Confidence Creation: How Customer Focus Groups Fuelled the Strategy of a Content Creation Client

Knowing your customer. It’s the difference between throwing a product into the market and crossing your fingers, and creating something that truly resonates with your target audience. But it doesn’t stop at your product. Understanding your customers will enable you to align your product, sales and marketing efforts, so you can hit all the right touchpoints at the right moments. You’ll have the tools to communicate that you know what your consumer truly wants – and they can get it in your product or service.

But conducting research into your customers can be difficult. It requires a close examination of their attitudes and buying journey, and understanding how these factors can change over time.

Getting ahead in tech markets

Our Consumer & End User Insights team helped piece together this puzzle for a well-known electronics company. Their products reach a huge range of demographics and consumers, but they wanted clarity specifically within the content creation market. Content creation is a relatively new phenomenon, so the client was working with many unknowns. Who were their consumers? How were they using their products? What was resonating and what wasn’t? For the client, these answers were the difference between becoming the go-to brand for content creation products and falling behind in the market.

Customer intelligence surveys and focus groups

Our syndicated Content Creator report already explored the market, but the client wanted to go deeper. Through a series of 1:1 meetings, the team worked with the client to determine their goals and challenges. They mapped out questions and segmentation for a nationally representative survey of around 12,000 US citizens. They then identified five focus groups, each segmented by a range of qualities and characteristics. Of the five focus groups, 10 highly engaged end users were selected for an in-depth interview (IDI) to further uncover their wants and needs.

Some of the key questions included:

• What device(s) do you own and use to capture video for your content creation?
• What are the main themes of the content you produce?
• How much time do you spend creating video content per week?

This helped us determine how different groups engaged with various products and why. Midway through this study, generative AI broke into the mainstream. Understanding the impact this could create, we pivoted our research to incorporate content creators’ approach to generative AI, helping the client get ahead of the market.

Outcomes guided by insights

Through our nationally representative survey, focus groups, IDIs, vendor interviews, plus market sizing and forecasting, we created a 360-degree view of the customer landscape.

We revealed how the subject matter of the content influenced the creator’s engagement with different products. We also identified how up-and-coming creators transform over time, and how their purchase journey evolves as they become more established and their content becomes profitable.

But we didn’t just provide the research. Our team shed light on how to get more out of the data, providing the insights needed to further fuel their strategy.

Through customer intelligence that was extensive in both scale and detail, the client successfully identified gaps in the market. Our Insights team's clear guidance and advice enabled them to align their products seamlessly to meet the needs of their ideal customers. These small shifts can turn a respected brand into the go-to brand within a rapidly growing market.

Knowing your consumers

Getting to the heart of your customers is often overlooked. While our industry outlooks can be an excellent segue into a market, customer intelligence helps you go one step further. For more information about how our Consumer & End User Insights team can help you know your customer, request a consultation today.

About the author

Olivia Lowden

Olivia Lowden is responsible for the long-form content, press, and partnerships at Futuresource. Prior to her career at Futuresource, she completed an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, demonstrative of her lifelong love of words.