The real value of self-service insights

We know what you’re thinking: Why self-serve insights when you’ve got a trusty analytics team, first-party data, consultancy hours, and supporting agencies on hand?

And yes, they’re all valuable sources of insights, but they share a problem that using a self-serve consumer research platform like GWI doesn’t: they eat up time. 

In contrast, having the right self-service platform at your fingertips can massively accelerate your “speed to insight”, delivering three big benefits that we’ll now explore.

1. Keep all your teams aligned with a primary source of truth

You don’t need a background in analytics to take advantage of what data can do for you.

With GWI, pretty much anyone in your organization can – and quite probably should – become an expert on your customers. Our intuitive, on-demand insights platform also means embedding audience data into your workflows, tools, and processes is easy thanks to our nifty API and other connections. 

What we’re really talking about here are the benefits of democratizing access to data across your organization. The right platform makes global data readily accessible and actionable for every one of your teams, which in turn drives better decision making.

From ready-made dashboards to downloadable reports, having the latest insights on tap helps align teams with what’s relevant to your customers right now. Access to fresh research also means you can snatch opportunities away from competitors by serving the right message, to the right customers, at the right time. 

2. Make decisions faster 

The post-pandemic business landscape continues to shift rapidly. As data analysts come under more pressure to deliver insights for multiple projects at once, bottlenecking is an increasingly common problem that can delay decision-making. You might even find that consumer behavior has changed while you were waiting.

The point is, speed to insight matters. Like early mammals running rings around lumbering dinosaurs, the more agile a business is, the faster it can react to changes in the market, optimize campaigns, and build strategies based on the freshest insights – all of which turns data into action.

With on-demand audience data, you can dive in and grab the answers you need to get decisions over the line at a speed that suits you. It’s also a neat way to support your agency and data teams, giving them back valuable time to focus on more pressing tasks, which in turn can drive productivity and revenue.

3. Check your persona assumptions at the door

Are you 100% sure your customer personas are still 100% accurate? 

An obvious example is the cost of living crisis and how it continues to impact the world of retail as people cut back spending in the face of rising inflation. 

And even if you do somehow manage to bottom-out their current thinking, what’s true of your customers today may not be true tomorrow. As our data repeatedly shows, change is the only constant:

• Over a quarter of US Gen Z say they often make impulse purchases, up 14% YoY
• The number of luxury fashion buyers who say standing out in a crowd is important is down 19% in South East Asia
• For US baby boomers, “finding inspiration for purchases” as a reason for using social media has risen from 9th to 5th place since mid 2021

The point is, changes like these have the potential to impact any number of sectors, from travel and automotive, to luxury, and consumer tech. 

The solution? Relevant, granular insights that can complement your first-party data, something that’s particularly important if you’re a DTC business.

Easy access to always-on insights means you can quickly see where consumers are spending their hard-earned money, then tap into these revenue streams while they’re still hot. 

Similarly, visibility of the emerging trends shaping consumer behavior – on both a global and a local scale – means you can monitor audiences across markets, compare your assumptions against the latest data, and adjust your corporate personas accordingly. 

What’s not to like?