Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Have you spoken with your various target audiences? I'm guessing that if you do a series of interviews with representative customers in each of 4 or 5 segments, you'll very quickly identify which are most likely to buy/try and what features are most important to them.

We recently completed a study in a different category/industry with the same general objective -- to identify the segments most likely to purchase, and what benefits are most important to each one -- and it really was an eye-opener for the client. There were even some surprising regional differences and unexpected segmentation options.

You can do this yourself, of course ... by setting up and structuring a series of interviews. Alternatively, this can be outsourced to an experienced market research professional. It depends on how much time and expertise you have and how important the answer is to your company. A middle ground would be to get a market researcher to go through the planning process with you, and then execute yourself. The pro will keep you from coming up with a study design that has built-in biases. If you have that, you could get results that are exactly wrong -- and that could cost you a bundle.