Management executives are more likely to view market research as an important investment rather than a marketing expense if it’s developed to serve as a cross-functional business intelligence tool.  How often do representatives from your organization’s key business functions – sales, business development, product development, account or program management – convene to talk about what they do and don’t know about the market, customers, key prospects, competitors, product or service performance, and other critical business issues?

Market research projects create a reason – a platform – for doing just that.  The most successful clients with whom we’ve worked involve cross-functional representatives in the upfront discussions and formation of research projects.  They also involve Market Connections in many of these early discussions.  And, frankly, it’s sometimes astounding to witness how unconnected the dots are around some very key issues.

While one research project can’t address every data gap in an organization, it can certainly be developed and executed to deliver insights that can enable performance improvements in more than just one area of operations.  And, in addition to sometimes revealing a critical need for business intelligence outside the scope of the research project at hand, this collaborative approach can result in quick and easy fixes to information needs or brewing problems that the whole group didn’t previously know even existed. 

It’s very helpful to engage your research provider upfront, since they’ll be charged with designing a research program that meets multi-purpose objectives and extending the analysis and data insights to numerous operational areas.  A strong research partner can also help structure and focus the internal collaborative sessions to maximize their outcomes.

Certainly, facilitating a holistic approach to market research development is more work for the project owner and may even add time to the project schedule.  But, the broader performance improvements that it enables will translate into a much more powerful return on your research and marketing investments.
 

 

As it becomes increasingly difficult to generate acceptable participation rates with online surveys and focus groups, panels are gaining widespread popularity.  Online panels are pre-screened and selected communities of people that have applied to take surveys on an ongoing basis in return for some form of compensation.
Many large companies, such as Microsoft and Disney, build and maintain their own custom online panels of pre-qualified research participants.  Other companies and private research firms turn to one of a wide range of vendors that market online panels.  Some offer access to consumer panels, while others offer business-to-business panels for targeting IT and other professionals, including CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, managers, directors, and other business decision makers.  Many providers offer both consumer and business panels.

Accessing your online research audience via pre-selected panels offers a few significant advantages:

•    Detailed population data:  Reputable panel providers usually have fairly detailed and sophisticated data on a very large community of members.  This enables researchers to refine their list selects down to a “needle in the haystack” level yet still maintain an acceptable sample size.  

•    Higher response rates:  Because panel members opt in as willing participants, researchers can successfully survey an audience that would otherwise be very difficult or even impossible to access and recruit via rented email lists.  For example, IT panels are in very high demand, as these titles can be challenging to reach via traditional research recruitment methods.

•    Significantly faster turnaround:  Because they eliminate the time typically required for e-mail list research as well as participant recruitment and qualification, panels enable researchers to accelerate their research project schedules.   

Researchers find panels particularly useful when pre-testing a desired audience will help determine the feasibility of and a more accurate cost estimate for a proposed study.  For example, a government agency wanted to gather some specific data from international travelers. Once the researchers had identified an appropriate panel provider, they first surveyed a targeted segment of the panel to learn how many had traveled overseas in the last six months, if they’d be willing to answer specific questions related to those trips, when they’d be traveling overseas again, and so forth.  This inexpensive pre-testing helped the agency determine the study was a viable option for them.

Because incentives play a very important role in panel research, Market Connections has used pre-testing to determine the minimum incentive value required to maximize participation.  We recently presented three incentive values to three different groups within a study’s targeted sample and learned that the highest value wouldn’t necessarily yield a higher response rate.  This helped us better manage the client’s research budget as well as avoid the recruitment delays that can result from incentives that aren’t high enough.

Of course, before proceeding with a panel audience, first weigh the pros and cons of online research in general to determine if it’s a suitable method for your project.  For many studies, telephone surveys are still a more effective methodology.  If online research via a panel audience is indeed appropriate, it’s important to carefully qualify the best panel vendor based on your specific targeted sample, the integrity and rigidity of their recruitment/ opt-in processes, how effectively they build and maintain their database, their reputation, and so forth.

Have an experienced research partner at your side to help with these assessments and decisions as well as to develop the questionnaire, manage the process, and analyze the results.  Remember – good panel providers offer fast and precise audience access, not necessarily full research expertise.