Suppose you spend $50,000 on advertising and generate 5,000 leads at just $10 each. On your dashboard the numbers look perfect. But when you check with your sales team, you realize something: not a single lead has turned into a customer. So was the campaign actually successful?
Instead of immediately changing the ads or increasing the budget, a business should first understand what’s going wrong. A good starting point is to review existing data and compare which campaigns generate the most leads with which ones actually generate sales. Attribution matters here because a customer might discover a company through an Instagram ad, visit its website a few days later, and eventually call after finding it on Google. If the company only looks at where the final inquiry came from, it might underestimate Instagram's role in that customer’s journey.
The next step involves qualitative research like interviewing the sales team or reaching out to potential customers who requested information but never purchased. These conversations could help identify common objections. For example, customers might be interested in the product but hesitate because they don’t understand the installation process or aren’t sure whether it’s worth the price.
Once the business identifies the reasons, quantitative research allows us to determine how common those concerns are among its leads. If the research shows that most leads are interested but don’t understand why the product costs so much, spending more on ads probably won’t solve the problem. I’d rather use that information to explain the product better, answer those questions before someone requests a quote, and then see if the closing rate improves. That’s what makes marketing research worth doing. You’re not just collecting information for another report; you’re using it to figure out what needs to change.