[Andy]

I don’t have access to the McKinsey’s of the world, but am looking to do a bit of a deeper dive into my target audience. A lot of the time I’ll use Reddit to get an honest opinion about the products or companies I’m looking into, but it can be more surface level stuff and I’d like to dig deeper. What can I do besides doing something like Billy Eichner style interviews out on the street?

Discussion

[Mark]

If I’m under pressure, this is the tour I do:
– Reddit
– Quora
– Keyword research
– Loose searches of Twitter, Instagram, YouTube
– Consumer reviews
– Google Scholar
– Expert reviews
– Podcasts

A half-day or full day digging around all of that will help you get a structure of the world you’re working with as well as the attitudes and usage patterns of the people in that world.

Other existing sources:

– In-house research that is kept behind a silo
– Customer service logs
– Speaking with frontline people (eg sales people)

If you’re working with the same type of audience, then consider building a go-to panel of people (internal, external) that you can text, email, or phone with quick questions.

Also, if you set up 30-minute interviews with people in your company (as you aren’t in an agency), this will help you gather information and build bonds for the future. You could speak with 5 people every month, for example, with a simple discussion guide.

• This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by  Mark.

[Andy]

Thank you for this! super helpful.

[Dulce Maria]

To get statistics or more client-y data, I usually go through newspapers and magazines as well.

You can search The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the NYT, etc., with the subject you’re searching on.

I hope it’s useful?

[Andy]

Thanks Dulce, this is great. As long as they don’t have paywalls all over the site it’ll work great!

[Lyndsey]

Pocket can be helpful to circumvent the paywall.

[Jeff]

Great question, Andy, and awesome answers from Mark and Dulce. I’m trying to do the same thing so this was very helpful. Thank you!