Customer research can improve websites. But what happens to everything else you learn along the way?
A company decides to redesign its website.
As part of the project, the team interviews customers to better understand their needs, challenges and reasons for choosing the company.
The conversations turn out to be really useful. The team learns things they hadn't fully appreciated before, including a few that challenge assumptions people inside the company have held for years.
The new website reflects what they've learned. The messaging is clearer, the content is more relevant, and everyone is pleased with the result.
The project is finished.
And somewhere in a shared folder, there's now a very nice presentation summarising everything they learned from customers.
There's nothing wrong with this process. The research helped improve the website, which was exactly what the team wanted.
But I think there's a missed opportunity here.
What else could the company have done with everything it learned?
What you learn rarely fits neatly into one project
We're used to finding ways to get more use out of content we've already created. But making better use of what we learned while creating it is a different opportunity.
We often collect customer insights for a particular purpose.
A website redesign. A positioning project. A new campaign. A customer story. A product launch.
We have a question to answer, so we go looking for information.
But customers don't organise their experiences around our marketing projects.
In a conversation about why someone chose your company, you might also discover what nearly stopped them from buying, what they found confusing, who they needed to convince internally or what alternatives they considered.
You might even learn what they wish they'd known earlier.
Some of those findings may be useful for the project you're working on. Others could be just as valuable for your next campaign, sales presentation, customer communications or content plan.
The question is whether anyone picks them up.
One finding can change more than one thing
Imagine a B2B software company that interviews customers and reviews recent sales conversations.
One issue keeps coming up. Customers can see the benefits of the software, and the people evaluating it are often quite enthusiastic.
But that enthusiasm doesn't always survive the next internal budget meeting.
The person championing the purchase struggles to explain the financial value to colleagues who haven't seen the demo, don't know the technical details and have other priorities competing for the same budget.
If the company hears this repeatedly, it could influence several things:
Website content: Perhaps the company needs to explain the business value more clearly, rather than focusing so heavily on what the software can do.
Educational content: There may be an opportunity to help buyers understand the costs of their current approach, the potential value of changing it and what to consider before investing.
Customer stories: Instead of focusing only on implementation and results, a story could also show how the customer got internal approval for the investment.
Sales materials: A simple business case template, relevant financial evidence or a few well-chosen examples might help the person championing the purchase make their case.
Demos: Perhaps the team needs to consider what different stakeholders want to understand, not just what impresses the person attending the first demonstration.
None of this means creating five new pieces of content immediately. Some of it might involve improving materials the company already has.
It's about using what you've learned to make better decisions about what content is needed, who it's for and what it should help them understand.
What you learn might change what you talk about
Sometimes what we learn from customers gives us a better way to explain our offering. Other times, it reveals a problem, question or concern that's worth exploring in its own right.
Some people are interested in what's changing in their industry. Others are trying to understand a problem, compare different approaches or get support for a decision they've already made.
And the people involved in the same B2B purchase may have quite different questions.
What interests someone following your company on LinkedIn isn't necessarily what another person needs when taking a proposal to their finance director.
Understanding these differences helps us decide what to talk about, what to explain and what kind of evidence might be useful.
Of course, that doesn't mean publishing about anything and everything. What you talk about should still reflect who you're trying to reach, what you want to be known for and what you can genuinely deliver.
Being relevant to customers and supporting business goals shouldn't be competing ambitions.
What happens to the findings after the project?
It's worth remembering that not everything customers tell us will be relevant to the project we're working on.
And not every comment deserves a new piece of content. Sometimes a finding needs more investigation, or a closer look at what competitors and the wider market are doing.
But when something important keeps coming up, it seems a shame to leave it behind simply because it wasn't part of the original brief.
Perhaps the interviews revealed a question that sales keeps hearing. Or a concern that deserves a clearer answer on the website. Maybe a customer story could be more useful if it explored something other than the usual implementation and results.
One practical thing I'd suggest is going back to the last customer research project your company completed.
What did you learn beyond the questions you originally wanted to answer?
Could any of those findings improve another piece of content, answer a question sales keeps hearing or help a customer make a decision?
Which useful observations are still sitting in that presentation?
You might discover that your next content idea doesn't require another brainstorming session.
It might simply require another look at what you learned last time.
And perhaps making sure those insights get a little further than the shared folder…
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If you think there's more to learn from your customers, or more to do with what you've already learned, I can help you gather, connect and put those insights to good use.