Market research and product insights have always been the core part of any product development strategy.
It’s never been easier to source information about consumer behaviour and what motivates it. With the help of natural language processing (NLP) tools, you can assess insights from thousands of consumers across multiple channels in minutes. But how can you leverage this rich data?
In this article, we’ll cover not only how to source and analyse consumer and product data quickly to get insights but also how to use them to inform your product development strategy and meet consumers’ demands, desires and wishes.
What Are Product Insights?
Product insights are valuable details and understandings extracted from analysing consumer data related to a product or service usage.
These insights based on customer interactions with the product are used to inform and improve product design, functionality and user experience.
Product insights reveal precisely how consumers interact with your products, the motivations behind their choices, and the patterns they follow when buying.
By delving into consumer behavioural nuances, businesses discover not only what customers want but also why they want a specific product. It’s about depicting the emotional details that influence a product’s purchase.
How to Get Product Insights?
You must first gather relevant data from all available sources to obtain product insights. Then, process it with advanced technologies to extract meaningful insights to inform your product development strategy.
Consumer research
Surveys and questionnaires
These are simple tools and have been used for a long while now. By simply asking the correct questions, brands can unlock helpful insights related to customer pain points, preferences, and requirements.
Surveys and questionnaires offer a direct line of communication with your audience. It allows you to question your customer base and discover what they want to buy and why.
Interviews and focus groups
They provide your business with the opportunity to have personal conversations with its clients. And dive deep into their opinions, perspectives and experiences.
Such supervised group discussions and one-on-one interviews help unearth nuances of customer behaviour that otherwise may go unnoticed.
Market and product insights from social media and review data
Every day, every minute, people share their experiences of products and businesses online via social media and online review sites.
This information is publicly available, accessible, and brimming with valuable insights – provided it is handled and analysed using appropriate methods.
NLP combines linguistics, computer science and AI technology to make sense of unstructured text data wherever it occurs. The Symanto Insights Platform uses NLP to convert this data into valuable, measurable insights.
You can analyse many consumer comments across any market in a few minutes. Find out which product or service features resonate best with each consumer base.
Data analysis
Use analytics tools and text analysis software
To obtain valuable insights, you have to process vast amounts of data. To do this, you need the right tools to execute it fast and deliver much-needed actionable product insights.
Such tools provide a detailed overview of your customer’s interaction with the product/service and its performance on the market. Moreover, they offer a granular comprehension of consumer behaviour. And help identify patterns, preferences and areas of refinement.
Symanto’s AI-powered technology and Symanto services offer product analyses that reveal your customers’ specific pain points. And help you create and refine products that surpass your customer expectations.
Product analysis is important because it helps:
- Identify the weaknesses of a product.
- Determine and comprehend the causes of a product’s performance.
- Obtain insights related to consumer trends for product development optimisation.
- Understand the market dynamic and where your product is requested.
- Compare your product efficiency and client satisfaction with those of the competition.
Symanto helps you with:
- Advanced analysis of review data, internal data and social media data.
- Thorough text analyses.
- Granular sentiment analysis on a topic level.
- Advanced natural language processing.
- Valuable actionable insights.
Features:
- Advanced search. Gather the relevant feedback with advanced search and filtering options.
- Detailed consumer sentiment. Use AI and psychology to depict the real feelings of your customers.
- Strong topic analysis that goes beyond text to depict the whole picture.
- Spot problem areas. Identify which buyer persona doesn’t react to your brand and adjust strategies accordingly.
- Profit on ready-made industry-specific AI models to tailor your results.
Examine customer feedback and sales data
Investigating what clients buy, when, and how often they make acquisitions delivers powerful insights into a product’s performance. These are determined based on the sales data.
In return, customer feedback speaks about the customer’s perspective and provides opportunities to refine your product based on real consumer experiences.
Competitive analysis
Examine competitor products
To better understand your position in the market, you need to analyse the other products that are present and compete with your own. Investigate their offer, how they position themselves, why their audience chooses those products and not yours, etc.
Discover each of your competitor’s unique selling points (USPs) from the perspective of their customers.
Such a comparative analysis delivers inspiration for differentiation and spots the gaps in the market that can develop into excellent business opportunities.
Monitor industry trends
Our fast-paced world comes with rapidly changing movements. Keeping a close eye on industry trends helps you anticipate the changes in customer preferences and behaviour and allows you to adapt your product strategy in due time.
It’s about being ahead of the innovation wave and not behind.
What Are the Components of Product Insights?
Product insights are the code that reveals the secrets of your customer requirements and expectations.
These insights are not meant just to impulse purchasing decisions but also to improve the overall consumer experience.
People may erroneously believe that the most relevant insights for product development are insights about the products themselves. In reality, it’s at least equally important to get insights about the consumers.
Product insights include components related to:
Consumer Behaviour
Deeply understand the buying patterns
Buying patterns are the details that customers leave behind when they make a purchase. They provide valuable information about the customer’s preferences and buying decision processes.
Knowing and interpreting these patterns empower businesses to lead the customer journey with higher precision.
Are your customers rational buyers who research all details before buying, or are they impulse buyers? Depicting such nuances and aspects helps tailor strategies and products.
Customer psychographics
Knowing what customers want from your product is one thing, but you can also use insights to understand key personality traits of different customer bases.
Are your customers more emotionally or rationally driven? Will they be more compelled by experiential upgrades or by new functionalities?
Symanto’s NLP algorithms detect consumers’ personality traits and preferred communication styles based on their writing.
You may be surprised to learn that who you deem to be your main competitor attracts customers with very different personality profiles.
Pinpoint motivations and pain points
Motivations and pain points are the drivers behind each purchase. It’s a sort of balance between what clients want to achieve or gain and what they wish to avoid.
Determining the emotional drivers allows brands to address pain points better and boost motivation.
Understanding the emotional topography of consumers is vital to developing and refining products that resonate at deeper levels. Whether fulfilling a need, solving a problem or providing a sense of belonging, you must be aware of your customers’ emotions and motivations.
Here is an example of product insights used wisely:
TikTok captured the attention of an entire generation.
Why? Because of their insight into what Gen Z want from social media.
Short-form videos are easy to create and allow for more creativity than still images, but the real clincher is every kid’s desire to be an influencer. TikTok’s format and algorithms make it easier for content to go viral.
This insight into young consumers’ motivations has revolutionised social media, with Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts quickly following suit to draw some of their userbases back in.
Market Trends
Analyse emerging trends
The market is dynamic, evolves constantly and provides new opportunities. Emerging trends reveal how customer preferences are about to change.
No matter what trends look like, a focus on health and wellness, a shift towards sustainability or the expansion of digital experiences, staying ahead of the curve counts. Knowing the developing trends allows your business to position your products and services as relevant and timely.
Adapt to evolving customer preferences
Consumer preferences shape the market and are continuously changing. If you want your business to survive, you have to adapt; if you want it to thrive, you have to adapt early and fast.
Being agile and responsive to consumer desires shifts is the way to make your products desirable and, if possible, indispensable.
Functionality and User Experience
Evaluate your product usability and functionality
Functionality is the spine of a product; if it doesn’t deliver what it promises, its life on the market will be short.
Evaluating a product’s functionality includes analysing how well it satisfies users’ needs, whether it solves the problems it promises to address, and whether it’s easy to use, among others.
Understanding these functional aspects confirms that your products and services meet customer expectations.
Improve consumer satisfaction
User satisfaction is the foundation and the blood of brand loyalty. It’s more than just selling a product; it’s about conceiving an experience consumers appreciate and are willing to repeat.
Enhancing customer satisfaction implies refining each product feature and every touchpoint of the buyer journey. And building meaningful relationships with customers in order to convert them from one-time buyers to brand advocates.
Leverage Technology to Get Advanced and Actionable Insights
In obtaining product insights, technology acts as a catalyst in facilitating your understanding of your customers’ desires. And also helps anticipate changes in trends.
Cutting-edge technology hones your capacity to stay relevant and ahead of the curve.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Predictive analytics for customer behaviour
Using advanced technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence, you have the possibility to analyse past customer behaviour and predict future moves.
Such insights empower your business to be prepared, promptly answer shifting consumer activity, and foresee what they may do and want next.
Personalisation
AI brings the opportunity to customise experiences at a granular level for individual customers.
By analysing data concerning interactions, preferences, and buying history, technology helps conceive tailor-made experiences that speak at a deep level. And create the feeling that a brand totally understands its customers’ expectations and needs.
Social media monitoring and data analysis
Extract insights from your social media channels
Needless to say, in our modern days, genuine conversations about brands and products take place. Keeping an eye on these conversations provides access to unfiltered insights into what clients say and share.
Tracking social media mentions, chats, hashtags, and sentiment delivers raw perspectives on how your products are perceived in real life and in real-time.
Answer client feedback in real time
On social media, customer feedback is quick and straightforward. Nowadays, you have tools available to answer this feedback in real-time.
No matter, if it is related to concerns, suggestions for product improvement, or just responding to positive reviews, answering to feedback creates a dynamic connection with your customers.
Transform Insights into Actionable and Results Generating Strategies
Getting product insights is meaningless if you do not leverage them to improve your product and marketing strategies.
Product development and improvement
Iterative product amelioration
If you pay attention to feedback, you can enhance your products and services. Iterative product amelioration implies an ongoing cycle that relies on listening to customer feedback, improving your product, releasing updated versions and asking again for feedback.
Innovation based on client feedback
Innovation is not necessarily about radical overhauls; it’s about executing impactful changes that address the client’s desires and concerns.
Customer feedback is a reliable source of innovation. As you analyse it, you may encounter latent needs or aspects that can be improved and grasp ways to remain relevant.
Use Symanto Insights Platform to Improve Your Products
The Symanto Insights Platform incorporates NLP technologies to offer powerful insights into your products and services from your customers’ perspective.
Symanto creates customised solutions to help you get the most out of online data. To get started, book your free personalised demo today.
