Problem

Quid, as an analytics and insights tool serves a multitude of use cases, ranging from Marketing Intelligence, Competitive Landscaping, Industry Analysis, Techonology Research, Voice of Customer, etc. by analysing unstructured text from news & blogs, company descriptions and patents using Natural Language Processing.

From the user experience perceptive, while being a powerful tool, Quid had a steep learning curve and required users to spend time pivoting, agrregating and slicing the data to arrive at meaningful and actionable insights. Our goal was to identify highly repeatable use cases, and create a simplified workflow along with automated insights from the data. A key requirement of this goal was to gather a deep understanding of our targeted users, and delve into their needs, painpaints, user journey and ecosystem of stakeholders.

Research Goals

The first step of the study was to define a concrete set of goals. I broke down the problem into smaller parts in order to outline the questions that we would need to answer to be able to have all the data necessary for the team to make decisions. The result was a set of 3 overarching questions that would guide the research study:

A. Who are the key stakeholders within the Marketing Intelligence ecosystem?

B. What are their goals, activities, measures of success and painpoints?

C. What value can we provide with Quid’s current technology vision?

A Look at Our Current Personas

Based on previous research, we had identified a set of 4 hypothesized personas. The goal of this research was to get a deeper understanding of the 'Rosa' persona and the key factes of the space that she exists in.

Phase I: Marketing Roles Overview

Using Quid to Analyze Glassdoor Job Descriptions

In order to get an overview of the responsibilites and activities of Corporate Marketers, we analyzed ~5000 job descriptions from Glassdoor. We used Quid's Natural Language Proccessing algorithm to analyze the 'responsibilites' with job description along with meta data such as comapny name, job title, company size, rating, etc.

Key Findings:

Phase II: User Interviews

Creating a Framework to Understand Users' Goals & Activities

As a next step, we conducted 60 min interviews with 10 non Quid users in the PR, Brand and Product Marketing roles.

The main goal was the understand their role, goals and activities, successes and pain points, and how they are currently getting the 'job' done.

Analysis & Insights: Key Findings

Understanding the Problem

Detecting Common Themes

The interview sessions were recorded and transcribed. We created an affinity diagram, exploring common themes within the data. Some of the common themes that emegered within the set of goals were actions related to various areas on marketing, such as social media, content marketing, consumer research, advertising and analytics. We mapped these themes against various activties, needs, painpoints, measures of success and current alternatives.

Key Findings

The information gathered helped articulate the framework of Rosa's (a person in a marketing role at a corporation) focus areas and activities. According to our findings, a marketing department within a corporation has broadly three focus areas (or sub-departments) on the Y-axis:

On the X-axis, there are areas of activities that marketers in all three departments focus on:

We decided to use a matrix of focus areas & tasks instead of segmenting the users by job titles. This is because marketing is such a variable field, and job titles mean different things in different things. For example, a PR department at a company like Walmart (ie faced with a lot of controversies) looks very different from Virgin Atlantic (that has a much healthier brand perception). Another example, in a big company, there might be 1 or more person assigned to each point in the grid, but in a smaller company, there might a fewer number of people covering a larger portion on the grid.

Mapping Goals against Tasks

The overarching goals for each focus area (PR, Brand, Product) were mapped the common themes indentified from the interviews. We also looked at how they are currently addressing each of the tasks within the framework and what their pain points are. This information helped us identify key value points that Quid can provide.

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Phase III: Exploring Correlations

Conducting a Survey to Verify the Framework

After building the framework of tasks and how they align against the facets of marketing, the next step was to verify this with quantitative data. We ran a survey with over 20 participants to understand how likely they are to perform the tasks within the framework, and how difficult do they currently find them.

For each of the goals, we asked the participants for a Likert scale rating of the following questions:

Axial Coding

We plotted the results through Axial Coding, where the circles represent a participant and the symbol represnets this focus area. This analysis helped us clearly see where the commonalities existed and which tasks are most important.

After plotting the answers on various dimensions, we correlated the dimensions on a 2x2 to looking for meaningful insights. For example, correlating the 2 dimensions of 'how likely' vs 'how difficult' helped easliy spot tasks that they would be highly likely to do, but are pain points for users. Similarly, we plotted other things such as 'brand health' vs likelihood to be pediciting reputation risk' to see if they are directly proportinal. This exercise was useful in identifying value gaps and key relationships.

Next Steps: Mapping User Journey

This analysis was intrumental in product decisions regarding the direction and focus of the initiative. We chose to focus on 'Brand Strategy and Management' area as a starting point to build a simplified workflow for, based on the value gaps indentified in the research. The next step was to conduct a more focussed research in the area of Brand Strategy and Management to identify the user journey and key pain points.

Since most of the Quid users consisted of analysts, one of the key challenges we faced was to research the key players within the Brand Marketing ecosystem and get a deep understanding of their goals, day-to-day activities, successes and pain points to understand the value proposition that Quid can make.

Analysis

Detecting Common Themes

We created an affinity diagram, exploring common themes within the data. Some of the common themes that emegered within the set of goals were actions related to various areas on marketing, such as social media, content marketing, consumer research, advertising and analytics. We mapped these themes against various activties, needs, painpoints, measures of success and current alternatives.

Previous slideNext slide

Mapping User Journey

We created an affinity diagram, exploring common themes within the data. Some of the common themes that emegered within the set of goals were actions related to various areas on marketing, such as social media, content marketing, consumer research, advertising and analytics. We mapped these themes against various activties, needs, painpoints, measures of success and current alternatives.