You're in a marketing meeting. Someone says, 'Our customers want faster delivery.' Another person adds, 'People are looking for better pricing.' A third chimes in, 'The market needs more features.'
Ask where this information comes from, and you'll likely hear: 'It's what we think,' 'It's what makes sense,' or 'It's what competitors are doing.'
This is how most marketing decisions get made. On assumptions. On intuition. On what feels right. And it's why most marketing campaigns fail to connect with the people they're trying to reach.
What Evidence-Based Insights Actually Mean
Evidence-based marketing insights aren't survey responses or focus group answers. Those tell you what people think they think, which is often different from what they actually think and do.
Real evidence comes from observing actual behaviour. It's what customers say when they're not being asked. It's the language they use when describing problems to peers. It's the patterns that emerge when you analyse hundreds of conversations, not just a handful of responses.
When someone complains in a support ticket, that's evidence. When they ask questions in a community forum, that's evidence. When they leave reviews explaining why they switched from a competitor, that's evidence. These unprompted conversations reveal what actually matters, not what you think should matter.
Why Intuition Fails
Intuition works when you have deep, accurate knowledge of your market. Most marketers don't. They have assumptions based on limited experience, industry trends, or what worked for someone else in a different context.
Here's what happens when you rely on intuition: You build campaigns around problems customers aren't actually trying to solve. You use language that doesn't resonate because it's not how they describe their situation. You position against competitors in ways that don't matter to your specific audience.
Intuition also suffers from recency bias. The last thing you read or the most recent customer conversation dominates your thinking. Evidence, on the other hand, shows patterns across time and sources. It reveals what's consistently true, not what's temporarily interesting.
The Power of Pattern Recognition
One person saying something is an anecdote. Twenty people saying the same thing in similar language is a pattern. Patterns are what you build strategy around.
Evidence-based insights surface these patterns. They show you that when customers discuss your category, they consistently mention three specific frustrations. They reveal that the language they use to describe problems differs from the language you're using in your marketing. They identify the triggers that actually prompt people to start looking for solutions.
This pattern recognition is what separates effective marketing from guesswork. When you understand the patterns, you can craft messaging that aligns with how people actually think. When you don't, you're just hoping your assumptions match reality.
Where Evidence Comes From
The best evidence comes from places where people aren't being marketed to. They're just talking. About problems. About solutions. About what works and what doesn't.
Support conversations reveal what customers struggle with. Community discussions show how they describe problems to peers. Review sites expose what makes them switch or stay. Social media conversations capture their unfiltered thoughts about your category.
These sources contain thousands of data points. When you analyse them systematically, patterns emerge. You see recurring pain points. You identify common language. You discover what actually drives decisions, not what you assume drives them.
How Evidence Transforms Marketing
When you have evidence-based insights, everything changes. Your messaging uses customer language instead of marketing language. Your positioning addresses real problems instead of assumed ones. Your campaigns resonate because they reflect how people actually think.
For example, you might assume customers want 'streamlined workflows.' But evidence might show they actually say things like 'I'm tired of switching between ten different tools.' The second phrase converts better because it matches their internal dialogue. This is why evidence-based marketing consistently outperforms assumption-based approaches.
Evidence also helps you prioritise. Instead of guessing which features to highlight, you know which problems customers mention most frequently. Instead of assuming which channels to use, you understand where your audience actually spends time discussing these problems.
The Practical Challenge
Gathering evidence-based insights isn't complicated. It's time-consuming. You need to read through hundreds of conversations. You need to identify patterns. You need to extract the language people actually use. You need to organise this into actionable insights.
Most teams don't have the time or capacity to do this manually. So they skip it. They make decisions based on what they think they know, and they hope it works.
But the cost of skipping evidence gathering is high. You waste budget on campaigns that don't resonate. You build features customers don't care about. You use messaging that doesn't connect. All because you didn't take the time to understand what your audience actually needs.
Making Evidence Actionable
Raw evidence isn't useful until it's organised into insights. An insight is a validated finding with context. It's not just 'customers want faster delivery.' It's 'customers consistently mention delivery time as a frustration, using phrases like "waiting weeks" and "takes too long," and this appears in 40% of support conversations.'
This level of specificity makes insights actionable. You know exactly what language to use. You understand the emotional weight of the problem. You can prioritise based on frequency and impact.
Tools that help you systematically capture and analyse customer conversations can accelerate this process. They surface patterns you might miss. They extract language automatically. They organise insights in ways that make them easy to use in campaigns.
The Bottom Line
Evidence-based marketing insights aren't a nice-to-have. They're the foundation of marketing that actually works. When you understand what your audience actually thinks, feels, and needs, you can create campaigns that connect. When you rely on assumptions, you're just guessing.
The businesses with the most effective marketing aren't the ones with the biggest budgets or the most creative campaigns. They're the ones that understand their customers deeply enough to speak to them in ways that resonate. That understanding comes from evidence, not intuition.
If you're making marketing decisions based on what you think you know, it's time to start making them based on what you can prove. Evidence beats intuition every time. The question is whether you're willing to invest the time to gather it, or whether you'll keep hoping your assumptions are right.