It's what you know that just isn't true. Mark Twain said it more elegantly:
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”
We're talking about insight here.
What is Insight?
There’s a big difference between information and insight. Information is basic data, while the definition of insight is information that has been processed and analyzed to be useful. In business, insight is intelligence that helps you decide.
To have insight into business means going beyond understanding your data. It’s about analyzing and using it to improve your products, services, or processes. A business insight combines data and analysis to enhance understanding of a situation, providing a competitive advantage. It’s about connecting to your clients’ inner nature and seeing patterns you can use.
In business, insight is “a sudden clear understanding of the relationships between things.” It’s that “Aha!” moment when everything suddenly makes sense. Businesses achieve success by having insight into their customers, their industry, and their own company.
Where Do I Get Business and Consumer Insights?
Great insight can come from anywhere—customers, employees, competitors, market research, data analytics… anywhere. It is important to be open to finding and knowing what to do with it once you have it.
Insight is a critical part of any business. Analyzing relevant data forms the backbone of understanding business dynamics, evaluating performance, and strategically planning by identifying market trends and customer preferences. It allows companies to take their data and information and turn it into knowledge that can improve their products or services. Effective use of insight can directly affect your company’s bottom line by improving decision-making and strategy.
You can give your business a competitive edge by being open to insight and understanding how to use it. So don’t be afraid to ask for feedback, analyze your data, collect more examples, or do market research. Your business will thank you for it!
How Do I Get Insight?
Insight can come from anywhere—customers, employees, competitors, market research, data analytics, and more—so organizations should discover insight from more than raw data alone. It is important to be open to finding it and to focus on deriving better insights from it, not just collecting more data. Acquiring new data analysis and market research skills, including analyzing market data, is essential for effectively gathering and utilizing insight.
Insight is a critical part of any business. It allows companies to take their data and information and turn it into knowledge that can improve their products or services, especially when small firms embrace data science for better decisions.
Data Analysis and Research
A common source of great insight is market research. Pursuing a master’s degree, such as an MBA, can provide valuable skills and knowledge for conducting thorough market research. Data mining and the right data science tools for small businesses are essential for analyzing various data sources to uncover hidden patterns and correlations that lead to deeper business insights. We can do this in-house or outsourced to a third party. You should research your target market, competition, and business operations.
Market research gives you the tools and ability to collect and evaluate the behaviors of your prospects and consumers. For example, budgeting apps reveal hidden leaks in annual spending habits. Other ways to gain business insight include talking to customers and employees (both of whom can offer fresh insights), and analyzing exit interviews can reveal reasons for employee turnover, as well as attending industry events and reading trade publications.
Believing something to be true without deep insight and continuous curiosity, fueled by an intense desire to learn and know more, is perilous.
Investment in Strategic Business Insights for Successful Businesses
As a leader, seek to learn more. You should be in the market, talking to your customers and partners. You should spend at least 10% of your advertising budget on research.
Why 10%, you may ask? Doesn’t it make sense to spend ten cents out of every dollar to learn what will grow your business? Just as businesses invest in insurance to protect against risks, investing in insight safeguards your business decisions by building an effective business intelligence solution.
Of course, not all research is equal, and it is possible (even easy) to do meaningless (or worse, harmful) research by arriving at misleading conclusions about consumer behavior. That’s why the most important people on your team, whether an employee or an agency, are the people who get you this insight by understanding the human challenge behind the data.
How Do I Use Insight?
You should build business planning and strategy development based on actionable insights. No consequential business endeavor should ever be started without a foundational insight as its guiding light.
Once you have fresh insights, you can use them to make informed decisions about your business plan and strategy. The insight will help you identify opportunities and threats, set goals, and allocate resources. It can also connect previously unrelated ideas and lead to new ideas. It’s the difference between deciding based on guesswork and data. This can help your business in several ways, including:
- Helping you to understand your customers and their needs better
- Allowing you to target specific areas for improvement
- Giving you a competitive advantage against other businesses
Insight-driven strategies can increase profit by optimizing resource allocation and identifying new opportunities, especially when they are grounded in disciplined business planning and strategy development.
Proactivity in Marketing: Analyze Market Data
When you translate what you learn into action, structured marketing planning for long-term success keeps those insight-driven initiatives aligned with your broader goals.
It is important to be proactive to make the most of your insight. Try asking yourself questions such as: What does this insight mean for my business? How can I change my strategy based on this information? What is the key question that matters most for action? By taking the time to consider these questions, you can ensure that you are making the best possible decisions for your business.
Insight is a valuable tool that can help you improve your business. It can also help teams bypass mental ruts and functional fixedness. By taking the time to understand how to employ this information, you can give yourself a competitive advantage and better serve your customers. Proactively using insight can enhance your sales strategies by better understanding customer needs and market trends, ultimately making it helpful for improving your business.
You're Not the Customer
In 1998, when I was managing The Coca-Cola Company’s business in Hungary–Doug Ivester, then the company’s CEO, visited our market. I was having dinner with him on the night that he arrived, and I realized, for the entire meal, he did nothing but ask me questions.
Not only did he ask many challenging questions, but he also listened carefully to my answers, often following up with additional queries after each reply.
At one point, I replied to one of his questions, and he asked, “How do you know that?” I replied that my experience in the market and the industry informed my understanding. He looked at me deadpan and said, “Mark, you are not the customer.”
Regardless of what you think you know, you know nothing unless you have gotten the answer directly, in a timely fashion, and without bias — from an actual customer. That’s the essence of insight. For small businesses, gaining insight into customer behavior is crucial for overcoming unique challenges and achieving growth.
Doug was an outstanding business leader, and I think his legacy at The Coca-Cola Company understates his deep and abiding understanding of some core business fundamentals. Doug has immense mercantile intelligence.
He is a finance guy who rose to the top of one of the world’s leading companies entirely because of his ability to understand, at the core, those things that truly matter.
In my experience running an agency, I often have similar conversations with business leaders, such as CEOs, Presidents, Marketing VPs, etc.
Early in my conversations with these leaders, I try to understand how they think, what informs their wisdom and mindset, how in touch they are with the market and their customers–and how much mercantile intelligence they exhibit.
One of the quickest ways to learn how well-informed a leader is to ask them questions about their brand, product, competition, customers, etc., and then listen carefully to their answers; truly insight-driven leaders tend to favor growth marketing driven by data over gut feel.
Does insight inform their perspective? Have they done research into why things are happening as they are? Are they truly curious about their consumer, the audience they serve, and their market?
Some leaders spend a lot of time talking about themselves. They want to tell you about their experience, education, knowledge, and past successes. While sometimes this can be interesting, it is often a key indicator that they have dug themselves deep into a quagmire of confirmation bias, instead of relying on disciplined competitive intelligence for better decisions.
They think they know a lot because they have been around for a long time and successful in the past (to varying degrees). When I ask, “Really, how do you know that?” Or, “That’s interesting. What insight led you to that insight?” I almost always get some version of, “Oh, I’ve been doing this a long time, and I understand this business.”
For small businesses, gaining a deeper understanding of customer behavior and market trends is crucial for overcoming unique challenges and achieving growth, and an asymmetric marketing strategy for small firms can turn that insight into a real competitive edge.
Huh?
In Conclusion
Hire and train people who value insight and have the education and training to arrive at valuable insights that are free of bias and inform the organization on useful and actionable facts. They need to help you answer key questions about the who, what, when, where, and how–of your market. Those team members should help you make excellent decisions informed by insight and by a disciplined, data-driven marketing budget.
They are illuminating the path for the organization.
Invest deeply in your curiosity and insight. Seek insight that will inform your decision-making. Don’t drink your own “Kool-Aid.” Recognize that your experience and education bring a Jungian “shadow” along with them. Anything you think you know is probably preventing you from knowing something you don’t. Successful businesses leverage insight to make informed decisions and drive growth, often pairing it with the right business systems and technology stack to act on what they learn efficiently.
About the author
Mark A. Hope is the co-founder and Partner at Asymmetric Marketing, an innovative agency dedicated to creating high-performance sales and marketing systems, campaigns, processes, and strategies tailored for small businesses. With extensive experience spanning various industries, Asymmetric Marketing excels in delivering customized solutions that drive growth and success. If you’re looking to implement the strategies discussed in this article or need expert guidance on enhancing your marketing efforts, Mark is here to help. Contact him at 608-410-4450 or via email at mark.hope@asymmetric.pro.