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Turning Market Insights Into Strategy with Darshan Mehta

In September 2021, Darshan Mehta was interviewed by Raul Hernandez Ochoa on “#DoGoodWork,” a podcast meant to highlight diligent efforts to “achieve new levels of excellence” in one’s life.

In this episode, Mehta speaks about marketing strategies, branding, and gaining insight into trends. Such insight is highlighted in his new book “Getting to Aha! Today’s Insights Are Tomorrow’s Facts.” In addition, Mehta discusses strategies for paying attention to more significant needs, the best way to research and seek out answers when considering the “why” of the market: Why do people want what they want, and how can your business give it to them?

Mehta discusses the need to maintain what is human and emotional in the market and remain tenacious throughout the chaotic nature of market trends and worldly events.

In this episode, you will learn:

• About Darshan Mehta
• The best place to start is when figuring out what the market is looking for.
• Strategies for seeking market insights
• How to effectively interview people on a mass scale
• How to deal with trends as they continuously evolve.
• Factoring in what is human about market needs.

Raul – How do you deal with trends like to know? Is this just like a fad? Is it going to die in nine months? Or is it an actual trend that’s going to live on over a year, two years? Or it’s gonna happen? It could get bigger in the next 10 years?

Darshan Mehta – There’s always going to be things that actually influence brands and how people think anyways. There’s certain things you’re going to do, but there’s also societal trends that are happening that are beyond your control. For example, I think now, post-COVID, a lot of people are reevaluating how they spend their time doing various things. I think that focus of their time is very different than it was a year and a half, two years ago. Everybody’s saying “either in my personal or business life, I want to make every second or every minute count as some type of value.” That’s a big change. Now, that may change again later on, but that’s something that’s going to affect a lot of people. How that translates to brands is that I think more and more people are buying experiences, versus just products now- an experience, but also somehow help society be better. Is the product sustainable? Or eco-friendly? Or any of these things, in addition to providing a great experience, it’s more likely to be more successful…. There’s always a positive and negative. There’s always an opportunity and a cost. For example, COVID made tremendous destruction on many fronts, but at the same time has created a huge opportunity for tremendous reconstruction. I mean, people are more adaptive to change… So, I think you need to recognize that some of these things that are totally out of your control, they’re gonna happen no matter what, but recognize that there’s always opportunities in any given situation.

Raul – Let’s talk about scale… How can we, theoretically speaking, interview 1000 customers?

Darshan Mehta – Focus groups, I still argue that it’s best, anywhere from 10 to 15 people per group and I’ll tell you why. Because the whole point of a focus group is to actually dive deeper into a topic. What’s interesting is- imagine a cocktail party- you go there, you have a conversation with people,  but if you have like one or two people, it’s okay. But, if you get like three or four, they’re all focused on this topic. You’re all like, “Oh, that’s really cool, what you said.” So you’re you’re loving, it allows you to go deeper into the topic and you will feed off of each other. That’s what allows you to get into those kernels of thought that are really in your subconscious. Oftentimes you’re not really thinking about these things, but 95% of our actions are done by our subconscious. These are things that happen. We feel something, but we haven’t articulated that thought… That’s where the real value is. That’s where the insights are.

Additional topics discussed:

• Marrying internal insights with direct approaches with target audiences.
• Cost-effectiveness of large-scale market research.
• How to use the potential space that branding occupies in social consciousness.
• Identifying “Pain Points”.
• Accepting the polarity of worldly situations and understanding how to find opportunities.

Host / Podcast Bio: Raul Hernandez Ochoa works to help creative founders grow their business with his podcast #DoGoodWork. With a background in business strategy, development, and consulting, he strives to promote living that doing good work requires. He describes it as being “not perfect, but imperfect.” #DoGoodWork hosts guest speakers that represent the drive to be successful and serve as a platform for Raul to share his insights and experiences with entrepreneurship.

Guest Bio: Darshan Mehta is the CEO and founder of iResearch, an online focus group platform that enables companies to quickly and affordably extract insights from consumers worldwide. Drawing from more than 20 years of marketing strategy and research design experience, Mehta is authoring a book, “Getting to Aha! Today’s Insights Are Tomorrow’s Facts,” to help business leaders understand and leverage changing consumer preferences.

In addition to his role at iResearch, Mehta is an adjunct professor at universities in Thailand, Sweden, France, and the U.S. Through the course of his work, Mehta has traveled to more than 80 countries and been recognized in publications such as Forbes, Inc., the Journal of Advertising Research, and Quirk’s.

Resources and links mentioned in the show:

• linkedin.com/in/dogoodwork
• dogoodwork.io/work-with-raul
• dogoodwork.io/podcast
• iresearch.com/
• linkedin.com/in/darshan–mehta
• connectqik.com/