of the research, I was able to talk personally with half of their students. And I was interested in a few things. For example, why did they choose the college and also what do they think is the most important benefit for them in

Viktor: 3:52

the college? It was students who, who already went to the university, right? Yes. So you went to the actual students who were sitting in the, in a lecture classroom listening to a class, and you, after the class, just went to them and interviewed them, basically like asking these questions, right?

Mihaly: 4:07

Yes, correct. And, and the incentive was one pizza. So it was very effective because half of the students signed up. And, what came out from the study, or this research is that the most important benefit from them is diversity. What they said, for example, an example is it's very interesting to debit about word politics with fellow students from Ghana and Japan. And in this case, you know, this is a so-called insight. Something interesting that you can build on something. And these insights are more like a story and not statistics. And I think this is the first principle of research is to look for customer stories. And don't start with huge data, huge number of data, lot of numbers. And so, so look for surprises, look for unexpected behaviors. Look for unusual product uses. We will get back to this, mag example later, but, Before that, let me tell you some other fundamentals. So first one is observe. in this case I was asking students, but I was also observing them in the classroom. And, observing them, observing any kind of customer is so much more, effective than asking questions because Viktor, what do you think?

Viktor: 5:24

This, this observation can be creepy as well, right? So I just imagined you sitting in the corner of a classroom and observing quietly, everyone. So I guess you somehow, warm them up to what's going to happen and why you are there and, and those kind

Mihaly: 5:38

of things, right? The actual setting was that, I was filming them. It's even less creepy. We told them that we have to produce, promotional videos and I just spent like 40 minutes in a classroom. So, yo, it, it wasn't creepy. I can, I can assure, but, I understand. I know that you are, very enthusiastic about observing people and not asking questions. Can you tell me why are you very enthusiastic about

Viktor: 6:02

observing? Yeah, sure. To give credit for credit is due conversion rate experts. So conversion rate experts.com. this is an English company founded by rocket scientists. They're doing basically conversion rate optimization, what the name suggests, and they are big proponent and I actually learned everything from them, from their free resources. So that's why I'm giving credit to them. Put a huge emphasis on mystery shopping or dog fooding. I guess. In the Silicon Valley dog fooding is more common and dog fooding is not a binary, whether you do it or not, whether you testing actually using your own product, in real life or not, it's actually a sliding scale, right? So if you be at zero, so basically just build your own. Product, like what happening at Facebook? at one point, Toker Back was telling everyone that they should use Android devices as well. So he demanded people to use Android devices because all the engineers were using Apple devices, the highest end devices, and they had zero clue about the median experience of the user who didn't have money to chill out, like thousands of dollars each year to get the latest mobile device or latest, computer for that matter. So that's kinda like zero. And then he demanded people to, use Android, Android devices and then kind of like all the bug were surfacing because the people who were working on a product, they realized, okay, how it could be better because they were using it. And also I see this as kind of like the biggest, barrier in Silicon Valley. So all the developers are using the BFIs computers, which are costing someone's yearly salary, and they're just detached from the media user. But this is the crazy part, since this is the sliding scale, right? And if you can turn this to 10, why aren't you turning to 11? Right? Because you can turn it to 11 and 11 is ma'am, everyone is actually should use it. Give you an example. For example, we send out emails, we're using beehive.com. It's gonna be a link in the description so you can, you cannot see it. So what would happen at Beehive if every single employee had to use Beehive to create a newsletter? No matter if you are in customer service, no matter if you are programming, no matter if you are just a DevOps engineer you have to use to have a newsletter, then all the problems would be surfaced because everyone had to create a real life something with your product. Lately we were setting a beehive thing up and I just came across them because I was actually using it. Just for example, if I wanted to embed an email subscription form, I couldn't use HTML in it, and I wanted to highlight, and it was, I couldn't even use new line character. This was just one text. And this is what you said previously, that insights should be treated as stories. So not like hard facts, because if you ask me, I would say as a, as a customer, please create me a subscription form, which I can embed in my website and I can put HTML text into it. But I realized, holy shit, it could be enough for me if it's just marked down. So I don't need what HTML text, moving pictures, gifts and, and whatnot. I just need like, like boarding Italy, lake underlining and, and those kind of things, right? And then what I realized, holy shit, I'm making a mistake here. I'm making it too complex. So if I just embed a big chunk of text into my website, no one's gonna read it. No one's going to subscribe to our newsletter. So what, what I realized is that, okay, actually, like new line characters would be enough. And then I was thinking through as a, as a so-called pro product manager, I realized, holy shit, I, I'm fucking this thing up. Actually, this should be short. The original design is perfect, right? The only thing is missing some kind of like notification and telling the user that please keep it short because otherwise people won't, subscribe. So that's kind of like why you should use it and also have to treat these things as feedbacks, as stories and not as hard facts because if you like grab every single feedback as fact and you implement it, you most of the time we make, um, a bigger mess than previously. One more crazy thing, this is like actually turning, the dial of from 11 right on, on the dog fooding scale. So one of the engineering company did this, who I know, and they co-located, engineers at customers. So each engineer had to spend one week on site with a customer and they had to work there, right? So that was kind of like there, the home office or co-located office with a customer. And they were seeing how the customer is using. They heard all the frustrations, right? So they got like the firsthand experience. From the customer. So that's kind of like, if you can do it, that's, that's one of the best, best things. If you can for a long time, observe how your product is used and not just like screen recording softwares and those kind of things, but actually be there physically and, and force your employees to be there physically with your customers. That's, that's perfect. You can learn a lot. And, and that's kind of like the 11, on the scale of doc fooding. I see.

Mihaly: 11:02

Okay. So back to why do we want to observe people? Right? So first thing is, people tend to lie. We tend to lie, even ourself, for example, 80% of people say that they are better than the average driver. And we really think that. And also if you ask, hotel guests how gym is important for them in a hotel, 70% will will say that it's very important for them. But only 16% will use the gym and the rest will drink Gene and see soft porn in the tv. And also second thing is respondents want to show an image. We always want to show an image. We want to be honest. We want to be, um, intelligent, smart, and things. So we will just. No project, an image for the, for the interviewer. And if we are in a group interview, it's even more prevalent.

Viktor: 11:53

Yeah. It's a lot of signaling is going on. So it's like, you don't want to be seen as someone who is not intelligent, you don't want to seen as, who has no taste or, or who is not, appreciating fine art and those kind of things. So there's like kind of like societal, pressure on you to like, just like project as you said, and, and signal basically this is what signaling is.

Mihaly: 12:15

The third one is we don't want to hurt the interviewer. So for example, if you show respondents a very, very bad website, and the respondent may think that the website is developed by the interviewer or took part in it, then we don't want to say that, oh, sorry, but this is very, very bad. This is a very shitty website because this is just not polite, and people usually are very polite.

Viktor: 12:38

This is why you have to always like, get all the weights off from them and tell them, okay, actually I'm not working for them. So actually I'm, I'm working for them, but I don't building these things. So I appreciate all the honest feedback because you cannot hurt me. So you always have to be, upfront about, and very explicit about they cannot hurt you or your feelings for that matter. Right.

Mihaly: 12:57

And also we always stated there is no right or wrong answer because what the schooling education system taught us that there is always a right answer. And in research, qualitative research, qualitative research, there is no such thing as right

Viktor: 13:09

answer. Let me diverge here for two minutes. So, there is this marshmallow challenge where they give students and they actually groups of people, spas and marshmallows, and they have to build a tallest building with that, right? And they observe different kind of people in kindergarten or, university students, university students, or actually people who are diverse in construction and engineering and even CEOs for that matter. And the result was quite stunning because those who were studying MBA, for example, Or, economic at university, they far much worse than people in kindergarten. So children, small children. And who did the best? It's actually like, who had the domain knowledge? Like, actually engineering or, or just some background in, in construction, because they had obviously the background knowledge, but the takeaway was that even small children, what they do, they just mess around, right? So they, they try and fail and try and fail. They iterate and it's much better than the management, studies university students who think that there's just one single solution of the tallest building, which can be built from this. Right. Let's have like a takeaway how university kind of. Messes you up a little bit. There is no single right answer. You have to mess around. You have to iterate. And if you allow to fail at first and iterate a lot, a lot of cycles, you get much better at the end. It's also one reason why they, why people lie, because they just don't know, right? So if you ask me and I want to be helpful, I'm going to try to come up with a reason, but most of the decisions are actually made on the emotional level. So they never surfaced the preference or cortex for us. And it's actually backed up by science that you already know the answer and only like after the fact you rationalize it, post rationalize the, the decision. So that happens with AI as well. So if you don't tell these large language models that it's okay to say no, you don't know. They try to come up with some answer and they hallucinate. And that's the same thing with people. They hallucinate, they, they quite certain they know, but obviously it's not the reason. How can we

Mihaly: 15:19

observe people? First one is that you already mentioned observe people in real life. And actually that's what, the very expensive research companies are doing. they, they go to the homes, to people and see them watching how they behave, how they watch tv, how they do the dishes and everything. And not just for observation, but for questioning interviews as well. The most expensive research companies go to people's homes and ask the questions there because you are more open. And also you can a ask about the artifacts in, in your home. So

Viktor: 15:51

go to people. There's a thing which is called, I dunno the exact word, but it's called a location dependent memory. So that's why it happens, the contact dependent memory. So that's why it happens. If you are in a living room and you go to the bathroom, you suddenly forgot. What you wanted to do. And that's kind of like how people behave. So it's, a lot of, environmental cues are prompting us and prompting unconscious behavior, which obviously by definition it's unconscious and we don't know about that. So that's why if you go to their like original context where they do some behaviors, like if you researching watching a tv, you have to go people's home. If you are researching how they cook, you have to go to their homes and go to their kitchen and see how they cook because that's their environment where they do the, the behavior. And that's where. A lot of unknown can be surfaced by you observing them. And

Mihaly: 16:39

also there is a study hack here. If you can learn in the classroom when the exam will be taken, then it's, it's wise to learn there because you will get this environmental cues, in that place.

Viktor: 16:52

Even if you don't know where the exact room of the exam, you can just like study or just like practice in the same way as you are going to be. So not like laying back in your bed, but like sitting out and actually at the desk and actually kind of like a same situation. Okay? So observing

Mihaly: 17:08

people in real life, this is the most, expensive and, and, the most complex. So the second one is usability test. And it's maybe, again, sounds something abstract or complex, but it's very, very easy if you, if you c come up with everything, marketing material, poster, Google, an ad and most important lending page, just ask your friends, ask your spouse. Just sit down. think loudly and try to accomplish something on the website, and you will learn a lot even from a five minute test. And also record it because after that you can see in detail and see so many clues that you did it wrong in the first

Viktor: 17:52

try. Even on the phone as well. I don't believe you know about that, but you can record the screen on your phone so you can launch a screen recording and give your phone to someone and just tell them, okay, use it and, and accomplish something. And then you can watch it back and see that they click then, because you obviously won't remember everything. Easier

Mihaly: 18:10

way to do it and then little bit more scalable, it's screen recording. There are some softwares. Our favorite is Hotjar. and, um, you, you just install a one pixel on your website and you can see how people use your

Viktor: 18:23

website. It's, it's, who doesn't know? It's like what a pixel is. It's basically just an h GMR code. So you have the website and just the same way as like a, an image is put on a website the same way you get a code and you just put in it. It's like, it's, it's extremely easy to put inside the website and, and start using it. After

Mihaly: 18:40

we started to record these screen, these sessions that people using your website, when we publish something live, I'm very eager to, to see the first users, see 20, 30 few dozens. And in the beginning you will get a lot of insights. How do they scroll? Where do they click? And, and so, and later it'll have a diminishing return. But there is a very useful feature in, in hoja and I guess other platforms as well, the so-called rage click. It happens when something is not clickable, but the users are repeatedly clicking. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click on something and you'll learn a lot from

Viktor: 19:16

that. And even your website can stuck. So it's like even if, if it's clickable, like a button, if there's no feedback, like, okay, I acknowledge the click and I'm loading so there's no loading feedback, then user can like reach, click to, to something and post like a picture a thousand times. If you are not, If you, if you, if you weren't careful with designing your website, I'm not sure whether you came across this before, but I was observing one of my friends and he was reading on a desktop of computer with, with his actual mouse. So he was this actually following the text he was reading with the mouse. So if you these recordings on a desktop computer, a lot of the time you can actually. See how fast and where people are reading and what they're rereading as well. So if they, you just see if you're really, curious and you, you really observe and you can see them. They go back and just like move the cursor at what, what point, because they don't understand, it's not clear. So that's kind of like a quick hack, which I came across. Okay, so, so the

Mihaly: 20:16

next one is Google Analytics. And I know that you heard, the latest version of Google Analytics called GA four. And this is, we can talk about a lot about Google analytics. We used it thousands of hours in our life.

Viktor: 20:28

You mean by this, that GA four is a big pile of stinking shits or something like We can say that, right? We cannot say that. Yeah.

Mihaly: 20:36

It wouldn't be politically correct. So, um, yeah, we can talk about in a later episode if you are interested. But just one thing here, is to focus on segmentation. We will talk about segmentation later, but it's very easy to mix together, segmentation and see the average rule, the average person, the average, time on site and things like this. And it can do more harm than good. So let's go with something other useful. Set up an experiments and our favorite is Fake Door. So what is Fake Door? I will tell you an example. A few years ago, piano Guys, which is a music group with 2 billion YouTube views, came to Budapest and we were responsible for their, concert marketing. And we were sitting at a, at a client meeting and the client started to debate that, if they should make a package with a concert plus a hotel room for the night. So people who come from the countryside can comfortably stay somewhere close to the location. They started to debate it, okay, how should we organize, what should be the price? And things like this. And we suggested that before we go into this, Just put a so-called fake door on the website. So put the option, on the website that there is the package. Even we can define some price there, so it'll look real, but if somebody clicks on them, there are two options. Nothing is happening. or user can, only sign up. They can't buy the product, but we say it'll be available soon. Please sign up here, or something like that. The genius of the thing that it took us exactly three minutes to implement this button and the results were that while in the, in the, in the next days we sold about 1000 tickets. And only two people are signed up for this

Viktor: 22:27

package. And all altogether is, it was like 5,000 tickets. It was like a whole arena, like sought out and everything. And that's a few really, just a few people were buying this, try to buy this package right after

Mihaly: 22:38

a few days, we were able to shut down this experiment. Okay, next one is AB test. And I would go back to the McDaniel example. So after talking with students and, and the professors, we found out that diversity was the most important benefit, from the school. There were multiple stories, multiple, dimensions, and we thought, okay, just to be clear,

Viktor: 22:59

it's, it's not just the students saying that they appreciate this, this diversity. It was also of the faculty who was quite. Proud of the diversity they had at the school. Right. So they was like, this is the number one thing we, we have to communicate everywhere in, on tv, on flyers and everywhere, right?

Mihaly: 23:14

Yeah. So what we did, we, we created very usual, Facebook ads and we put different benefits, and, and targeted people and the main target audience for people in the central European regions, Hungary, lave, Slovenia, and other countries. And we found out that out of the six most important benefits, diversity was the last. And we try to find out why. And the reason is that most of the students in, in the region came from a very homogenous background. So 20 people from the same town, same city, they don't understand at all what is diversity. They may know what does it mean, but they never experienced in their schooling system their most important benefit was the thing that they're giving an American degree. And once you are studying in the school, it's something that it's, it's given, it's not interesting to you. I know at the end I will get a degree, which is certified American degree or actual American degree. It's actually USA degree, right? So, yeah. So actually, but in the everyday life, you, you, you don't, Study for

Viktor: 24:18

death. It's kind of like when you start out and you apply to the school, you think like, yeah. It's kind of like cool. I get a, a US a degree. Why I'm in Europe. Right. In one of the most beautiful capitals of, of Europe. And, and that's, that's nice, right? Once you progress that line and you already study, just kind of like a back to that. Yeah. Obviously that's, that's

Mihaly: 24:37

gonna happen. Just to summarize this, first you collect the stories and then you put it in test. And this is the observation part. So even you can ask, if we have an observation part of your research, then you can be more confident about asking people and maybe some answers will be not that honest and data gathering problems and things like that. But if you put in an observation study, like an AB test, then you will be got to go get

Viktor: 25:01

sc. Like first you have a. Qualitative data, which people are quite averse of. Like, yeah, I cannot process, I mean, if I ask for free text feedback, I get too many, I won't understand. So they don't do it and they want to do like a quantitative at start, right? So that's the big biggest mistake if I understand correctly, that they kind of like skip this qualitative like information story gathering and then you condense it. And once you condense it, you can test everything and then, The math will show, so you will know which one works

Mihaly: 25:30

better. Yeah. What, what you say. So, so the qualitative research is mostly the open-ended questions, the interviews, when you talk with people. And the quantitative research is when there are only numbers. So, for example, in a, in a, in a survey design, you can ask somebody an open-ended questions like, what do you like most about the product? Or you can, show them three. Examples, the price, the quality, and the color or something like that. And people can choose. And in my experience, the, the primary choice for most of the people working in marketing are the quantitative, because it's so easy to analyze. You can just put it in Excel, make a graph and done. But first you have a lot of responses and it's very hard to segment. And also it doesn't answer the question why, and this is the most important. So if you. No, what you are looking for, it's very easy to understand the qualitative research and you don't have to get 5,000 respondents enough to get 100 respondents. And I was talking about McNair case, I was talking with, with about 30 students and 15 professors. So it's not a lot. And it was group

Viktor: 26:32

interviews. How can someone take this away who don't have resources? Because that's one of the common objection I get back is like, oh, okay, it, it sounds good, but I mean, I cannot like, analyze thousands of, of responses. I cannot talk to hundreds of people and if I only talk to 10 people, it doesn't matter. And then they don't have the resource to AB test, right? So they don't have the resource to run the proper quantitative number based task. So what can, like a solo printer, what can not someone, someone who is not full of resources that, for example, even at the big companies as well, because maybe you don't have the budget for it. So what can you do then? Okay, so first,

Mihaly: 27:07

after we go with the fundamental task, I will show you an exact example. How would, how would I conduct a very. cheap research for a cooking school. But to answer your question, you don't have to ask a lot of people. What is the goal of research? Reducing risk and understanding your customers? So, for understanding customers, there are free and easy tools as a desktop research, also secondary data, we will talked about that, but about interviews. Even if you can, conduct five minute interviews, not just the perfect target audience, but anybody related to your target audience or with similar problems, it's so much more than not doing anything, not doing an interview at all.

Viktor: 27:44

Yeah, and it's kind of like a, a diminishing rate of return right on, on your time. So if you do want even just one, you talk to one person, it's like huge boost compared to none. And then if you do two, it's like kind of like bigger, but after five, it's like it doesn't really matter that much. So if you can do to one to three, it's a huge boost on your understanding and actually not just understanding their pain and stories, but actually the words. Exact words they're using and I'm not sure, but whether you reem obviously you remember, but, when Arnold Schwarze Ander was coming to Budapest, we had three weeks to turn around an

Mihaly: 28:20

event. It was like a craziest marketing. It wasn't a proper marketing campaign, but we, enjoyed the, the team at the very last minute. And, we had to make a lot in this three weeks.

Viktor: 28:31

Yeah. So, so the situation was, it's, it's Catholic was a crisis marketing, to be honest. It wasn't the proper marketing, it was crisis marketing because a few years back, the same exact event was canceled and then they said, okay, now Arnold Schwarzer is coming. But people didn't believe it, but we didn't know that we missed a lot of background knowledge. But what we did, we put up like a landing page and we put my phone number on the website, right? So if we brought traffic from emails, from advertisement, from whatnot, And people didn't really understand something. They had a phone number to call I instant, and I was there. I picked up the phone once they had the question and I realized that something is not clear. Then we instantly changed it in five minutes on the website live. So it was insane. That's how we realized that, oh shit, people don't believe that actually on is coming. So we had to embed the Facebook post. So we had to embed the Facebook post of Arnold Schwarzenegger so people could click on it and see that it's not fake. It's actually from the real Arnold Schwarze Z is really coming. So that's kind like a, a good hack as well. So if you are on a time crunch, you can play customer service as well. So if you want to have insights from your company, just sit in a customer service desk for a day. you will have more than plenty.

Mihaly: 29:44

Okay. And the next one, it's a, it's a very advanced tactic. It's a advanced fake door. It's called a wheel. V2 are closing it. Come from the founder of close.com. They have a very good content about sales. And so what is V2 closing? You start process as you would actually sell something. So, Even approach somebody on quote, call, call, email, actual landing page. And if somebody's interested in, in your product, you start selling even before it, it's ready. And you tell them, okay, this product will be ready in a few weeks. So what do you need to buy it? Actually just go through the process. So for example, you ask, okay, what do you need? What is the first step that you need? And for example, they say, I have to understand what are the exact benefits? And, and you say, okay, after you understanding benefits, what is the next step? And, potential client would, would say that I have to present three other options to our procurement team. And you don't stop anywhere. You go through, okay, after procurement team says it's okay, what is the next step? Then you say, I have to present it to the legal team. Okay? And if the legal team says, okay, what is the next step? Then we have to write a contact. Okay. And how much does it take? What is the next step? What is the next step? And you go through the sales process and you will understand so many things about who are the actual decision makers, what are the obstacles and what you should focus on. Genius.

Viktor: 31:03

Love it. I never ran this far, to be honest. last time I was on a podcast, which was listened to, not, not too many, but 30,000 people. I give a feed or test of giga brief.com. which is a newsletter for ai. So it's like, as, as it says, it even has a character of Giga Chad, kind of like a Viking character who is writing this AI letter. And I made a fake door test for it, just a landing page and thousands of people sign up. So, sooner or later I have to have to launch my newsletter. I guess this

Mihaly: 31:35

was the observation, let's go to, The asking if you have to ask people and you can't observe them anymore. So there are four parts. Who should you ask? What should you ask? Where should you ask? And how should you ask? And let's start with the what part and for the what part Again, what big research companies are doing like the NI and Ipsos, gfk and other ones when they're creating big budget branding campaigns for the biggest council me brands like b bmw, McDonalds, burger King and other ones, they go very deep in the attitudes, the motivation, the psychology part of people, and they will find some interesting insight. And the very expensive creatives will come up with a big brand campaign. So, so this is how professionally it's done

Viktor: 32:21

by it's millions of dollars, right? We are, we are talking about like lots of manpower. Lots of resources and millions of dollars basically,

Mihaly: 32:27

and and lot of time branding company takes at least one year to make it in real life, to publish it from

Viktor: 32:33

the beginning. And it's a planning, right? So it's just from planning to, yeah, being able to launch. So planning and execution itself. it takes my year. I studied

Mihaly: 32:41

this in, in New York City and I went to the biggest advertising agency. And so how do they do things? And of course it's good because it's very process oriented and you can save s you, it's like, it's like choosing i b M. If you are working in, you know, this classic example, nobody got fired, choosing ibm, nobody got fired. Choosing Nien as a research company, if you work for Vodafone, which is, hundreds of millions of dollars business, even in, in the, in Hungary, if they develop a new offer, they don't have to go. That deep, like they would develop tens of millions of dollars branding campaign. So what should you focus on the so-called jobs to be Done framework? What is this? This framework is focuses on what user want to accomplish. So let's go to the milkshake example. I know you're very familiar with and I think of a few of our, um, listeners as well, but just let's go. It's so just to beam framework that, um,

Viktor: 33:38

it's basically was popularized by Clay Christen. He was one of the, the most influential, management thinking people. And he actually, was a professor at Harvard. So he was one of the biggest proponent of jobs to be done.

Mihaly: 33:53

So he was approached by McDonald's, that McDonald's wanted to increase their milkshake revenue. And their initial question was, and I will read it, can you tell us how we can improve our milkshakes so people would buy more from us? Do they want it cheaper? Chunkier, chewier, chocolatier. So they were really focusing on the, on the product

Viktor: 34:15

and the texture it, texture of it, right? Yeah. So they, they made two huge mistakes here, if I'm not mistaken. First is they went for the quantitative feedback instead of asking open-ended questions like, okay, what is your biggest pain? What are you looking for? So in instead of these questions, they were like, okay, these are the four or five options, which one you will choose. And the second thing is they assumed the actual customer expert of solution. The customers are not, not the experts of solutions. They experts of the pain and what and what they want to achieve, right? So they know what they want to achieve, they know why it's hard. But you should be the expert. So you shouldn't ask for like, how should it be done? Because then you, why are you there? You are the expert, you are creating the product or the service.

Mihaly: 34:57

Yeah. So they of course got conducted a extensive research and they applied the feedback, what customer set, and you know, what happened? Nothing. Yes. There was no uplift and there was no uplift in in the sales. So, this is when the jobs will be done. Framework comes in because people hire a product for a specific

Viktor: 35:19

job. Just before you get into it, you don't want to have a two inch drill. You want to have a two inch hole in the wall so you can fix up a picture on the wall, right? And if you think like that, so you have a job, then actually it's not just the, drilling machine, which can do the job, but actually a two-sided tape as well. Or for that matter also, you can use a hammer as well. Or you can use a projector as well, or you can use like a, like, like a tablet as well. So if you think like what is the job of displaying memories on the wall or in a living room, then the whole word opens up, right? So

Mihaly: 35:55

back to the milkshake. So what they started to observe people and they found out that there are two kind of people who are buying milkshakes. First one, people in the morning come in the restaurant alone, buy some milkshake, goes away. Immediately. The second one is in the afternoon there were some families who came into McDonald's, ordered several kind of food and also a milkshake, and, consumed it in the, in the restaurant. First, they didn't understand what is happening here, and they started to ask these people, why do you choose milkshake in the morning? At first it was very hard for them to answer. It's not trivial. It's not usually, it's not trivial for people to answer these kind of questions, but they found out that the thing is they hired the milkshake to make the morning commute more fun because they were sitting in the car for an hour or even more and they wanted to do something in the meantime. And their problem was that if they. chose a banana. They became very hungry, very early, done

Viktor: 36:56

with it. Quickly. So it's like a banana doesn't last long, right? You just like finish it quite quickly? Yeah. If they

Mihaly: 37:01

chose a bagel, everything was full of cream cheese. If they chose donut, then everything was sticky. These like circumstances and the, then these pains and frustrations with other products. So they hire the milkshake. Why? Because it's, sick. It takes time to, to drink it and, and it's. Doesn't look that unhealthy like a Snickers bar because some of the respondent said that, once I ate a Snickers bar, I felt very guilty that I ate a desert a cake, as he said, in the morning. So what is the job here? Help me stay awake and occupied while I make my morning commute more fun. And if you know this job, then you will understand who are your competitors, what are the price ranges? And so, so what do they do? They make the milkshake a little bit more thicker and also put, small particles of fruit in the milkshake because it make it more surprising and more fun. So, because this was the job of the. To make the commute more fun. And also for the other segment for families, they also made a smaller version, a smaller cap size because it was for the children. And what was the job here? The case was that parents told a lot of nos to their children, no, you can't buy a toy. No, you can't stay up late. No, you can't have a dog. And finally they arrived to the restaurant and the children asked, can I have a milkshake too? And they were able to connect with saying yes. So in in this case, the milkshake job was to have a connection between the parents and the children.

Viktor: 38:33

And also it like a smaller size, right? And also the healthy part as well. So if you make it look more healthy with fruit options and you make it smaller size to fit children compared to make it more thick and bigger in the morning, it is kind of like different. Product for obviously different jobs, but they actually addressing the real need behind the job,

Mihaly: 38:54

right? So, so in the jobs to be done framework, there are three important things. The job, the pain, and the game. The job that we already mentioned, help me stay awake. The pain at the bad outcomes, frustrations and related risks. For example, in this case, the ban too fast to eat, other products makes a lot of mess. And the third one, are gains, which is usually benefits. So for example, this little chunks of fruit, nobody would choose a Misha because there are little chunks of fruit. But it's a nice added benefit and maybe it's more likely that somebody would purchase again because they like it.

Viktor: 39:29

Just these examples of paying, gain and job for, university as well, like what we talked about McDaniel. So what is the job there and what is the pain and what is the gain?

Mihaly: 39:38

Okay, so the functional job, okay, we will go one layer deeper in the job. so the functional job might be that I want to get a degree to get a job. This might be a functional job.

Viktor: 39:49

It's same with the car from getting A to B. So it's kind of like very, very like raw, very not so sexy, just like, yeah, getting something done. It's like functionally getting A to B, getting a degree, and so on and so

Mihaly: 40:02

on. Yeah. The second one is the so-called social job. So for example, I want to look like an educated people in the eyes of my friends. I want to make my parents proud. So you want to impress other people. So second one is a social job. Third one is the emotional job that you want to feel, in a certain way. In Magna example, Budapest has a image of, party place for young people, and we found out that parents choose the price range of the university, and usually, um, students use the actual city of the university. And this is, something related to emotional job that students want to feel themselves. Good. They want to have fun in their youth. So next one, in this example, what can be the pains? What do you think? I

Viktor: 40:51

came across this actually, and, it's most of the time just, either way you don't know what to do in life. So just kind like buying some time for yourself or you try to finally impress your, family because they always ask and nag you, okay, what are you going to do? What are you going, going to study? And that's kind of like putting an end to these questions and it's just kind like, okay, now I'm. Applying to university, I'm working on it. And, you are free. So I, I, I think these kind of things mostly in my experience, what is your experience?

Mihaly: 41:22

You are totally right because McDaniel College, a so-called liberal arts college and liberal arts is, um, some, How would you characterize it? Getting out of

Viktor: 41:32

business really quickly? No, it's not the information you wanted to say.

Mihaly: 41:38

The benefit of liberal arts, as they say that they, um, teach you how to think, how to think about things, and they give you a foundation for, for everything.

Viktor: 41:48

They, they teach you the right ways of ta thinking so the right ways. Right? Yeah. No, just kidding. Still. So, go ahead. Go ahead.

Mihaly: 41:56

Sorry. I think diversity is a gain in mag gain, so having to talk with somebody from Japan and Ghana in the class is, is, is a gain. It's, it's a benefit. It's, it's not a job, it's not a pain. It's just a nice added blue. But when you are there

Viktor: 42:09

so you can party in the city, it's, the nightlife is quite neat. So it's, it's a huge gain. Right. May be not error beforehand, the before applying, but once you're there, it's quite good. That is obviously the university student, what they do. It's like if you not study and even if you study, you party. So,

Mihaly: 42:26

so we already emphasized segmentation as well. And just another example, the thing about Disneyland that, with enough data you can draw the average route of people where people walk in Disneyland, but it, it would be a so-called one sides fits none solution because, some young couples, families with children and, senior people would walk a very different path in Disneyland experience very different things and everybody would be happy. But if you, if you want to make them to go on the average route, then nobody would be happy. So that's why it's important to segment and don't mix segments, not even in your

Viktor: 43:07

research. Are we going to talk about the, the different levels of jobs like functional, social and emotional, or are we done with that? Because I, I want to diverge for two more minutes here.

Mihaly: 43:17

Yeah, you, we can diverge now.

Viktor: 43:19

Okay. So it's, it's, it's, Viktor is diverging for two minutes, again section. So let me share with you because it, it's quite amazing. So it took me 10 years to understand this. So we were using this, jobs to be Done framework for 10 years and then I realized why COD Brands. Like Apple, Starbucks, or Tesla are card brands. And what is the three brand theory behind that? And I want to give you that two minute gist of it. So extremely quickly. And also want to explain that why these brands or these card brands never make sense from the outside. Their fans are always leveled as irrational, so they never make sense. Let's look at Apple for example. If you look at Apple devices and computers and smartphones, if you look at memory and processor, you can find better. And Android phones, you can find better laptops with, with bigger capacity, hard drive, with stronger, stronger memories or stronger CPUs. Right? But still people are, are choosing Apple, right? And I know because when I was young at the university, I, I had a Windows laptop. I was always tweaking. I was always trying to make it better, right? So that was my, my goal. And the functional job is just computing writing tax. Using it for work and those kind of things. So that's the high level functional job. And the social job is all about signaling. So all about how you look in the hierarchy in society, right? So I can display my vault with Apple, right? So I'm vaulted because I have Apple, computers. And also Apple tries to position itself as a privacy, provider. So it's, it's kind of like they don't sell ads, they didn't sell it. Now they sell ads, but that's kind of like, they don't sell ads, so their privacy, it doesn't really work that far, that positioning. So that's kind of like a social level. And the emotional job is how do I feel myself if no one is seeing me? Um, that's kind of like, it just works. If I just open my, apple laptop, I can work, I can, I don't have to optimize my Apple phone, my iPhone, right? Because it just works. And that's why from the outside it doesn't make sense because it's not competing on a functional level of whether, how hard it is, how strong the computing power is. It's. Competing on a social and emotional level. So how I feel and how I look like, and that's the same for Starbucks. So Starbucks coffees are basically just like a big bunch of milk, hot milk with lots of sugar and the Thai amount of coffee. So from the outside, the functional side, it just like to wake up and drink coffee in the morning. You can find better even artisan, roasted coffee beans, right? And you can do it yourself and you can buy an apress or, or and so on. And so, so from the outside never makes sense to to buy Starbucks. But on social Joe, it's very distinctive. The the cup, right? So everyone can see that you're rich because, because you are buying an overpriced sugary milk, right? Basically. And also on the emotional job, you feel loved, right? Because the hot milk and, and coffee feels us basically loved. So it's competing on a social job mainly. And also a little bit on the emotional job as well. And the last example is Tesla. So it's like, yeah, lots of people are saying, yeah, it's overly expensive and so it has downsides, so it doesn't really make sense. And Tesla Farmboy, just like Apple Farmboy, it never makes sense from the outside. And the Tesla car is just getting from A to B, right? So why not You are buying something cheaper, right? Or even like Volvo something which is which, which you can trust more, right? But for that matter, if you just want to get from A to B, The competitor is also home office because if you don't have to go to the office, then you don't need a car, right? So that's a functional job. Then the social job is how do you look like, obviously it's expensive, so you look rich, but also it's green signaling. So this green signaling social job is really strong lately that you can basically signal that you care about the planet, you care about the environment, and so on and so on. And the emotional job is the same with Apple because they fix all the time. They push out updates and they fix minor issues in the software over the air constantly. So it's making your life easier. So that's kind of like the system, how these card brands work. They never compete on the functional level. They compete on a social emotional level. And how strange that the Triun brain theory is basically an evolutionary theory about like lizard brain. At the core, which is the oldest part of the brain, and it evolved the limbic system on top, which is no longer just concerned about survivor like emotions, how you feel yourself, but also social interactions. So social jobs, and then thefor cortex, the latest layer, which is making the rational decisions. And if you look at it, all the card brands, card strategy is based on. Targeting the lizard brain and the limbic system. So it's kind of like the social, conduct, social hierarchy, how people see you, and also how you feel yourself. So what car brands do basically, in one sentence, they take away pain and frustration so they suffer for the emotional job and also make you, you look good in society. And that's all. That's the gist of it. And it took me 10 years to understand it, and now you have it in a few minutes. For example,

Mihaly: 48:33

for Apple, some people would say that in the. Mostly in the area of Steve Jobs, that Apple wouldn't conduct researches, and it was like, they just intuitively know what people want. And in Miami at school, one of our teachers, told us that just one week

Viktor: 48:50

you shouldn't talk about this. Right? That's, that's what

Mihaly: 48:52

she said. Yeah. I can't, I can't name her or something because I, I wrote a blog post about this and she asked me to put it

Viktor: 48:59

down. You didn't study in New York and you didn't hear this, so it

Mihaly: 49:03

Yes, correct. Right. So, so she said in, in 2000, seven, if I'm right, when the very first iPhone came out, just one week after the release, she was doing interviews and conducting research. And the question was, what do people think about people who are using iPhone already? Kind of

Viktor: 49:24

like, this is a social level, right? It's not really the functional, like what is missing, what extra feature we need and those kind of things. It's just like, okay. How do you see to kind of like how people are seen in society? That's, that's extremely interesting. One more cover out though. It's like when signaling is used as kind of like a, a bad word, not using signaling, it's kind of like a signaling as well. So you, you, you, you wear like cheap clothes and that's kind of like you signal that you, you don't care about like these superficial things in life, but we do it all the time and that's kind of like how we survive. So it's very deeply ingrained in human society and human survival that we are working as a society, not alone. So it's, it has an extremely important function. It's not irrational, it's not, doesn't make sense. It's just a different layer. So there's a, like a prefrontal cortex function layer and those two under like a social emotional, they're as valid. On the same level, at least as valid as the prefund cortex level.

Mihaly: 50:21

So when you know the job, functional job, social job, emotional job, that it would be easier to know who are your exact competitors. And I would like to quote something from the c e of Netflix re testings. He said that really, we compete with everything you do to relax. We compete with video games, we compete with drinking a bottle of wine. That's a particularly tough one. We compete with other video networks playing board games. So instantly the map of your competitors becomes wider and sometimes your competitor is doing nothing. For example, in cases of online universities. The alternative for people who cannot afford the regular universities and don't have time for regular universities, the alternative for time is doing nothing, not learning at all. Because if their functional job is to get a degree and they just. Learn from the degree to get a better job than they won't even

Viktor: 51:16

learn. That's kind of like changing lately. So the AI revolution is now changing education as well, because now it can tailor to each specific need on a scale. So like Check Inc. Like lost a huge value of their stock duuu as well. So because of C G P T, Is giving better, faster, more personalized answers in more diverse areas than these companies can.

Mihaly: 51:42

The example here was for that, sometimes you don't have a competitor, you are competing with passivity, with doing nothing.

Viktor: 51:48

That's really important what you're saying because that's disruption. Like lower level disruption means, and it was again, clay Christensen was a big proponent of lower disruption, which is coming from the lower end that most of the time, like AI tools now are competing with nothing bigger. Chunk of people can shell out 20 bucks a month forche G P T and then use it as a tutor compared to paying like hundreds of dollars per hour for their children to get private tutoring in, in, in different fields, right? So these tools, even though they are like, it's portrayed as not perfect. They're actually competing with nothing and compared to nothing, even an imperfect thing is infinitely better. Okay,

Mihaly: 52:35

so next part is the pains. Usual research. We spent about maybe 30% time on on understanding jobs and at least 60% on the pains and the remaining 10% of gains. And I, and I tell you why pains are the most important because, um, usually you want to, make people to switch from a current solution. Try something new, try a free trial, buy your product or something. But they need a lot of frustrations that will make them motivate to switch because it's, emotional investment. Even, I guess like the

Viktor: 53:10

traditional VC wisdom is like, at least have 10 times better alternative before you want someone to change, right? So that's kind of like, the ethos as well there that you, you have to have not just marginally better, you have to be like in a different ballpark if you want people to change your solution.

Mihaly: 53:29

Yeah. So, with research paints, and we've put them in big, bold letters in a landing page in our marketing communication and also in sales materials and in the sales process, and just, okay, what are pains, just an example, think about ikea. What are one of the biggest pains of the families, with children that they have to bring their children, in, in nicar and shop with them? And it's very annoying to focus on what, which exact furniture you want to choose when somebody constantly crying and, giving you a lot of. Guidance about what do they need. And so, so what Ika did, there are childcare, supervised childcare in almost every ikea, and you can put your children there and shop

Viktor: 54:17

enjoy shopping alone. Right? And some me time.

Mihaly: 54:20

Yeah. And, and which paints, you don't just have to focus on building a better mouse trap, build a better product, but it's about building a larger mouse and then building terrifying fear in your customers about the mice. So if you really have to emphasize these pains as well.

Viktor: 54:38

And then also, also is just like how much the companies actually understand, understanding you, right? Because if they understand your pain and they're using your words, the exact words you are using to, to describe your pain, Then you know that, okay, I can trust them because they speak my language, they speak what I actually under, feel and, and and live through day to

Mihaly: 55:00

day. Okay? So I would like to show our listeners a few example questions and we will put it in, the whole list in the show notes. Just I would like to highlight the four. So to uncover paints, you can, ask customers, what makes your customers feel bad? What are their frustrations, annoyances? I, I know you like this question that, What's keeping your customers awake at night? Also, what risk do your customers feel and how, okay, current solutions, how are your current value proposition underperforming for your customers? And the last thing is how, how do your customers define two costly? And it's important to measure things first. What do you say? It takes a lot of time. Too much money. substantial effort. What is too costy for them? And second, for example, somebody said it, it takes too much time to wait in line. How much is too much time? Is it one minute, five minute, 20 minutes? So you need to measure these pains. What is too

Viktor: 55:56

much? Even just like using scales. So that's, for example, used in pain management in clinical settings that they always ask what is your pain level from one to 10? And when it's done, they don't judge it. It's personally, it's done. So they give you painkillers, right? But they have to understand because you, some people are just saying, yeah, it's extremely painful, and what is the pain level from one to 10? It's like, yeah, it's five. Then it's like, kind of like normal, right? Painful compared to lying on a beach, on a sunny beach, right? So that's, that's why you always have to at least put in a, in a comparative sense to scare from one to 10 to understand like, okay, get a glimpse of what someone means when they say a lot of waiting, for example. Or it's cost a lot. What does it mean

Mihaly: 56:40

exactly? Less things are grains, which are usually the benefits. And we'll put the uncovering, questions in, in the show notes. But again, it's important to. Measure and ask people the actual numbers. So if somebody answer the salary increase is a gain. Ask them how much percent, how much money, salary increase would be a gain in your case. Then last thing is to prioritize and it's very important. So for example, in a group interview, we, we ask, uncover all the jabs and put it in little sticky notes. We uncover all the gains, all the pains, put it in little sticky notes, and we start to put it on the wall and ask, participants to make it in order. We show them two sticky notes, which is more important for you. They choose one, we put it up. Then we, we repeat the process with all the, all the little cards, and we will have a prior list. What is the most important job? What is the most important pain

Viktor: 57:36

and gain? That's quite complicated. How, how can it be done? What is the simplest, minimum viable? Research that someone can do this in this, regard. When you

Mihaly: 57:46

conduct even just a, a few minute interview with somebody, you'll uncover. If, if you focus on these jobs, you will uncover these jobs and you will try to phrase them. So for example, in McDaniels, in, in a university case, okay, so we talked about that you want to get a good job after the school. So one of your so-called jobs, and you can use this terminology in, it's not that complex. So you can say that one of the most important things for you in a university is to get an American degree so you can work anywhere in the world or things like that. And they say, yes, yes, it's important for me. And also mention that. Parting in Budapest is something important for you. Yeah. Right. It's right. So, which is more important for you being able to work anywhere in the work or parting in the next four years And they will say, oh, parting in the next four years. So put this job up in the priority list. And it can be in notes, you can put in, in a, in a screen sharing, you can put it in a paper, you can write it down. And there are so many possibilities. Just if

Viktor: 58:42

you, for example, let's say you are a content creator and you want to research your audience and you don't have much resource at hand, then you can basically just approach one or two followers and ask them to get an interview and you just make notes and ask questions. And they don't even have to see it, right? Because you can just like ask these questions and making this list and prioritizing yourself or your screen without them seeing. So it's not necessarily them. Them to see. So even not necessarily to be in, in one place, in one room, you can do it digitally. And also it's just like prioritizing. This is kind of like a qualitative prioritizing. So what they think, what they feel about right, is still just qualitative data. So you have to test. And what could be low cost, way, low resource way of testing these. So it's like, let's say I'm still a content producer and, or solo, printer. I get, get the pains, I get the jobs, I kind of get a understanding like, okay, these are the jobs, these will be done. So I get the feeling that these will be the jobs. So these would be the competitors. And then how, how do I proceed? Okay, so

Mihaly: 59:48

there are two things. If you really want to test something, which came from interviews and other qualitative research, then I think still, running Google ads or Facebook ads with different headlines is the most important thing because it's observational, let's say. I cannot do that. Okay? The second one is, to create surveys and put them in options. So if you have the option to get a big reach and at least 100 or 200 people would be able to answer a survey, then you can put these jobs and wins and gain as a option in your survey. So it's not open-ended, but it's a close-ended. So it's not an open-ended, but a multiply choice or, or single choice question. There is something that, it's even more. Cheaper and easier and faster. And this is the next part, keyboard research. What is keyboard research? Can I give

Viktor: 1:00:37

you a few examples for cheaper? Of course. Alternatives. So we did this, but I, I'm not sure how explicit it was for us, but going to conferences is one of the best thing, and most of the people is doing it wrong for two reasons. One is when we went to a conference as an exhibitor, then we actually put up the communication, which was already tested, right? So we already collected the information qualitatively, then tested it with AB tests and advertisement, and we used actually for McDaniel College, like American degree. And we were proactive. So we weren't just standing there and waiting for people to come. We. Proactively vent out, from our booth and approach people and started discussions with them. So that's one. The second thing why the why people is doing it wrong? It's the best opportunity to iterate because you have actually, it's, you are forced to summarize in two minutes maximum how you can sell your product or service in two minutes. You have to tell the best. Pains. The best games, the best jobs. You have to build the strongest case. And you do it a lot of time because it's like shit of people that are there, right? And they're interested in the same thing. They're put in the same place and the whole day, obviously you are, you will lose your voice at the end of the day. I always lost it.

Mihaly: 1:01:55

It's like TikTok in real life. And you will feel when they swipe right,

Viktor: 1:01:58

you can see when they, they're not interested, when they don't understand something. And most of the time people think that they need a huge breach of reach where you want AB test, but it's not true. You can ab test in person, you can tell a story, a pitch, and then fine tune and tell a different story and just kind of like highlight a different pain and see what is sticking more. I guarantee to you if you do like 20 of these interactions in a day, and it's not a lot, we did hundreds of interactions in a day. You do just 20, you're going to be much further ahead than as you started. So it's kind of like a also good exercise for an introvert like me to practice being social.

Mihaly: 1:02:38

Okay, so back to keyboard research. So keyboard research. What is keyboard research? Okay, first. Even before you start a research, I will suggest to start with the keyboard research. We can, you can conduct it for totally free and in less than 30 minutes. So what is it and how does it look like There are some free tools on the internet, like Uber suggest answer the public Sam Rush a drafts Uber Trends. Yes. And you can put a topic, for example, in this case, when we were preparing for this exact podcast episode, I put in marketing research, just this. And in Sam Rush related searches, some of interesting things came up. So first, what is the first step of a marketing research? This is something what people actually putting in Google search. Second one. Why is marketing research important? That's the reason why we started this podcast with this, what is the goal of an effective marketing research studies and the first, how much does market research cost? So you will get a general knowledge. What people are interested

Viktor: 1:03:34

in. This cap like reminds me of the best caps. Most of this keyword research tool, which is Google, just like write your topic and look at the FAQ section on the Google, result. It is one of the best thing because, and if you just like open one of the questions, it's going to give you more questions. So you just have to open and close a few questions and that's kind of like a quick and dirty way without using any fancy tools. Just Google search, it can be done in five minutes. Basically

Mihaly: 1:04:01

what I like in Samaras, Agera and these tools, most of them have a trial period and some of them you have to pay. But what most. You can quantify them, you can make an order. What is the most search for? What are people most interested in? And it can be useful in the beginning of the research and also in the middle of the research. And the second big group of conducting, desktop research is now C G P T. So I asked C G P T, what do people think about the benefits of marketing research? And they said risk reduction, understanding customers. I asked, what are the obstacles of people who are conducting marketing research? And Chad, g p t said that limited resources, time constraint, lack of expertise. And we work with clients and it was totally true. And, what are the frustrations, overwhelming data, difficulty with implementing the findings? So first as a research, I think it was very useful. And, what actual data said, yeah, it's true. This is our experience in real life. Second one, what are the tools and channels that you can ask people? So there are two ways written. And talking or invoice. So Rita, you can make surveys, you can use chats, or you can use emails. I will tell you a few examples and it'll be talking. You can have physical interviews, meeting with people, you can have online interviews and also in interviews you can talk with one people or talk with a group. Let's do a quick and dirty overview on the survey design. So we talked about survey questions that in the beginning we want to use open-ended questions because you will get more insight. It's a little bit harder to analyze, but it's still better written on your time than doing one to square. questions and choosing from five to five or four to five options. How do you make people to feel the service? The easy way is to ask your friends, ask your current customers to fill them. Second one. Called email approach. It worked as very well in the past when we wanted to understand the banking jobs of developers when we wanted to hire developers. And we send an email to our developer agency owner and manager friends and ask them to please free the survey and we will share the results about. So it'll be useful for you as well. But um, also you can, do it with cold email approach. Maybe you will get a one or two person response rate, but if you send to enough people and it's open-ended questions, so even, few dozen, responses would be more than useful. The pro way, what we did for most of our clients, that we set up a speed stake. And run Facebook ads. So for example, people could win something with a value about $500 to a thousand dollars, something appealing like a three day getaway in a hotel or a mobile phone. And all they had to do is to fill a 10 minute survey. And we were able to, get thousand, 2000 answers, from about $2,000. And it's including the, the price and $1,000 for, for the marketing

Viktor: 1:06:59

budget. Yeah. And I guess what's, what's, what can be used most of the time just putting it into a process. So putting it in the flow. So it's like in, in our case, when someone is subscribing, we instantly start to ask questions about them, so onboarding them. But that's the same if, if someone is approaching you because they want to hire you or your company and you ask full up questions, right? To clarify. Whether there's a match, right? And you can ask about the competitors as well. You just send me an email about how a Coia provider is basically asking customers that, okay, if you use a competitor, send us the last invoice and we credit you the same amount so you can try us for free, for literally free without cost. And that's kinda a neat way of. Making price research and, and competitor research.

Mihaly: 1:07:53

Yeah. It was quicker that io just to tell them, I, I really love their communication and their founder Jeremy Chatline, sending a lot of great emails.

Viktor: 1:08:02

Yes, sure. So it's, it's actually we love to give credit. The credit is due. So go to quickmail.io if you want to learn about, cold emailing and just copy their emails as well. So at least get inspired by their emails. It's awesome either way, at the beginning of the flow when you onboard someone or at the end of the flow. So if you deliver the, product or project or something, always ask at least having the flow itself. Not everyone has to fill it out, but if you just like keep on doing your job, eventually these results are going to pile up and you can constantly. Improve your product and, and offering.

Mihaly: 1:08:39

Okay. And the last part about about service, that you can screen people, which segments are in. And also you can find the most articulate people and invite them to an interview. How do you find these people? So you will read people's answers and most of them will be mediocre. Okay. Average. But some of them will stand out. It's very, very thought about. It's

Viktor: 1:09:01

kinda like super forecasters, right? So there are a few, yeah, a, a small portion of, society who can forecast well and if you can screen for them, then you can use them to forecast. But that this kind like the same logic, right? So you get feed feedback from everyone and they get the best ones. And the person approach, the best ones who can articulate clearly. What's going on in their lives and, and their relation with your product.

Mihaly: 1:09:25

In our experience, you can invite this paper for a 50 to $100 gift card for a one hour long interview. So, to answer, it's, we talk about pro Lever and, based on this research, we made $1 million branding campaigns. So we spent $2,000 on the Facebook ads and the price for the sweepstake. And after we offered $100 gift cards for the interview participants, and we have, about 20 participants. And it was enough. So out of, $4,000. Am I right? Yeah, you can, you can conduct, good

Viktor: 1:10:00

research. This was just the cost. I mean the, the material cost of it. Obviously there's time, cost and everything, but it's still extremely small compared to the value which we, or the money which we are spending on advertisements to un reach itself. And that's kind like the, one of the secrets of ours as well, that we. Use the takeaways everywhere. So once we get like a deal with a magazine, which is actually targeting families, then we are running a separate test on families and see what is working there. And then we are using that communication. And then if another magazine is, targeting single, women, then we run a test on single women and see what is going there, there, and we use that. But otherwise, from the general results, we're using it in radio ads and TV ads and everywhere basically. So we scale up and use the communication even in real life conferences as well. So, yeah, we scale up what, what we

Mihaly: 1:10:59

learned. I would like to give you our top five survey questions. So two questions for people who hasn't bought your product yet. we would ask them first, what holds you back from buying right now? And the second one, I know you like this question, but what insane success would mean to you? You can learn from this a lot. Second one, the second part of our tophi questions. For the people who just bought your product in the exact moment or a few minutes after they bought, we would ask what convinced you to buy? So what was the benefit, the pain that you convince you to make, the purchasing decision. Second one, how will this product make your life better? It's not how actually it helps you, but what are the expectations? And it's very important because it, it's, you can use it in marketing communication as well. Can you give an example of that? For example, if somebody's just paid the money for a cooking class, their expectation would be that in a week I will be able to cook these dishes for our

Viktor: 1:12:00

friends. That can be fulfilled. So that buys important because if the expectation is that you are going to turn into a Michelin star chef, That is a false expectation, which you cannot like support, and it, it's, it's unreasonable in two weeks time, right? So that's why you have to know these expectations, but then you can manage them.

Mihaly: 1:12:20

And the fifth question is, you should ask it later when they already starting using the product or experience your service. That what is something that exceeded your expectations and what the answer is something that you didn't emphasize enough in your marketing communications, but you can. So for example, in a cooking class, I really like the wines. and because you haven't mentioned that there are good quality wines in your cooking class. Okay, what are the bad questions, Viktor? I know, you have some examples. What are the worst questions you ever seen in service?

Viktor: 1:12:54

I, I guess we talked about this. So just to summarize, either way, you ask quantitative questions, so choose from these fixed options at first, and that's how you start this whole research process. It's obviously not good. And the second big thing is when you ask customers to come up with solution for you, we already talked about this, they don't know most of the time, and you are the expert. You should be the expert. You should ask about their goals, their fears, their pain. What did they try in the past? Unsuccessfully, you can ask what did they try successfully? So you can ask about their experience and their pain and their goals, but not like how I should do my business because I'm the expert. If I know all the parameters, then I can create a solution and then I can test the solution. You can ask, but it's never going to be, really useful. To be honest, in my experience, people can articulate their pains, their aspirations, their frustrations, much better than articulating what actually they need. And that was a good example for me. What I provided before that, on an email signup form. Which I can embed, I would ask the customer for HTM r code editor, and it totally doesn't make any sense and it's counterproductive. What I need is just like more contrast, more shorter, more to the point description why someone should, subscribe. So if I could choose a feature knowing this, I would choose an AI driven solution, which is giving me options, right? Which is suggesting based on well working examples, tailored to my exact description of my newsletter, and that can be implemented quickly. So it's, they're talking actually about like a 10 minutes, implementation about just making the API cool about this and collecting some examples. It's actually 10 minutes or maximum an hour compared to implementing an HT editor, letting users to create huge s email subscription forms. Which wouldn't convert, which wouldn't serve me, right? So that's why you shouldn't listen to or you can listen, but you have to make the decision you must have at the end of the

Mihaly: 1:15:02

day. Okay? In just two sentences about group interviews, if you had the resources to invite more than five people, then I would suggest to, make group interviews because in the same time, you will get more, insights as, similar participants tend to repeat the same things and you don't have to, hear it several times. Just you can group together people. The usual is to group together from the same segments, so similar people, so they can read each other and, they can tell new things that other people didn't say. But there is a, advanced hack here that you can mix together different people. So example, people who are very passionate about Japanese cars and people who are very passionate about German cars. And they will clash, you know, they will debate and you can learn more, from an group interview.

Viktor: 1:15:54

You also can do it on Zoom as well. So it's not something which is out of reach for most people, I guess. Because if you shoot out an email to followers or to your readers, And you invite a few to a Zoom interview, you can record it, you can transcribe it, you can rewatch it, and it can be quite productive as well. So it, it can be quite low cost. It, it doesn't cost too much to, to run

Mihaly: 1:16:14

these. Okay. We have two more tools and we've give you an actual example how, from the beginning to the end of, research. So the, an ultimate tool is mystery shopping. Viktor, can you tell me what is mystery

Viktor: 1:16:28

shopping? I guess we talked about this. So it's, it's about like dog fooding trying out yourself. So going there and using the product and and, and buying it as a normal buyer and trying to understand the process itself. That's why I gave the example of beehive. Once I set it up, I learned a lot. I was struggling and I bet my life on it actually, that if each and every employee would mandate it to use beehive to create their newsletter, that the single most productive decision that can be made with a product like that. Mandating everyone to use it at the company. And they kind of like mystery shop in a sense that they're going to be forced to, to create something and, and go through the whole journey. And that's something what, Alex Hormo is talking about as well, that think in terms of the flow itself. So it's not just you are getting, gym membership, but also if you go through this process you realize, holy shit them, what kind of clothes should I wear? Where do I buy them? What kind of food can I eat? Where do I buy them? If I go to the supermarket, how do I decide? And then if you understand this and kind of I mystery shop it, even just like virtually in your head that you realize that giving them a shopping list or giving them guidance the first week to shop in the supermarket, even better just send them packages. Of raw materials and how to cook them or just ship them like well done healthy food, that's even better because they don't have to think about that. So just going through the whole process makes it easy to think like how you can provide additional value, how you can take away frustration. And if you take away enough frustration, you can build a card brand. That's the card strategy, and that's how mystery shopping can aid it. Okay,

Mihaly: 1:18:19

and the last one too, and I think this will give you the highest return on your time, is to talk with a customer expert. So somebody who is expert in customer jobs, paying gain obstacle, who are these people? The staff, the sales people, not the sales team leaders, not the support team leaders, but actual people who spend seven, eight hours a day talking with customers. For example, one of our friends worked at, McKinsey as a consultant, and he said, there is this company who has a worst network of experts. So for example, they were doing something on biotechnology, and they're able to talk with one of the best cancer researchers in the world for an hour. It cost about thousand dollars an hour, but you can talk with the best and ask any questions. Yeah, basically

Viktor: 1:19:06

you pay a thousand of to$5,000 an hour and you get the best expert in the world, and you can talk to them one to two hours. And it may sound like a lot that you are shitting out $10,000, but it's nothing. It's really nothing because it's shortening the whole. Sequence of getting to know this whole field, basically compressing the whole research process into a few hours.

Mihaly: 1:19:27

Yeah. So when we start to work with the clients, usually we do the desktop research, keyboard research. And so, and before we start to talk with the customers, potential customers and target audience, we talk with somebody from the support or, or the sales stream. And we try to gather, draw a map. So what should we focus on? What are the things that, coming up? And I would give you an example here that we were doing a marketing for a physical exhibition. So it's like a physical exhibition, interactive, exhibition on several thousands of square meters about sport.

Viktor: 1:20:00

Like a dinosaur exhibition, like it's kind of like

Mihaly: 1:20:03

a yes, like a Titanic exhibition, dinosaur, like anatomic exhibition. There are so many things in the world. The good thing about is this, that after you develop this exhibition, you can sell a lot of, tickets, but after that, when the exhibition is finished, you can package all the exhibition in containers and sell it so to other, Exhibition organizers, and you can reopen the exhibition in other parts of the world.

Viktor: 1:20:28

Kinda like a franchise for exhibitions, right? Yeah.

Mihaly: 1:20:31

And it's, it can be very profitable to, to sell it because there are, you have no cost, just, get the franchise right, so, so, But the problem is there are only about 100 people in the whole world that who are buying these exhibitions because it started at about$100,000 and it, it can go up to millions like the superstar Titanic exhibitions. And so we weren't able to talk with customers, but luckily the founders of this exhibition were very fluent in this area. They also bought exhibition and also they went to trade shows in the US and other parts of the world. So they met these people. And what we did, we conducted two 90 minutes long, very deep interviews with the founders and asked everything about these people. What are the criteria, what are the pains, what do they choose? What are the successful exhibition, what are the least successful exhibition? And so we were able to develop the franchise landing page. And actually a few weeks later, they sold one franchisee partner.

Viktor: 1:21:32

So it's kind of like, if I understand it correctly, you always go to the source. Who has the most skin in the game, right? It can be customer support, it can be sales people, it can be even a CEO for that matter in this case, right? So what you have to be cognizant of and what you have to look for is who has the most in the trenches experience and talk to them because that's the fastest way to you to understand the field.

Mihaly: 1:21:57

Okay? That was a theory and the fundamentals. So just a very short, actual example, how would I conduct a research? Got this halfly hypothetical example that you have a cooking class and you, want to start with team building events. So first thing I would do is open a notes app or open a. Text the editor and write down all the questions that you have in mind. For example, who is the target audience? What should I emphasize on the landing page? What channels should I use? How much can I charge for the product or the service? what is essential in team building? So you write all this down and after you go to the keyboard research, and I will start with j g, pt, I asked, C G P T, what are the pains, gains and customer jobs for people who are organizing a team building event? And for example, j g PT said that the pains are participant engagement. And actually in real life we get it a lot. logistics, catering, transportation, equipment. So for example, you can answer it, that everything is organized. You just have to come time limitations, measuring effectiveness. Second one, gains, what are the gains? Networking possibility, increased motivation. So these are the benefits. The, the good thing is benefits that you can put it in a landing page just as it is. Have a part of your website. What are the benefits of a teambuilding event? Increase motivation, improve team dynamics. You can even use

Viktor: 1:23:26

that phone call as well. So if you call course, some companies or teams, you can tell them these like, okay, I. Provide a venue for team building events you can cook, it's quite engaging. You don't have to think about logistics. Everyone is engaged and so on, and so on and so on. So you can actually use in the phone script as well. So you don't have to have fancy websites or email communication for that matter.

Mihaly: 1:23:47

And, what are the customer jobs? Activity selection, event planning and budget management? Budget management, I found out that, for example, some people say is it deductible? So there are some financial things that if you plan ahead and you show the solutions, it'll be easier to get clients. So after C G P T, I went to Sam Rush and I just put team building events, team building and team building, cooking class. And I want to read the questions and I found out that most people put near me. Team building near me. So now I know that it's, you have a radius when you can surf. People most probably don't want to go, far. Second one, they put virtual team building. So now you have an idea for another product. also it was cheap, indoor, outdoor. You can target these keywords and you can think about how can you put it in your marketing communication. Also, some people put it Christmas and yeah, Christmas is a big part of team building events. Everybody's having fun so you can plan ahead. And also there was a question how a team building event impacts employee morale, morale and motivation, which is similar. The church g p T side. Next one, fund your competitors. We talked about, okay, first start with the immediate competitors, people who are already offering the same service. And I checked some of, our competitor's website and I found out something interesting about segmentation that most of the website talk about company team buildings. But, in the bottom part of their website, there were friends and family team building events. So again, segmentation that we already mentioned several times comes up that you should segment here as well. Also when you analyze your competitors, you should analyze what is the main benefit that they put on their website. What is their title? What is their headline? Most probably based on intuition, but also experience. So you, you can think about why do they put

Viktor: 1:25:43

there. Here's a, a quick hack as well. Charge G P T Hack and prompt that. Get a few testimonials and using the testimonials, put in the prompt and say, these are the testimonials for my product, which in this case is team building events and cooking as a team building event. And it can instruct to give me an exhaustive list. Of possible headings and subheadings for my website, which maximizes conversion. This is going to be in the, in the show notes, so don't worry about this prompt that you can actually use what people are saying and get creative with G P T and write some options for headlines and sub headlines. Yeah, and about

Mihaly: 1:26:22

reviews first, I would. Read a lot of reviews by my manually, because there are some hidden things. For example, in the cooking place, somebody said I was able to cook the dishes to my guests. So this is some gain, some benefit, but also if you have a lot of reviews, you can put all of them in charge G P T and ask them to summarize it and also as G P T. Okay. Based on these, testimonials, what other benefit gains and pains can come up? So you, we talked about with few shot prompts. So this is something that you can. Give a great direction to J G P T. And the last part I would do that I would ask my friends who owns a small company, for example, a small development agency, small tourist agency, and ask them if they have been to a team building even before. And I would focus on the circumstances. Okay. When did you choose it? What was the prompt that made you to start organizing a team building given what was your annoyances frustrations? What did go well? What did go wrong in the team building given so you can learn about this. So, and I think at this point, it's enough to create a landing page and then offer and start doing

Viktor: 1:27:31

something. Or even just a sales script or emails as well. So not just, it doesn't matter the communication form itself. So whatever you have at hand, it's like if you can talk to face to face with friends who are owning companies or who are leading teams at companies, you can reach out to them on LinkedIn, on, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, whatever, where you can call it, call. You can call email, you can put in Facebook advertisement, you can put this information in Google Ads, you can put it on a website so you don't have to think just on, on the website. You can basically using all, all communication because then you basically what you did, you collected am munition to use. And from that you can pick and choose what you want to use and you can test them, right? So there's no pressure at the beginning. Just focus about having iterations, as much iterations as you can. And at the end of the day, you will have much more, data to back up what is working. Actually, you can double down on those.

Mihaly: 1:28:27

Okay. Viktor, I think that is offered today. And the listeners, if you are interested in, any part that we didn't put, too much time in this, for example Google Analytics, writing the exact questions, please comment below, write us an email, and we will incorporate your feedback in our future,

Viktor: 1:28:46

episodes over and out. Bye guys.

Mihaly: 1:28:49

Thank you. Bye. In the next episode, we'll talk about AI image generation. We'll dive into the mysteries and hidden insights to stay ahead of your competition. We'll explore the core of AI image generators, including median in dolly and stable diffusion. Misunderstandings about AI image generators are widespread. We are here to dispel them. We review how these generators don't just copy and paste, but operate in the latent space. This means they intricately comprehend and combine elements such as style, lighting and composition, offering an unprecedented level of creative freedom. We'll discuss how mija is rapid feedback loop helps them offer unmatched quality over competitors. While it may be an excellent choice for small scale projects, we reveal why custom models are superior for enterprise level applications beyond stable diffusion. We also explore how AI tools like DOI Camba ai, Adobe Firefly, and Lumen five are transforming the visual AI landscape. We also highlight pressing issues surrounding privacy, societal impact, and copyright concerns with AI image generators. Lastly, we want to overlook the practical tips, unleash the creative power of AI by drawing inspiration from training data sets, curated styles of renowned directors or artists like Wes Anderson, and even the simple shot on iPhone prompt for realism. We also touch on how to stay ahead in areas from logo design

Viktor: 1:30:05

to e-commerce. If you enjoy this episode, don't forget to subscribe and rate us. It really makes a difference. For all the insider info, including show notes and transcript, check out disruptor digest.com. you are part of a software as a service or a cutting edge tech company with more than $1 million in revenue, they're offering a limited opportunity to select few to accelerate growth.

Mihaly: 1:30:25

Visit artisan.marketing to learn more. See

Viktor: 1:30:28

you next time.