Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

“Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?”

In doing “quick” market research for a client competitive positioning project, I do a lot of exploring and digging - which involves going down holes, running into dead ends and reading voluminous tomes. Sure, it’s far easier to do research these days thanks to the Web, but it still takes time, perseverance and some hieroglyphics deciphering (the fine print in distributor contracts and SEC filing footnotes, for example.)

It’s really dark down there in Google’s sub-basements…but sometimes a great little nugget of info can be on - say - page 21 of the search results. You also should investigate a lot of leads (even - gasp! - use another search engine or two.) Try wacky keyword combinations.

All so you can:

Read everything you can find that’s specific to the industry and company.

Then read everything you can find on competitors.

Then read about the competitors’ competitors.

Then read about the customers.

Then read about the customers’ customers.

(And listen to podcasts and watch videos along the way. You never know what a CEO may say in a live interview!)

Thus you come to the end of day one. That’s when it really gets interesting…but I can’t give away all the secrets, now, can I?

(You may also find some snakes out there…pricing issues, customer perceptions, competitors’ breaking news and the like. All of which need to be dealt with quickly.)

(Yes, I own a whip and a hat. But that’s a (clean) story for another day.)