Data showed only 7% of Fort Worth's target market was aware of city attraction.  Our campaign changed that and  generated 300,000 additional room nights.

Many marketers think they don't need research to tell them about their customers. But the data show they're wrong. In a recent study quoted in the Harvard Business Review, 90% of CEOs thought their customer satisfaction levels were at least 40% higher than they really were.

What drives purchase intent? Just about every retailer says price, but data show price is the third or fourth determinant. (That's lucky, because unless you're Wal-Mart, e-Bay or a guy selling TVs that fell off a truck, it will soon be impossible to compete effectively on price.)

Is your marketing communications program getting the right message into your prospects' heads? Your neighbor isn't the one to ask. Not your spouse, either. Unless they're a demographically, psychographically, statistically-projectable match to your target audience.

Good data is cheap. And priceless.

Research is a tiny fraction of any marketing communications budget. So even though it tells us pretty much what we expected nineteen times out of twenty,  it's an affordable insurance policy.  And that twentieth time –  when we're surprised – good data can prevent a marketing disaster or identify a gigantic opportunity.

Sounds like we're selling data. We're not. We advise our clients to buy it, but not from us. Since one important use of research is measuring the effectiveness of our work, we insist that a third party provide it.

We do, however, have a vested interest here. The data that our left brains slice, dice and analyze are the basic building blocks our right brains use to construct marketing communications successes. The better the data, the better job we can do.

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