Identifying which channels drive trust and action for your audience, so marketing investment goes where it actually moves people, not just where it's always gone.
The company wanted to understand which channels their audience trusted most when discovering new solutions, with the goal of informing referral and affiliate strategy. The original question was too narrow for the decision being made.
Qualitative-first study to open the hypothesis space, then a quantitative follow-on to size and prioritize. Mid-study, I expanded scope from channel preference to referral feasibility, because early interviews made clear that structural barriers and incentive design mattered as much as channel trust.
You can't survey for what you don't know to ask. The qualitative phase was necessary because the hypothesis space was genuinely open. We didn't know whether channel mattered more than incentive structure, or whether feasibility barriers were even on the radar. Once the qual surfaced the real variables, the quantitative phase let us size findings and move from what matters to how much and for whom.
Peer recommendations emerged as the most trusted channel for discovery, now informing referral program design and partner strategy. The expanded framing produced insights that a simple channel ranking never would have surfaced.
Share findings in stages. The temptation to wait for the complete picture meant some teams didn't get early-stage findings that would have been immediately actionable.