Research Methods for Branding Strategy

“Research your customer everyday.” Ok…how? 🤔 “Get to know your customer better.” Ok…𝘩𝘰𝘸? 🤨 “Know your customers better than they know themselves.” Ok…HOW?! 😩 I can’t stand this advice on Twitter. It sounds smart, but you can’t do anything with it. You can’t put “know them better than they know themselves” in a Notion doc and have it grow a brand for you. Here’s what “knowing your customer” actually looks like in practice 👇 1. Read 10–20 customer reviews a day. Copy/paste the best phrases into a doc. Don’t “summarize”, steal their exact wording. 2. Listen to 1 sales or support call. Write down every time they say “I was worried that…” or “What I really want is…”. 3. Run 1 tiny poll a week. One question. One hypothesis. “What almost stopped you from buying?” is better than a 30-question survey nobody finishes. 4. Screenshot ads + comments in your niche. Your customers are already telling other brands what they love, hate, and don’t believe. Use it. 5. Tag what you find. Fears, desires, identity, situations, objections. Turn all those random insights into buckets you can actually build ads from. (Basically, setup a boring little system you can repeat until their words are more familiar to you than your own copy.) That’s “knowing your customer.” THAT’S NOT THE END THOUGH!!! After you LISTEN…here’s what to do 👇 1. Capture, don’t paraphrase. Drop their exact sentences into a doc or spreadsheet. One row = one quote. No cleaning it up. No “marketing-ifying” it. 2. Tag the emotion. Next to each quote, add a simple label: • afraid / frustrated / overwhelmed • hopeful / relieved / proud Just naming the feeling you see, don’t try and interpret it just yet. 3. Tag the situation. WHEN does this show up? • At checkout • After a bad agency experience • Late at night doom-scrolling Context = targeting later so write it down. 4. Tag the identity. Who are they trying to be? • Good parent • Smart operator • Calm, in-control person This is where your best hooks will come from. 5. Turn quotes into “Because → So → So that” lines. For each big insight, write it in the following format: Because they [feel X] in [situation Y], they want [outcome Z] so that they can [identity win]. (𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮 𝘐 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘴, 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺, 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘮𝘦: https://lnkd.in/gfSFnuTP) Now you don’t just have “voice of customer” data floating around everywhere. You have testable ad angles: • The fear angle • The identity angle • The relief angle • The “everyone else is doing it wrong” angle Listening is only step one. Labeling, structuring, and testing what you hear. Tagging is step two. Labeling, tracking, and clearly understanding. That’s how “know your customer” turns into “this is an ad we can scale.”💰

The Secret to Our 33% Creative Win Rate (No BS Framework) Here's a shocking truth: Most marketers jump straight into making ads without research. Then they wonder why their ads flop. Today, I'll show you our exact research process that helped us achieve 33% win rate with our creatives. Let's dive in 🧵 First, understand this: Great ads aren't created. They're discovered. Here's our 3-step research framework that prints winners: 1. Customer Research (The Gold Mine Most Ignore) Forget about writing hooks or filming fancy transitions. First, become obsessed with your customer. Here's exactly how we do it: → Deep dive into Reddit threads (Raw, unfiltered pain points) → Analyze 1-star reviews of competitors → Study 5-star reviews (What made them happy?) → Monitor Facebook Group discussions Pro Tip: Look for emotional language ❌ "The product is expensive" ✅ "I feel guilty spending money on this" 2. Winner Analysis (Why Did It Work?): Most people look at winning ads and copy them. Amateur move. Instead, break them down psychologically: → What mass desire did it tap into? → Which hidden beliefs did it challenge? → What psychological triggers were used? Example Analysis: - Hook Rate: 45% - Why? Pattern interruption in first 0.5 seconds - Message: Challenged common industry belief - Angle: Transformed technical feature into emotional benefit 3. Competitive Intelligence (The Smart Way) Don't just spy on competitors. Decode their entire strategy. Here's our process: → Find their longest-running ads (They're scaling these for a reason) → Analyze their landing page messaging → Study their offer structure → Map out their customer journey Pro Tip: Look for what they're NOT saying Sometimes the biggest opportunities lie in the gaps they leave. The Research Matrix We Use: For every product we run ads for, we create a document with: → Top 5 customer desires → Top 5 customer fears → Top 5 customer objections → Top 5 current beliefs → Top 5 desired beliefs This becomes our creative brief. The 80/20 Rule of Research: Here's what to focus on most: → Emotional language customers use → Transformation stories → Moment of realization → Hidden anxieties → Status desires Why This Works: When you do this level of research: → Your hooks write themselves → Your angles feel fresh → Your messaging hits deeper → Your creative concepts flow naturally The ROI of Research: Most people: Spend 20% time on research, 80% on creation = 10% win rate Our approach: Spend 80% time on research, 20% on creation = 33% win rate Quick Tips for Implementation: → Spend minimum 4 hours on customer research → Create a swipe file of winning angles → Document every insight → Look for patterns in successful ads → Test against your research findings Remember: Good research = Better angles = Higher win rate Want to consistently produce winning ads? Save this post and start with research first.

Stop trying to rush your brand strategy into existence. Nobody ever remembers that you were forced to move quickly; they only remember the lasting pain of a compromised process. Do the research you need to fully understand your situation. That includes research on your customers, your market conditions, your competitors, and your own brand's strengths and weaknesses. Hire professionals to design and field it. Understand the pros and cons of qualitative versus quantitative (and why you might use both). Make sure they're asking the right questions — and you're willing to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly they surface. Gain the insights you need to really know your target customers — those you have and those you want — inside and out: ❓ Who they are. ❓ How they live and work. ❓ What they value and care about most. ❓ Their pain points, decision factors, felt needs, and unvoiced desires. ❓ How your brand and others are meeting those needs currently — or not. Study your competitors. Look at your direct competition and perceived substitutes. If you're a motor home brand, your buyer might also be considering vacation homes or a boat. Get to know what's competing for their attention, really — and what your advantages and perceived shortcomings are so you can deposition alternatives in your brand strategy and messaging. Lastly, identify the internal stakeholders you need to bring along. Change management research has repeatedly found that involving people in decision-making processes significantly increases their likelihood of adopting organizational changes — even when their specific recommendations are not implemented. And know who your influencers are and who your final decision makers are — because they're not always the same people. Assemble a cross-functional team of leaders and SMEs to speak into the process. Is there somebody who is likely to be a troublemaker or naysayer when the new brand is launched? Include them. It will make the process better, it will make the brand stronger, and you'll have one more brand champion on your side in the end. Now ... ✅ You've got your research findings, your ideal customer profile, and your competitive landscape defined. You've know your brands strengths and weaknesses. ✅ You've identified actionable insights and your available positioning opportunities. You know what's blue ocean versus red ocean and what's safe versus what will be a real stretch for your organization, so you can land on the right implementable brand strategy. (Because the perfect strategy is useless if it can't or won't be adopted.) ✅ You've assembled the right team of influencers and decision makers, engaged them the fact-finding process, educated them on the key insights, and socialized your brand opportunities. 🎉 Congratulations! You're ready to build your brand strategy. #branding #brandstrategy #brand #strategy #leadership

When I say I do research work for brands what I’m actually doing is… …running positioning experiments. 🧪 What I like about that framing is that unlike the broad umbrella of research an experiment feels very focused and specific. In this case, the experiments center on how to: ✅ Improve alignment with customers ✅ Uncover new ways to differentiate Like any good experiment we follow (roughly) the scientific method: 1️⃣ Plant a stake (aka. Observation) What do we know…or at least think we know…about our customer today? We start by going through the first step of our positioning process to capture all our assumptions about our customers up front. 2️⃣ Develop questions What information would help us: ⦿ Create stronger alignment with our target customers ⦿ Help us discover new potential segments ⦿ Stand out in the market landscape 3️⃣ Analyze results Look at the data for our current target segment and then slice up different views to see how that compares and contrasts with other potential segments. See what sort of opportunities and market gaps exist that we can tap into. 4️⃣ Refine positioning Go back to the customer definition from (1) and see which assumptions are validated and which ones need some tweaking. That’s the BIG KEY. 🔑 By going through that full cycle you not only create clear direction for your experiment, you also create a record of how and where your positioning shifted. Without that before-and-after process it’s extremely hard to know how to apply all the new learnings. When you take that extra step it naturally feeds into a plan of action on where you are and where you need to go next. And these positioning insights provide immediate impact for your:   ⦿ Messaging ⦿ Sales pitch ⦿ Content ⦿ Ad campaigns ⦿ Pricing ⦿ Product roadmap If you’re looking for new growth, that’s the best bang for the buck you’re going to find. 🔥 #positioning #customers #research

We do creative for $5m-$150m/year DTC brands. Research is the most important part of their creative strategy. Here’s our end-to-end research process, divided into 6-steps. Step 1: Brand Analysis In this first step, we look at the brand from a birds-eye view. - Website (PDPs, offers, about us, mission, etc..) - Reviews (Extract all reviews for the offer we’re pushing) - Organic social (Primarily IG, FB. Even better if the brand has a community) - Onboarding forms (We collect guidelines/info on the onboarding) Step 2: Industry Analysis Here we look at external places. - SubReddits (These are Reddit groups for specific topics/interests) - ClickBank (Great for DR offers. Usually health-related like supplements) - Forums/affiliates (Affiliate sites of the brand or other forums) - Amazon (Amazon reviews are great. Very straight to the point) Step 3: Quote Bank Creation Third step is collecting all existing topics/reviews (from the above sources) and categorising them in different brackets. This helps us: 1) Kick off script writing with some sort of foundation 2) Write scripts in an authentic, customer-centric language For example, we recently built a quote bank for a personalised clothing brand for men. Our quote bank was divided into 4 main categories: - Personalisation - Experience - Fabric - Fit We were able to get done with scripting in 2-3 days Step 4: Competition Analysis The fourth step is about spying on the competition. - Top competitors (Make a list of 5-10 brands and do an audit of their CS). - Foreplay (Save competitor ads to get inspo for angles, concepts, hooks) - Ad spying tools (We use other tools like Unicorn ads and PiPi Ads). Step 5: Ad Account Analysis Here we look primarily at the best-performing ads. - Winners in the past 90 days (Spend/efficiency ratio, soft metrics, structure) - Reverse transcript (We take down the transcript and analyse the script) - Audiences (Identify best audiences, look at spend by demographics, etc..) - Ads comment section (Negative comments are typically the most helpful) Step 6: ICP Development The last step is the ideal customer persona creation. - Segment audience (We divide the audience into different personas) - Create personas (Create personas based on age, gender, psychographics) - Motivators and barriers (Problems, outcomes, drawbacks of other alternatives, why they should buy now vs later) To recap: Step 1: Brand Analysis Step 2: Industry Analysis Step 3: Quote Bank Creation Step 4: Competition Analysis Step 5: Ad Account Analysis Step 6: ICP Development That’s it, hope this post was insightful. If it was, please drop a reaction and leave a comment. And let me know if your thoughts in the comments.