How Market Research Fuels Winning Strategies in Health Marketing
Welcome to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence.
This is the first episode in our Be Bold miniseries and we are thrilled to host Dan Reilly, a renowned market research strategist and advisor, to discuss the evolving landscape of market research, especially in the context of mental health and anxiety—issues significantly amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dan emphasizes the importance of a meticulous approach to market research that goes beyond traditional quantitative and qualitative methods. He also projects that while AI will continue to grow in utility, it will not dominate market research soon. Instead, experiential marketing will become increasingly significant.
The discussion highlights how understanding the audiences’ emotional and contextual experiences is paramount, and why marketers must ask the critical question: “What’s it gonna take for you to buy my product?” This episode is packed with insights on how to effectively engage with specialized clinician audiences and the crucial balance between research time, speed, and quality.
We dive deep into examples that show the practical implications of nuanced market research—from understanding parents’ challenges with celiac disease to addressing vaccine mistrust among African American men. Each example underscores how strategic, empathetic research can lead to transformative insights and actions.
Thank you for being part of the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. The future of healthcare depends on it.
Key Takeaways:
Holistic Market Research Approaches: Dan Reilly stresses the need for intricate market research beyond just quantitative and qualitative methods. He highlights the importance of exploring and validating findings to gain a comprehensive understanding.
Experiential Marketing Over AI: As much as AI is pivotal, Dan predicts that it’s experiential marketing that will take precedence in the near-term future. Marketers need to create immersive and meaningful experiences for their audiences.
Understanding Emotional Context: A significant portion of the discussion is devoted to appreciating the emotional and contextual layers of consumer experiences. Whether it’s how patients feel during an MRI or parents’ challenges with celiac disease, understanding these dimensions can lead to valuable, actionable insights.
Targeted Outreach and Education: Combining insights on vaccine mistrust among African American men with targeted outreach by sports organizations resulted in a 10% increase in vaccinations. Dan underscores the importance of effective communication and relational trust-building.
Choosing the Right Research Design: Sara Payne emphasizes that the desired insights drive the choice of research design. Whether dealing with complex emotive issues or seeking high-level quantitative data for board decisions, selecting the appropriate methodology is crucial for yielding relevant insights.
This episode of the Health Marketing Collective provided invaluable perspectives on modern market research in the healthcare industry, reinforcing the need to remain adaptable, empathetic, and strategic in a rapidly changing world.
About Dan Reilly
With over 25 years of experience, Dan blends his background in business, psychology and market research to help clients navigate their landscape and capitalize on opportunities. From client-side to agency, he’s worked in several industries, including healthcare, finance, manufacturing, consumer, food & beverage, and retail.
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Sara Payne [00:00:10]:
Welcome back to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. I'm your host, Sarah Payne. In today's episode, we're diving deep into the world of market research with an expert who knows how to turn data into actionable insights. After all, understanding your audience is no longer just a strategic advantage. It's a necessity. Yet many marketing leaders struggle with knowing the drivers and needs of their buyers. In today's conversation, we'll uncover some common pitfalls and explore how truly knowing your audience can be the difference between a good campaign and a great one. Our guest is an experienced market research strategist and advisor, Dan Reilly.
Sara Payne [00:00:49]:
Dan is currently managing director of insights and analytics at SRG, where he helps clients gather insights to drive effective business and marketing strategies. His work has spanned multiple industries, including health care, with clients such as the Mayo Clinic, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Fairview Health. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome, Dan.
Dan Reilly [00:01:10]:
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.
Sara Payne [00:01:13]:
Yeah. Likewise. You and I know have worked together on a number of different research projects over the years, so I know you have a lot of great insights to share with our audience. Dan, let's start by talking about what it takes to truly know your audience. What are the key steps that a marketing leader should take to kinda go beyond that surface level insights and really be able to understand what drives their buyers' decisions and their behaviors?
Dan Reilly [00:01:42]:
Sure. So one thing that we often hear from leadership is this idea that the target audience that they're looking at is gender based or age based or income based, a lot of those demographics. And this is true especially in health care where they start to look at, comorbidity, and they start looking at various conditions and say, this is how the audience is. But what we have found is that there is a direct and positive relationship between what people are and how they think. So there's this idea of demographics, and then there's this idea of psychographics. And psychographics aren't just motions, but they're attitudes, normative beliefs, and control barriers that people put in themselves to help understand the world around them. And we tell leadership, don't worry just about the demographics, but worry about why people are doing what they're doing. Not the who they are or even the what they are with the behaviors, but understanding the why, understanding that motivation, and then grouping like people around that using various segmentation techniques can help CEOs and other leaders really start to get to this idea of, oh, I know who this person is.
Dan Reilly [00:03:02]:
I know them because I see them. I see their gender. I see their ethnicity. I can see their income. I can see their education. But more importantly, I also see what their hopes and dreams are. I also see how important technology is in their lives. I see how important big institutions are.
Dan Reilly [00:03:21]:
So when we look at large health care systems, there's this idea of the big institution and who's attracted to that. Not everybody's attracted to a big institution. There are some that find really positive elements of it and others not so positive. Understanding that can really go a long way in helping leadership really get to the idea of who they should be speaking to.
Sara Payne [00:03:42]:
Yeah. I really appreciate the way that you broke that down because I think you're right. You know, humans human beings are incredibly complex. And, you know, we we have to be looking deep into those, those drivers in terms of hopes and dreams and all of those different layers that comprise who we are and how we make decisions in our lives.
Dan Reilly [00:04:05]:
Absolutely.
Sara Payne [00:04:07]:
And, you know, one of the other things, Dan, that I'm that I'm always fascinated by is there's such a wide range of ways that market research can be leveraged for marketing purposes. And so to that end, let's pretend for a minute that you're you're not a consultant. You're you're an in house marketing leader. And let's play a game of if if my business goal was x, I would do y in terms of market research. Can you give some examples?
Dan Reilly [00:04:37]:
Sure. So let's say that my goal is to convert my current customers to a new product. So if I'm gonna do that, then what I need to understand is what is the viability of the new product. I need to understand what's the transference from the old product to the new product. And then I need to understand how can I make sure that at each point that they drop off, we're keeping them together? In a situation like that, people often say, well, we should just go out and talk to the customers. And you're right. You talk to the customers, but you're also talking to prospective customers. Because even though they've got the current customer as your product, there are people who are gonna be able to onboard with your old product with the idea of getting to the new one.
Dan Reilly [00:05:27]:
So it's important to understand both. And the other thing to think about too is that when we're looking at how these consumers think about the product using a research technique that's quantitative in nature. So a survey or looking at consumer data that already exists will allow you to start to build that stage gate approach where, okay, they've got the product. Now is the price acceptable? Now are the features aligned? Now are we making sure that that product moves forward in a positive way so that the conversion rate can happen? And then you can follow that all the way through using a lot of different, analytical techniques, regression among others that will allow you to see that. So that's that's one. Another example would be, let's say I am a company that wants to build a new product, but I only know from what I've heard from the salespeople. So this idea then becomes, okay. I am now looking at a product idea that I've gotten from salespeople, and they're all telling me it's gotta be cheap.
Dan Reilly [00:06:28]:
It's gotta be cheap. It's gotta be cheap. I don't build cheap. What I build is high quality products that mean something to the consumer. So how do I how do I include that piece into it? Well, there's a a couple of techniques. One's called Kano. The other's called Conjoint that allows you to basically say what attributes are most important to your customer or future customer. And not only that, but which ones add the most value to the price.
Dan Reilly [00:06:54]:
So a a really good example is this when we go shopping for a car, we often say we wanna buy a car based on price. Reality is we rarely buy a car based on price. We buy a car based on many other factors. Price is at best a secondary one. That allows us to be able to say, when we're buying the car, price is there, but what we really have to emphasize is x. And those are just 2 techniques that allow us to to do that. So, I think in both of those situations, you're leaning more into quantitative research than qualitative research because you're really looking at understanding how to maximize your dollars associated with that specific bill to you.
Sara Payne [00:07:31]:
Yeah. I I that's such an important one, because you're right. A lot of the conversation with sales is going to center around price, but the job of marketing is really to help drive value. Right? And, yeah, and and increase that that value and and and be able to, support a a a premium price. Any other, business goals, examples that you think are, really important for folks to be thinking about when they think at sort of the look at the overall mix of different market research, initiatives that they could pursue?
Dan Reilly [00:08:12]:
Sure. So one of the things that we often tell people is how much magnitude of importance are you putting to this? So is this something that I'm a manager and it's just gonna go to the director and we're making a decision that way? Or is this a decision that I'm not making, my boss isn't making, my boss' boss isn't making, but the board is making? When we have clients who come to us and say, I have a I have to work with the board and and I have to get their approval for this permission, it is almost always gonna be quantitative research. Because the board looks at that and says, well, that's nice you had a conversation with them, but what's the number say?
Sara Payne [00:08:52]:
Sure.
Dan Reilly [00:08:53]:
Yeah. Conversely, we've also had clients who have said to us, what I really need to understand is the context into why we would be making this decision. So I I have the hard data on it, but what I don't have is the reasons why. I don't have an exploration or an understanding from the customer of how this could benefit them beyond, the simple numbers that we have. Well, in that case, we may be quantitative. We may actually sit down and say we're gonna we're gonna actually go through this process with you so that you can begin to understand how the consumer feels in relationship to the different KPIs for exist for example. So one time I worked with a client, and we were bringing them through their client or their their patients through the, an MRI experience. And so at each stage, we had the capability to sit and ask people, how are you feeling? So here's a here's a chart of people's pictures on them.
Dan Reilly [00:09:55]:
Show us which one best emphasize exemplifies you, and then why is that? What is happening in the environment that makes you think that? And in this case, what we saw is that there wasn't a lot of consternation, a lot of negative feelings until they entered the room. Once they laid down in the MRI machine, they started to calm down a little bit. They started to understand, okay, I now know what's happening. I now can see this, even for people who have gone through it many times. So we were able to say to the client to the to the our client, when they enter the room, don't have them enter a cold room if you can. Don't have them enter a room by themselves. Make sure someone is there with them so that they can feel a sense of connection and be able to understand how that experience is going to actually benefit them, not only physically because of the MRIs, but also emotionally because of the context of the relationship with the tech.
Sara Payne [00:10:52]:
Yeah. That's such a great example where it's it's way more than the numbers. Right? And I think that just is a beautiful illustration of how choosing the right design for your research based on the types of insights you really are looking to drive. Mhmm. To your point, it it may be part driven by the audience of who's going to consume those insights, and what matters to them. But I think unpacking at the end of the day, you know, is this a complex emotional thing? Then perhaps it needs to be the qualitative element to really dig deeper than just, you know, a a survey response. And actually, I wanna elaborate on on that point a little bit in terms of, you know, qualitative versus quantitative.
Dan Reilly [00:11:38]:
Mhmm.
Sara Payne [00:11:38]:
I wanna talk about b to b, and I wanna talk about reaching clinicians and understanding their specific drivers. Because a lot of the change that I see companies trying to drive in health care today is about changing or elevating the standard of care. And clinicians are critical, very critical audience to be able to affect that change. Right? If you don't get them on board with implementing new guidelines or having new conversations with their, with their patients, it's just not gonna happen. So from your perspective, when it comes to getting those insights from clinicians, when does it make sense to talk to them directly qualitative versus having them complete a survey? What have you seen to be effective?
Dan Reilly [00:12:29]:
So one of the things that we've always looked at when we first start understanding the the role of the clinician in research Is is this something that is going to be highly specialized, or are we talking with with GPs? Or are we talking with nurses? Or are we talking with PAs? If we're talking with GPs, nurses, or PAs, then there really can be a balance between the 2 of qualitative or quantitative. The higher and more concentrated the specialty, the greater emphasis is gonna be on qualitative research. In part because the the GPs, the nurses, and the PAs are the ones that are closest to the patient. So it's easy to understand their interaction with the patient. The further you get away from the patient, it's almost paradoxical. The further I get away from the patient, the greater the impact I have on what that patient is trying to or what I'm trying to do for that patient. So in this context, it's really about understanding where the role of the patient fits. That's one piece.
Dan Reilly [00:13:34]:
The other piece to keep in mind is that as we move forward with the research, how much is it gonna cost? It's much less expensive to conduct a study with GPs, PAs, and and nurses than it ever would be with anesthesiologists, radiologists, surgeons. So there may just be an issue of I have $10,000. What do I do? I had a client recently come in me and say, I wanna conduct research with anesthesiologists. I have $15,000. What could I do? And I said, we may get you 12 interviews, maybe 15 interviews. I I need to really have more than that. And I said, well, then you're gonna have to have more money because these folks are are very expensive to speak with. So there's a cost element to it as well.
Dan Reilly [00:14:20]:
And and you hate to put it that way, but that's kind of that's how it can be driven.
Sara Payne [00:14:26]:
And is the cost not to get too far down in the weeds from a budgeting perspective, but but the cost is driven, I'm assuming, by 2 things. 1, there are fewer of them because it's a specialty. There are just gonna be, frankly, fewer of them in the country. Right? And so smaller pool that you're driving from, but also their time is at a premium. I mean, everybody is is from a clinician standpoint, but but maybe dollars you're bringing to the table to compensate them for their time is higher. Is that also driving the cost or help unpack that a little bit?
Dan Reilly [00:14:59]:
Yeah. So part of what we're seeing is that the consumer has to under or the excuse me. The client has to understand that when you are looking at under speaking with clinicians, that there's the time value of money.
Sara Payne [00:15:13]:
Yep.
Dan Reilly [00:15:14]:
And the time value of money is strictly enforced, the greater the specialty. So Sure.
Sara Payne [00:15:22]:
Makes sense.
Dan Reilly [00:15:22]:
One of the things that often happens, Sarah, is that clients will come to us and say, I wanna speak with a person who's at Cleveland Clinic, or I wanna speak with a person who's head of surgery at Dana Farber. Well, that's great. We'd all like to speak with those people. But the reality is you're not going to get a hold of them because it's it's one thing to have a a research company call and say, hey. I need to speak to you. It's quite another to have the NIH call and say, hey. I need to speak with you. They're answering that call before they get a hold of me or I can get a hold of them.
Dan Reilly [00:15:55]:
That and that's part of the reality of this too is that who are you speaking to will dictate how accepted the research results are and how accurate you can understand the market. The flip side to that too is that confidentiality is supreme in market research. That is a, that's a touchstone that is very sacred. And often people wanna say, well, I wanna speak with the head of Dana Farber so that I can use their information in my marketing materials, and that's where we have to draw the line as well. So confidentiality is huge. They're gonna speak with us on the guarantee of confidentiality. We can't pierce that. And in case of health care, we don't even ask if we can pierce it.
Dan Reilly [00:16:34]:
With consumers, you could say, hey. We're doing this. Can we use your name? Can we contact you again? Health care, that's that's not something that we ever wanna encourage because it's well, if you're gonna do that, then what else are you gonna do? And now we start getting into HIPAA. Then what does that mean? It's such
Sara Payne [00:16:49]:
a Yeah.
Dan Reilly [00:16:50]:
It opens up the whole gamut words. Yeah. So in general, we'd like to keep away from it.
Sara Payne [00:16:54]:
So you're you're getting into some areas, you know, common things that may crop up, think expectations that that that you're helping to manage with some of your clients that you consult on. What are some of the common other common mistakes, companies make when they pursue market research projects? What are some of the things that you you just wanna highlight in terms of things to avoid doing?
Dan Reilly [00:17:17]:
Sure. So there's this old adage in market research. It's true in other industries, but it was certainly true in market research. I want it fast, I want it cheap, or I want it good. Pick 2. And clients, while it's it's apocryphal in the way we think about it, it it really is true. If you want something quick and inexpensive, then there's not gonna be enough time to really analyze the data. It sort of affects the quality of it.
Dan Reilly [00:17:46]:
If you want something that's going to, be really understood in terms of an insight perspective and also cheap, then you gotta spend a lot of time doing it because it's gonna take a long time to get those people recruited. It's gonna take a long time to do the results because you can't throw an army at it. You throw 1 person at it. And then, of course, the the the oldest adage is that I I want it cheap, and I want it, fast, well, then your opportunity to have that be a quality piece really gets hampered. So we start looking at the idea of of time, speed, and, quality. So and and that's a that's a common mistake. I think the other common mistake that, people fall into is that the insights will answer all of my questions.
Sara Payne [00:18:37]:
Mhmm. Yeah. Tackling too much in. Right?
Dan Reilly [00:18:41]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Sara Payne [00:18:41]:
Versus being focused.
Dan Reilly [00:18:43]:
Yeah. The insights only answer the questions that you asked. And if you can't share with me what's actually going on in the organization or if you can't tell me what you're actually trying to do, then I'm gonna come back and miss the mark. And there are so many times that clients have said, well, why didn't we ask that question? And the answer is we did ask that question. You would took it out or we did ask it because we thought you were gonna take it out. We put it in any way, and are we great that we ask that question? So it's it's just a part about understanding what the limitations are as well as what the advantages are.
Sara Payne [00:19:19]:
Dan, what is what is one of your favorite research programs that you've led on behalf of a health care brand? And you don't have to mention who it is, if you're not able to, but can you share an example of of something that you were a part of that was rewarding for whatever reason or really, insightful, impactful for that particular company?
Dan Reilly [00:19:43]:
Sure. So, I did a study for a a health care organization. Then
Sara Payne [00:19:49]:
Meaning, like, meaning, like, health system or Health system. K. Got it.
Dan Reilly [00:19:54]:
Yeah. I have one health system, and then I have a a manufacturer. But we were doing work for a health system, and we were doing, work on understanding how parents view celiac disease. And what we did is we found parents who thought their children might be celiac. And they agreed with us, and we walked through the entire process of them, going through this, diagnosis. And one of the things that we saw that was really interesting is that the physician would say, we've conducted the test and your child has celiacs. Now go talk to the dietitian and we'll see you in 3 months. The parents had a lot of questions about it.
Dan Reilly [00:20:41]:
Yeah. And the physicians often didn't know the answers because they didn't understand the practical aspects of celiac. Like, I could tell you the elements of the blood disorder and if it's inherited or not. I could tell you all that stuff, but I can't tell you what to eat. You gotta go to the dietitian for that. The dietitian steps in and says, well, here are the things that Johnny should be eating. Now you have to increase the number of vegetables that Johnny eats, and and you need to make sure you keep away from bread for Johnny. Well, this is all great, but Johnny said, and Johnny likes pizza.
Dan Reilly [00:21:10]:
So what the heck am I gonna do? And what we wound up doing was for a set of people, we said we're gonna send some people to the grocery store, and we're gonna send other people to a specialized bakery. A specialized bakery is for celiac. So it's it's all gluten free. So the parents that went to the grocery store, what they would do is they pick up an item, they would look at it, and then put it down. And then they pick up another item, and they look at the ingredients and put it down. It wasn't until they got to the potato chips that they could actually grab it and said, my son or daughter will eat these. They won't eat anything else in the store, but they'll eat potato chips. When we took them to the, to the, the bakery, it was quite a different experience.
Dan Reilly [00:21:54]:
When they would walk in, the parents would come in and they'd be very, very, very worried. And the kids would be very, like, this is gonna be gross and all of that. And the ones that were the best, we visited 2 or 3, the ones that were the best that said, hey. You like pizza? And Jimmy or Johnny or or Jamie would say, I love pizza. It's delicious. Here. Have a piece of pizza. Can I have that? Oh, yeah.
Dan Reilly [00:22:15]:
It's fine. Don't worry about it. Well, I don't know. And the parents would say, well, I don't know. And then often the person would grab it, bite it, eat it, and say, I'm your son. I'm your dog. I get sick too, and this food doesn't make me sick. So the parents would almost universally, start crying.
Dan Reilly [00:22:34]:
Almost universally. Because it was the sense of relief that we've now got food that my child can eat and that my child isn't gonna get sick anymore. And just doing that kind of work and making that understanding that connection between the the food that the parent is providing the child and what the child is eating was hugely important to the client. And what it resulted in is doctors got a heck of a lot more educated on what food to eat. And number 2, there was a one sheet. Go to these bakeries. They have the food your kid needs. Now go see the nutritionist and the dietitian and all of that, but go do that and go do that now.
Dan Reilly [00:23:15]:
Don't do it tomorrow. Do it now because it's gonna answer all of your questions, and it's gonna make you feel alleviated because we know how finicky kids are and in terms of eating. So that was that was one that was related to a health system. The one that was related to a manufacturer is we were working on, a new, way to think about vaccines, new delivery system. Mhmm. And one of the things that we came out with was how do we get people to understand that this vaccine isn't going to be harmful. It's actually going to benefit the average consumer. So when we're developing this vaccine and this is during COVID.
Dan Reilly [00:24:02]:
So part of it's the COVID vaccine. Sure. When we're developing it, one of the things that we heard was there was a lot of mistrust. And we thought, well, these are the anti vaxxers, and these are people who are fermenting this this, distrust for their own personal agenda. So we conducted some research and said, who's likely to get the vaccine? It's a really simple question we put out nationwide. And what we saw that the group was the was the least likely to get vaccinated were African American men. And we said, why? And they said, Tuskegee Institute. There is a fundamental distrust among African American men and women, but really men, about vaccines in America and how it's a government conspiracy.
Dan Reilly [00:24:47]:
And these aren't folks that had any other element of conspiratorial perspective, in their their thought process. Because we asked them, how much do you agree or disagree that the JFK assassination was conspiracy? Sure. How much do you agree or disagree that, fluoride can cause, harm to children in fluoride and water fluoridated water. So these old ideas, we brought them forward, and it was universally, like, no. No. No. None of that's true. No.
Dan Reilly [00:25:16]:
That's true. But, oh, yeah. Vaccines are are are gonna kill me. I don't trust vaccines. So part of what we had to do is say, okay. Who can we image in this this advertising that would allow them to understand that even at the pinnacle of health, you still need this. At the pinnacle of distrust, you still need this. And one of the groups that we spoke with were, African American athletics athletes.
Dan Reilly [00:25:42]:
We went to to NBA, NFL, and they were wonderful. They would talk about COVID specifically, but they would say, yeah. We'll talk about vaccines. We'll talk about getting vaccines, to folks. And we saw that as a result of that, the uptick in, vaccinations among African Americans, especially men, increased about 10%, which was a really cool thing to see. But you don't think about the mistrust of, well, it's all just the the hype from the anti vaxxers and all that. No. In this case, it was legitimate concern.
Dan Reilly [00:26:13]:
And when they said Tuskegee Institute, I was old enough to understand what that meant. My younger colleagues kinda looked at me and said, what's that? I'm like, well, okay. It's time to crack out the books and get you learned on this because you really need to know this. You really should know this. So it was a it was a great opportunity for not only them to learn, but for us to understand that just because you think something's happening, you need to take a deeper look, and you need to be open to what it says because it may challenge you and certainly challenge, our client. Well, that's just not true. We're not racist. No one's saying you are.
Dan Reilly [00:26:47]:
You just have to understand this is a perspective.
Sara Payne [00:26:49]:
Right. Yeah. Some deep seated beliefs that are out there, right, that could impact you the effectiveness of the adoption of whatever it is that you're rolling out, which is I think both of those examples are are really great because I think it speaks to the importance of not only understanding the audience, but then what what's going to be effective in terms of rolling this out from a marketing perspective to support effective adoption. Right? So in the case of the health system, I love you know, I felt thinking about this from a marketing perspective, I love this notion of really bringing more education to the bedside. Right? And and and and convincing using the insights to help convince clinicians that this needs to be part of that care experience and that bedside experience with these families who are being, you know, diagnosed with celiac disease. Yep. Sending them away with a diagnosis is is is going to be a very negative experience for them. You need to in order to be a partner and a trusted partner that they're gonna come back to again and again and to, you know, build that relationship with a patient, a family, and what have you, is to deliver more of that educational component.
Sara Payne [00:28:04]:
I love that. And then the other one is highlights, you know, the importance of representation. Right? Who we're showing in imagery, who we are bringing forward, to talk about the importance of these things in our campaigns is really important as we think about effective adoption, particularly in areas where there might be, lower adoption for whatever for whatever reason and obviously makes complete sense, in that example that you shared. I think we have to talk about AI, Dan. I mean, we can't not talk about AI. I I I am interested in your thoughts on how AI has improved the ability for companies to gather helpful insights. And I, you know, I'm not necessarily predicting that AI is gonna replace the need for formal market research, nor am I suggesting that anyone should just go out on their own. Right? For all of the obvious reasons you've already laid out here today, you really wanna bring in a real expert on this.
Sara Payne [00:29:03]:
I'm just curious what your perspective is on whether AI can be helpful as kind of a first line collaborator for gathering insights. What can it do well and not do well? Any things you anything you've been sort of flabbergasted by that you have seen, you know, where where AI has just gotten something, horribly wrong. What what are your perspectives?
Dan Reilly [00:29:23]:
So when we look at AI, the great thing about it for market research is you can give it a large dataset, and it can call down for you what you really need to know. So
Sara Payne [00:29:37]:
Yep. Summarize, insights, analysis.
Dan Reilly [00:29:41]:
Yep. Yep. So we have a a a product that we call the the virtual SME, virtual associate meta expert. What we do is we take all of our clients' data, our their PDFs, their reports, and we put it into our our proprietary system that uses AI to start to output answers to questions that we have. So we may have a client who is looking to better, to to develop the next generation of, prosthetic. And they may have all these reports saying the number of people that have prosthetics and and all of their interviews that we do. And we may ask, what are the 3 most important things when thinking about building prosthetics? It'll say, these are the 3 most important things. Great.
Dan Reilly [00:30:21]:
Now what if I'm building a prosthetic and it doesn't fit right? What are my consumer? What are my options? So I'm answering this. And it'll say, here are your 4 options that you have to do. The great thing about it is is that it allows us to then start to say, okay. We can really start to hypothesize building really based on this, and then go to the qualitative to explore the hypotheses to validate the or to formulate them better, and then go to the quantitative validate. So that's that's one thing that's really good about it. An area that's really challenging for AI is that it makes the assumption based on the information you give it.
Sara Payne [00:30:58]:
Correct. Yes.
Dan Reilly [00:30:59]:
If you ask you a bad question, it's going to give you a bad answer. And, one of the things I've had people say, well, I often wanna just be more, informal with it. Well, you can be informal with it. You can say how you doing today? And they'll say fun. That means nothing. So why are you why are you asking it? And the other thing is that when people ask very complex questions and they say, well, I rephrase it a different way and they get the identical answer, it means that the, the AI tool, whatever tool they're using, is tapped out the limit of it. So it's always helpful to understand that everything with, AI is trial and error, and it's more error than trial. But once you get it right, it's a it's a very helpful tool to summarize, very helpful tool to to bring down.
Dan Reilly [00:31:46]:
But what it doesn't do is it doesn't think for you.
Sara Payne [00:31:49]:
Absolutely. Yeah. And you're right. It's all about the information that you give to it and the questions that you ask. But hasn't market research always been that way, Dan? I mean, the the the design of the question is so critically important in market research that this is probably not surprising to you. Right?
Dan Reilly [00:32:06]:
No. No. No. And then we always say, I'm only as good as the questions that you allow me to ask. So if I'm not asking the right questions, I'm not gonna get the right answers. And when we often see clients come back and say fortunately, this happened not happened to me for many, many, many years, but clients have said, this just doesn't this doesn't make sense. This doesn't work for me. It doesn't meet my expectations of what happened.
Dan Reilly [00:32:29]:
9 out of 10 times, it's because we didn't ask the questions that we knew they wanted us to better understand. We just went out and said, oh, no. We know best. We're gonna go do it this way. And the the results aren't always as as you hope. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't.
Sara Payne [00:32:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Dan, let's switch gears here for a quick fire segment before we wrap up. Sure. What is one of the coolest facts or surprising insights that you've uncovered through research?
Dan Reilly [00:33:00]:
I would say the coolest fact that I have uncovered is that when we think about how physicians deal with patients, that one of the last things they consider is how the patient thinks. They're always focused on how the patient physically feels. They really focus on thinking. So they always miss anxiety. They always miss consternation. They always miss silence. They always think this is just a great experience. They didn't say anything.
Dan Reilly [00:33:33]:
They were they were really focused on what I was saying. Like, no. They were staring at you because they were terrified. And they didn't say anything because they're super anxious, and you need to pick up on that. And you need to have techniques that allow you to do that. That's one of the coolest things in the health care that we saw. And you explain it to doctors. They're like, oh, that's a oh, yeah.
Dan Reilly [00:33:52]:
Well, yeah, there was that one. Oh my goodness. This happens all the time,
Sara Payne [00:33:56]:
doesn't it? Yeah. Interesting. I wonder if we'll see that change over time because obviously the conversation around anxiety and and mental health has definitely exploded, as a result of COVID. So perhaps we'll see that shift over time. If you could give one piece of advice to chief marketing officers about market research, what would it be?
Dan Reilly [00:34:13]:
That there isn't just one way to skin that cap. And many times I've said to, CMOs, if you're looking at understanding what your market is, you have to do 2 things. You have to explore for understanding and then validate for prioritization. If you're just gonna talk with your customers, you're never gonna be able to prioritize. If you just validate and prioritize, you don't have any idea what you're validating because you can go to the market to find out what the hypothesis were. So it's always do both, and it doesn't have to be quantitative and qualitative research that does it. You can do a, a search for, an AI about, hey, how do these customers think? Use that as a basis and then figure out here's what I know and here's what I don't. What I don't know, do I not know it enough? Do I know it enough where I can validate it? Or do I not know it at all and need to go out and explore it? Those are the kinds of things that need to be, that CEOs really need to get is do both explore and validate.
Dan Reilly [00:35:16]:
Don't just do 1.
Sara Payne [00:35:18]:
What's the market research trend that you think will dominate here in the next year or so?
Dan Reilly [00:35:24]:
I can tell you which one I don't think will for sure, and and that's AI. I think AI has seen it run its course in market research. We were all very skyded and scared. A lot of consternation about it's gonna replace my job and everything else. Well, now that it's settled, people are starting to see, oh, it really doesn't do all this. It only does these things. And the shine is starting to wear off. We're not seeing AI in everything anymore.
Dan Reilly [00:35:50]:
We're now just seeing it in certain names and certain institutions and certain products. So I think one thing that's not gonna happen is AI. I think an area that's gonna start to grow even more is experiential marketing. So there's a lot of emphasis now on satisfaction and all of those performance indicators, but now we're starting to see well, no. It's the experience that drives it. And it's always been there, but now we're starting to see and this goes beyond CX, so I don't mean the customer experience in terms of I would hear, I would hear, I would hear. There's certainly a value in that. What we're really talking about is how does that make you feel, how does that add to your life, much more about the motivations, which at the beginning of the show, I said that it has to be below the basis to understand behaviors and understand performance.
Dan Reilly [00:36:38]:
So I think those are the 2. But that's the one big area experiential research is gonna become even more important to move forward.
Sara Payne [00:36:44]:
Great. Last question. What's one question every marketer should ask their audience?
Dan Reilly [00:36:50]:
What's it gonna take to get you to buy my product? That's that's really it. And it's not no. I didn't say what are the benefits. No. I didn't say
Sara Payne [00:36:59]:
Yeah.
Dan Reilly [00:36:59]:
Why won't you buy my product? It's what's it gonna take for you to buy my product? Now we obviously put it in much more elegant terms.
Sara Payne [00:37:06]:
Right. Of course.
Dan Reilly [00:37:07]:
At the end, it's what's it gonna take for you to buy my product? That's that's the ultimate question that that any marketer should be asking.
Sara Payne [00:37:15]:
Love it. Well, Dan, this was a real pleasure. I I know I learned a lot today. Thank you for being here. How can listeners get in touch with you?
Dan Reilly [00:37:23]:
So if listeners wanna, get a hold of me, there's 2 ways they can do that. They can send me an email to dreilly, dreilly, n s r g dot com, or they can visit our website, www.nsrg. .Com, and, send us some comments there. But, yeah, if anybody has any questions or follow-up, we'll be more than happy to answer them. Yeah. Dan is a wealth of information, so certainly reach out to
Sara Payne [00:37:44]:
him, and he will get your market research initiatives off on the right track. Well, that's it for today's episode. If you enjoyed the conversation today, do us a favor and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for being part of Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence because the future of health care depends on it. We'll see you next time.
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