Because our panel are real, human experts they are very flexible on what they can comment on.
They can in principle respond to any marketing question you choose to ask them or work you wish to show them. But the main intent of the service is to give you a simple check step on something you already developed.
Our primary purpose is to check collateral before you press “go”:
Using their wide experience, they will act as a proxy for your target market, viewing your (nearly?) finished marketing campaign, material or collateral as confirmation all is well before you commit the budget. Show them what your prospects will see, and ask “What do you think?”.
But because they are time-served marketers, the work doesn’t need to be finished, in fact, it’s probably a good idea to test early rough ideas before you spend too much money. Given our low costs, you can even test the first draft and go back to test the revised version! It will be a different panel but that also gives you even broader input.
You can apply this “check” step to almost any piece of marketing that can be viewed or read. Our only proviso is to recognize the panel has signed up to do a quick review of the material, so they can only be expected to read a short blog or review a single web page – to give you say a minute or so of reading time. Please bear that in mind. If you submit a “war and peace” item we may push back on you!
You can also test general thinking
There is a second potential application of SenseCheck, which is to get strategic input on your thinking. You could submit your headline marketing strategy, your positioning idea, or a question about say NPD. If you can summarise briefly in words what you plan to do and why, they will read that and give you their thoughts. A bit harder for them to give firm guidance from their arms-length perspective but for sure you will be reassured that your thinking passes the gut feel test with our experts. And maybe the questions they can come back to will provoke you to think further and avoid going in the wrong direction.
Let’s note that many of these people do provide strategic consultancy to their clients. They would ideally want to know far more about your business before giving you fully justified strategic advice. So, you need to take their gut feedback as exactly that. Useful but I am sure your panel would agree, it’s not a replacement for a consulting project…
Again, please be aware of the 1 minute (ish) guide. Try to get your thoughts or ideas down to less than a single written page. And make a proposal. Tell them what you plan to do so they can react. Don’t just ask an open question. Realistically we’re not here to do your thinking for you (sorry) we’re here for you to bounce your thinking off.
Reach out for more input
You are fully empowered (indeed, encouraged) to reach out to any advisor on your panel to ask further exploratory questions after their first response. They will welcome that. But be aware there is a limit to what they will do for free 😊 We hope Sensecheck opens some long-term business conversations.
If in any doubt email us, or simply send us your proposed test and we will come back to you on how to get the most out of it.
