Spotlight Monthly marketing retainer · customer research
1,684 emails sent. 214 responses. Enough customer context to rebuild the marketing.
VTO had exceptional word of mouth but was marketing on assumptions. We ran a real customer survey inside their own Odoo, then mined the open-text answers into a voice-of-customer keyword map and a channel-by-channel media plan.
VTO Wheels, a vintage and classic car wheel manufacturer.
214 responses, mined into a voice-of-customer keyword map and an evidence-ranked media plan now steering VTO's SEO, copy, and channel spend.
The problem
VTO has one of the strongest referral engines you will see, but it was marketing on guesses. There was no first-party data on how customers actually discover the brand, what they almost bought instead, or the exact words they type into Google. And because roughly three quarters of customers buy wheels only once, growth depends almost entirely on reaching new people. Guessing at that is expensive.
- No hard data on how buyers really find VTO, only anecdotes.
- No record of the competitors customers weighed, or why they switched.
- No map of the language customers use to search, so SEO and copy were assumptions.
What we did
A real survey, in their own Odoo
Built and ran a 19-question survey on VTO's own site using native Odoo Surveys, with a free t-shirt incentive to drive volume. Emailed to 1,684 customers, it pulled 214 responses, a strong rate from an engaged, hard-to-reach audience of classic-car owners.
Mined the words, not just the checkboxes
The signal was in the open text. We hand-read and coded 169 discovery stories and 205 competitor answers, because nobody writes three sentences in a survey unless they have something to say.
Turned language into a keyword map
Extracted the exact phrases customers use, from the styles they search for to the rare fitments they need to hundreds of car-and-model long-tails, into a voice-of-customer keyword doc that now feeds SEO targets and product copy.
Ranked every channel by evidence
Counted real customer mentions of every forum, magazine, event, and creator, then turned that into a channel plan: where to spend, where to invest time, and where to spend nothing.
In the customers' own words
"The option to specify the wheel offsets was a game changer."
"Looked at several brands, but VTO were a better price for the looks and quality."
"Real people to talk to, and you answer the phone."
What the survey produced
Not a report that sits in a drawer. It became four working assets, each already steering a decision.
1. A clear read on brand sentiment
The numbers confirmed what the referral engine implied: quality is the brand, and it is the flywheel behind everything else. Service, not price, is the emotional differentiator. Price is a value story, not a weakness.
rated quality the best they had seen, the highest score by far
had already referred VTO to someone else
own multiple classic cars, a fleet, not a one-time buyer
These respondents are VTO's most engaged customers, so satisfaction skews positive versus the full base. We read them as directional strength, not a census.
2. A content pipeline, ready to write
The open text handed us specific, high-intent pieces to build, in the customer's own language:
- A comparison page targeting the alternative customers weigh most before choosing VTO, the single highest-ROI page on the roadmap.
- Style-search SEO pages built on the terms customers actually type, rather than a brand name they do not know yet.
- Fitment guides that lean on VTO's real moat: the rare sizes and custom fitments where it is often the only option.
3. Audiences and channels to act on
Segments to work now
- A ready-made list of the most engaged customers for a dedicated email track.
- The multi-car collectors, VTO's highest-value tier.
- A standout community advocate already driving discovery, a relationship worth formalizing.
Channels ranked by real mentions
- Spend: the print titles and forums customers actually named.
- Invest time: the communities where being helpful beats advertising.
- Skip: the platforms this audience simply is not on.
The whole survey in one sentence
"When no one else makes a wheel that fits your car, the right bolt pattern, the right offset, the right look, VTO does."
The survey is closed and fully analyzed. Its language now shapes VTO's SEO targets, product copy, and channel spend, and it is the research method we run for other 19 Prince clients.
Marketing on guesses?
We run the research inside your own Odoo and turn what customers actually say into a plan you can act on.
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