2. “Insights are too expensive.”
Yes, good research costs money. But doing no research always costs more:
- building a product no one wants,
- choosing a target group that doesn’t exist,
- launching communication that completely misses the mark.
If you don’t know who should buy your product and why, the risk of failure instantly grows. Fortunately, understanding your target audience no longer needs to cost tens of thousands of euros. Fast concept tests, cocreation, online communities — it can all be done for surprisingly modest budgets. The return, in the form of risk reduction, is disproportionately high.
3. “Consumers don’t know what they want.”
To prove this point, people often quote Henry Ford: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said: a faster horse.”
However, the problem is never the consumer not knowing what they want. In this case, Ford would be asking the wrong question. Good research, rooted in behavioural science, culture, and how people really make choices, reveals patterns that are far more consistent than the intuition of even the smartest entrepreneur.
Consumers are perfectly capable of indicating what need a yet-to-exist solution should fulfill. Don’t expect them to come up with the solution — that’s the marketer’s job.
4. “Our gut feeling is enough.”
Intuition is important, but your gut feeling comes with side effects:
- it is shaped by your own bubble,
- it is based on your personal preferences,
- it ignores blind spots you never see yourself,
- and it can lead to wishful thinking.
Insight is not a replacement for intuition — it is the counterbalance that tests and supplements your intuition. The best marketers combine both: vision and evidence. It prevents endless internal discussions based on opinions (“I think that…”) and creates alignment based on a realistic view of the target audience.
5. “We already know this.”
A variant of the previous argument, but a bit more arrogant. People who have worked in a category for years often believe they know the consumer inside out, but market behaviour changes. Cultural codes shift. Brands and categories evolve. Competitors launch competing solutions. Whereas internal knowledge often remains mostly… internal.
Insights provide a reality check. It prevents organisations from slowly but surely believing in their own fantasy world.
6. “We already steer based on KPIs, so extra insights aren’t needed.”
Dashboards full of CTRs, viewthrough rates, sales figures, and rotation data create the impression that everything is being monitored. They explain what happens, not why and that is exactly where things often go wrong.
When the numbers are good, you don’t notice it. But when sales decline or campaigns suddenly stop working, you are completely in the dark without insight. Only one strategy remains: guessing. Without proper understanding of your target group, you don’t know what the fundamental problem is, and every optimisation becomes a matter of luck.
7. “We suspect the results will be negative.”
You rarely hear this explicitly, but I often sense it. A silent fear that research will undermine the dream. Especially for founders, this is a barrier. Their “baby” is being weighed — and may be deemed too light. That is precisely why they should do research. If your target audience doesn’t embrace your idea, you want to hear that early — not after an expensive launch and years of hard work. You also want to know why.
Insights always give you more than a judgment. They reveal:
- why a benefit isn’t clear,
- why a brand promise isn’t convincing,
- why a pack design sends the wrong signals,
- why a message triggers resistance.
In that “why,” the opportunities for improvement lie. Yes, the target audience may completely shoot down your product. That is a tough message you should hear as soon as possible. Mostly, though, research doesn’t kill ideas — it provides the clues to improve your baby and ultimately make it more successful.
Every supposed reason not to use insights is a reason to use them.
Insights are not a luxury, not a delay, not a cost item. They are one of the most powerful tools marketers have to:
- and develop more impactful communication.
Insights no longer require a complicated process reserved for large teams or big budgets. The field has evolved and is surprisingly accessible: fast, smart, and immediately usable. You don’t need months, thick reports, or expensive agencies to get closer to your target audience. Those who think research is a barrier usually discover that it’s actually a stepping stone: toward better decisions, internal alignment, and making choices with more confidence.
