During the June 23, AMA MRC TweetOff session with myself, Jeffrey Henning (@JHenning), and Cathy Harrison (@VirtualMR), one topic we debated was the role of anonymity in customer satisfaction surveys.

Cathy’s point, “Customer satisfaction surveys are for measuring, not intervening.”

And Jeffrey’s, “Follow up with every dissatisfied customer who takes a survey.”

To be frank, my opinion on this topic has changed in just the past year or two. Before then, I was an ardent believer that all research must by anonymous—no matter what. I felt that any direct follow-up would show research participants that their survey responses could result in unexpected communications—and even if “helpful”, this experience could still impact future willingness to participate in research.

But in the past couple of years, two things have happened:

• First, I have been working with many clients who need to show that market research is not an academic exercise. Who need to demonstrate that research can directly, immediately, have positive outcomes. Many client-side market researchers have to negotiate for budget with non-researchers, who often view such studies as nice, but not necessarily actionable. Imposing anonymity on customer feedback reduces the research’s potential for clear, measurable usefulness.
• Second, I have seen raw data from several studies where it was obvious that participants expected follow-up. Indeed, anyone who has done a customer satisfaction survey knows that open-ended questions will often return entries such as, “The last software upgrade didn’t work—can you please fix it?” or “I have called your customer service number twice and can’t reach a live human being!”  You can bet that if they take the time to type that into a survey and you don’t follow-up, the damage will be irreparable.

Anonymity in Market Research

Yes, most surveys should be anonymous. But customer satisfaction surveys are an exception. Make it clear at the beginning or end of the survey that respondents can opt out (or opt in, if you prefer) of follow-up. Provide a phone number, web site or email address that can be used for any questions about how responses will be used.  The reality is that most customers expect follow-up.

What do you think? Do you agree? Have a different perspective? Please add your comment here or call the blog comments line at 508.691.6004 ext 702.

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Given a choice between funding 1 big market research project each year versus a bunch of small ones, I usually prefer the small ones.

Why?

Because big projects are risky, slow and yield too much data for anyone to digest. Most of the data gets used ineffectively, if at all.

Small projects have less risk. They get done quickly. Results get shared while they are still fresh. And conclusions can be communicated within the attention span of a busy recipient, so they actually get used.

In market research, small can be beautiful.

What do you think? Do you agree? Have a different perspective? Please add your comment here or call the blog comments line at 508.691.6004 ext 702.

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What is the biggest problem facing market researchers today?

• Sample quality? Hmmm…. a huge problem, but no.
• Inappropriate use of methodologies? Always a challenge, but no.
• Poor survey design? Another good one, but I think it’s part of a bigger issue.
• Over-hyping of social media-based methods? A definite issue, but not the biggest.

The biggest problem we have is that too much research gets ignored. Too many studies lose momentum. Too many important findings get disregarded.  Even if end-clients sit politely in a final presentation, not enough of them use the research to make real decisions and take real actions.  And that’s a problem because it leads to negative perceptions of research itself.  Too many people perceive research as academic or theoretical; they don’t see it as something that truly can impact business success. Indeed, many non-researchers see market research as having a poor ROI.

If we want people to really use research, it needs to be more credible to them. And that means 3 things:

1. Let them see it, so they can believe it. When end clients are removed from the process, they are less likely to believe the findings. Especially any that contradict their personal opinions.  Jon Last, former MRA president and president of Sports and Leisure Research Group., talks about data proximity. He’s right. http://www.researchrockstar.com/why-internal-clients-ignore-market-research-results/
2. Let them have a say in it’s design and execution. Involve them in the process, start to finish. And I mean real involvement. Cross-functional teams sounds like a nice way of keeping people involved, and can work in some company cultures. But in reality? In most cases I have seen, the team members from outside the research function have neither real responsibility nor authority; they come to the meetings as clients or even just semi-interested observers. Research isn’t in their job description, its not what they get evaluated on, and they are easily intimidated by the “experts.”
3. Train them. Market research isn’t a secret society. A lot of the stuff we do is teachable. A little education will overcome many of the poor assumptions that lead to perceived credibility issues.

So here’s the point: to really address these three items, we need to re-think what market research functions should be centralized versus decentralized.

My proposal is that for many (not all) organizations, decentralizing market research can address these 3 items very well. Let different functional areas have their own mini-market research teams. Better still, have some  people in existing functional areas take on some market research responsibility for their groups; they will have a unique blend of expertise areas, which will help ensure actionability.

Objection: Research takes too much Skill, You can’t just Train People

My, what egos we researchers have! Do we really think that all market research projects are so hard, that other business professionals couldn’t possibly learn how to manage them?

In my 25 years’ of market research experience, I have seen that at least 70% of market research projects are pretty simple. They don’t require multivariate analysis. They don’t require lengthy questionnaires. They don’t require complex skipping or branching programming. Many don’t even require weighting.

Of course, 100% of research projects do require certain quality standards. Length. Objectivity. Scale choices. Knowledge of basic statistics.  All of which are teachable to any reasonably motivated professional.

One Vision For The Future of Market Research Departments

A centralized research function will remain an important resource, and support the decentralized teams.  In this scenario, the centralized research function of the future will focus on four functions:

1. Policy creation and enforcement. For example, how many times a year customers can be invited to research events, and what types of incentives are permissible. Heck, you can even have a policy that says, “Any questionnaires over 20 items long must be approved by (name of the organization’s market research director).” This is something, BTW, that many market research groups never have enough time to do!  If they can delegate some of the smaller projects, perhaps they will have more time for this type of important, strategic role.
2. Resources. Centralized access to research tools, secondary reports, in-house research results, standardized questionnaire templates, sample sources, in-house panels and communities.
3. Sophisticated studies and Trackers. Management of high-end, organization-wide studies (those requiring advanced analytics and longitudinal tracking)
4. Training. For example, either producing directly, or through partners, ongoing training, which will include “Market Research 101” as well as functional area specific content (such as “Product concept testing” for product development groups, and “Message testing” for marketing teams).

In this scenario, the decentralized functions will be specialists that serve the unique research needs of specific areas. They will have day-to-day relationships with the people who will be using the research. They will speak their language, and make research accessible and credible to them.  They will have the skills to do basic research, and have access to experts as needed.

Bottom Line: Improving Market Research ROI

A decentralization approach has the potential to boost research credibility AND also address the issue of rogue, unsanctioned, DIY research.  We all know there are plenty of bad questionnaires going out these days (though many come from “professionals,” too).  Clearly, more non-researchers WANT to do research. They want fresh insights. They want involvement in the process. So let them! With some intelligent policies, access to resources, and training, we can have the best of both worlds: quality research and greater research ROI.

Now what? I say: test it. Pick a functional area to test this with, preferably one where you know there is some rogue research going on anyway. You can take advantage of the existing interest to build a satellite research team.  Provide some training and policies, and give them some time. See how they do.  Do their projects go well? Do they have impact? Is the ROI good? Are the internal clients satisfied?  You just may be surprised.

As always, all comments welcome!

Note: This blog post was inspired by the Tweetoff held at the AMA’s virtual market research conference on June 24th. Thanks to @JHenning and @VirtualMR for a GREAT event! You guys are fun to debate with!

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If your company invests in market research that generates fresh customer insights, should you hold it tightly, or should you share it?

There are some obvious cases where you hold it tightly. Data that is specific to proprietary product ideas is a good example.  But other cases aren’t so clear-cut.

When in doubt, share it. At least some of it.

A Tale of Lost Market Research Opportunity

A few years ago, I worked with a technology company on a large survey project. Very fresh stuff.  They discovered customer needs and values that could be leveraged in totally original marketing messages. They identified unmet customer needs that could be addressed simply by repackaging existing products.  In short: we had lots of cool data on our hands.

Enthusiastic about the research’s findings, a VP at the company invited me to a meeting with one of their largest distribution partners—a huge, well-known company. He asked me to share a subset of the data with them. At the meeting, the distribution partner had 12 attendees—all people who have direct influence over their business relationships. I presented some key findings. They loved it. They even offered to reciprocate by sharing some new research they had done. We started to talk about the results, generating ideas about possible implications for business opportunities and product innovations. We planned next steps.

It was great. There was real energy.

The next day, I got an email from my client. He had returned to his office to have his hands severely slapped for sharing research results. And not too long after that, this clear-thinking, collaboration-minded VP left that company. I wasn’t surprised. I would have, too.

The Greatest Market Research Risk?

Yes, market research can yield a competitive advantage. And it costs a lot of money. So I understand the inclination to keep it secret and for inside-eyes-only.  But really, in most cases, what is the risk? The biggest risk is that you share the data with someone and they give it to a competitor. How likely is that, really? It’s a lot more likely that you will give them data, and they will ignore it.

But if you did share fresh market insights with another organization and as a result created new opportunities, wouldn’t that be great? Isn’t that a risk worth taking?

If research results can help business partners, inspire clients, encourage employees or motivate suppliers, I encourage you to consider it.

The potential upside is fantastic. And few companies are bold enough to do it.

[What do you think? I welcome comments here or contact me by email: KKorostoff@ResearchRockstar.com]

When conducting survey projects, should you survey your own customer base (people who actually by from your company), or non-customers? Or both?

After all, you may very well have a list of customers that would be convenient for you to use for your survey project. But is that a wise choice? Maybe, maybe not.

In the quest for objectivity, we often do research with a mix of customer and non-customers. At the end of the project, we compare their responses to answer questions like:

• Do our current customers perceive our brand differently than do non-customers?
• Do our current customers value our product category differently than non-customers?
• Do the two groups differ in terms of feature requirements? Price sensitivity? Other purchase behavior?

Clearly, there is a lot of value in surveying both current customers and “potential” customers.  But realistically, it can be a lot easier and faster to survey current customers. After all, you may have their contact information so emailing them a survey invitation is a snap. They know who you are, and may even like you enough to want to help out by sharing their opinions—so response rates are good. And you know they are real—no worries about the veracity of responses.

In contrast, getting access to non-customers can be expensive, time-consuming, and risky. Sure you can buy sample from a panel provider, or seek other options (partnerships with professional associations, user groups, etc that may meet your needs). But how much will it cost? How long to arrange it? What kind of response rate will you get? How are those respondents authenticated?

So, what’s a time-constrained, budget-sensitive researcher to do?

In an ideal worked, you would examine your research objective, and then decide if it is best met by surveying current customers only, or a mix. For example, if your objective is to choose which features need to be in the next release of a software product, you may very well want both groups. Current customers, to keep them happy and maximize their likelihood to upgrade to the new release when it is available. New customers, in hopes of attracting them to the product for the first time.

But if time or budget doesn’t allow reaching non-customers?

Then you need to ask yourself two questions:

1. Are my customers an acceptable proxy for non-customers? Do I know enough about both groups to understand how different they are—to have an informed opinion of the likelihood that they have similar attitudes and behaviors relevant to the study I am planning? The answers will tell you how much of a risk you are taking, so you can deliver the research with appropriate caveats for anyone who will use it.
2. Is there an acceptable fallback? Even 10 interviews with non-customers is better than nothing. Or perhaps an outside expert with relevant experience is available (try Zintro or GLG for quick access to expert networks) for an objective sanity check.

Customer insights gathered through research deliver great value. But we always need to think about what we really mean by “customer”—current customers, or potential ones? Even if time or financial constraints prohibit you from conducting research with the ideal mix, take the time to understand the risks or consider fallback options.

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Some of our online market research classes have been updated, and we need feedback!  We’ll be testing the content by offering in-person seminars in Massachusetts. So here’s the deal: attend a free market research seminar, and all we ask in return is that you provide feedback.

The following topics are being scheduled:

• Introduction to Market Research Project Types & Methods (2 hours)
• Introduction to Market Research Project Management (2 hours)
• Product Concept Testing (1.5 hours)
• Designing Online Questionnaires (2 hours)
• Divide & Conquer: Introduction to Market Segmentation (1.5 hours)
• Creating Your Market Research Strategic Plan (1.5 hours)

Interested? Fill out this short form and you’ll get date and location information:  Seminars.  As soon as details are confirmed, you’ll get an invitation.

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Well, “abuse” may be a little strong…but market research results certainly do get misused. Sometime intentionally; twisting results to confirm existing opinions, or ignoring results perceived to be inconvenient. In other cases, the misuse is accidental—issues such as poorly labeled charts or unclear methodology documentation can easily lead to erroneous conclusions.

Unintentional misuse of market research is best avoided through effective quality assurance processes and well-documented (and communicated) methodologies.  Making sure report readers understand what types of conclusions are appropriate to draw from a research effort, and making sure results are reported in a precise fashion, are both key parts of managing any market research project.

The harder challenge is preventing intentional misuse.

This is truly one of the biggest challenges for market research managers—preventing clients (internal or external ones) from purposefully manipulating results for self-serving purposes. But wait, is it the market research manager’s job to keep clients honest? Yes, at minimum, to point out inappropriate use.

What’s a market research project manager to do? Here are 2 tips to prevent market research abuse:

1. Find an executive advocate for the research. Having someone from outside the research function endorse the research does two powerful things. First, it sends a message that the research has value. After all, if an executive is taking the time to digest the results and be vocal about how they plan to use it, it must be important. Second, if the executive is associated with key conclusions from the research, it becomes harder for others to manipulate the results. It doesn’t prohibit the possibility of a constructive debate about how to interpret key findings—which is always to be encouraged. It just minimizes the risk that someone will hijack the project and make inappropriately self-serving conclusions from the data.
2. Include others in the analysis process. If you know the research is at risk of being abused, make a preemptive move by inviting a team of people to participate in the analysis process. If it’s a quantitative research project, host a meeting where you share a selection of key charts and facilitate an open discussion about their implications. If it’s a qualitative study, you can invite a group to view some video highlights or to receive a preview of selected verbatim quotes; again, to facilitate a group discussion. Including 4 to 8 people in an open discussion about research results and what they mean for the organization is a great way to keep everyone honest—and has the added benefit of promoting the research.

What do you think? Do you agree? Have a different perspective? Please add your comment here, or call the blog comments line at 508.691.6004 ext 703. Thanks!

The difference between good market research and great market research can be significant.

But sometimes the incremental time, cost and sweat of that extra effort simply doesn’t make sense. Sometimes, “good” is just perfect.

I was reminded of this last week at the Launch Camp conference in Cambridge. The event, for entrepreneurs seeking social media wisdom, had some interesting speakers; the one from whom I learned the most was Dharmesh Shah, Chief Technology Officer and Founder of HubSpot (on Twitter as @Dharmesh).

In three years, this company has gone from start-up to 2,000+ customers, most of whom pay a monthly fee. Dharmesh shared his start-up success insights at Launch Camp and advised the attending entrepreneurs to focus on practical marketing. Selling stuff. Tracking key metrics to understand what sells stuff. And in his case, this clearly works.

He observes that many entrepreneurs get bogged down by over-analyzing their decisions—ultimately missing their window of opportunity. Key areas for such analysis paralysis? Product optimization and pricing.

ACK! Product concept testing and pricing research are two key pillars of market research practices around the world! But of course, he is correct. Especially in the context of new or rapidly evolving product categories.

Product Concept Testing

Market research offers proven methods for testing new product concepts—methods that can prioritize features or optimize feature-price combinations. And that’s great.

But I have seen companies completely miss windows of opportunity because they kept adding on less-than-critical features before they would launch. Kept conducting more and more research to inform (or justify) their decisions. Their leaders traded early market feedback for an over-engineered product. Dharmesh chastised this approach and emphasized that while market research is useful, at some point you need actual market feedback in order to inform further improvements. The ultimate feedback: will people buy it? If they buy it, will they return it?

Of course, these days, there are ways to simulate actual product releases to do this—although that is not a realistic option for all categories.

Pricing Research

Look, if you are talking about mature consumer product categories (like toothpaste and laundry detergent), pricing research is a very defined, concrete sort of practice. But in many B2B markets, emerging markets, and new product categories, it simply isn’t perfect. Yes, do some research. Do some primary research, analyze competitive/substitute pricing, understand your target market’s overall budget, know your expected ROI. But at some point you have to take a leap with pricing. And as Dharmesh said, despite long-held tenets to the contrary, you CAN adjust your pricing down the road.

Imperfect Data is Better Than No Data

Yes, it is true—imperfect data is better than no data. And sometimes, directional data sooner is better than quantitative data later.  In any case, knowing when to stop conducting market research in order to price and release new products can be tricky. Luckily for busy professionals seeking to inform product and pricing decisions, there are many options along the continuums of research speed and exactitude.

BTW, Dharmesh has a book out—I ordered my copy and can’t wait to read it: Inbound Marketing.

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Don’t let employees bias customer feedback results. Or worse, don’t let high-score-seeking employees bully customers into giving them inflated scores.

If you allow employees to invite customers to take customer satisfaction feedback surveys, make sure they aren’t saying things like, “The highest score is a 10. I hope I earned a 10!” You have probably experienced this yourself, perhaps at an auto dealership or retail chain. Upon completion of your transaction, the clerk give you the feedback survey instructions (perhaps advising of a phone call you will receive, or giving you a URL to use), and then says something like, “I’m hoping you rate me as “extremely helpful.”

Obviously, such behavior not only taints the data, it can also make customers uncomfortable.

So how can you determine if your customer feedback system is being abused? Here are three easy options:

• Simple analysis. For example, if you are in retail you may be able to run the statistics on individual sales people or customer service reps to see if their scores appear artificially high or simply too consistent.
• Get outside help.  Deploy some mystery shoppers on a discovery mission. What do they experience?
• Ask. In the feedback survey itself, ask respondents if anyone told them how to respond or suggested a desirable feedback score.

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Peter Shankman advocated for market research today. I was there. Not 10 feet away from him when he did it.

It’s great to hear a social media authority praise—even promote—the benefit of asking customers’ about their views. In this case, Peter was making the excellent point that companies need to ask customers how they want their information delivered. At today’s presentation in downtown Boston, Peter specifically advised the business folks in attendance to take the time to ask their audiences (clients, prospects, donors, whatever) how they want to receive information. He points to the fact that the way information is delivered these days is extremely fragmented. Nobody can afford to simply guess how their audience wants to get information.  He points out that simply taking the time to ask people how they want information delivered can save huge amounts of money.

Now granted, he didn’t go beyond that to advise the best ways…or potential challenges…of asking people how they want to receive information. But as someone who has done actual primary research on this for many business clients over the years, I can tack on two bits of advice.

Self-reporting can be way off, so augment with actual behavioral data. If you simply give people a list of information sources (newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc) and ask them which are their preferred ones, you will get a very particular picture. If you ask the same people which ones they have used in the past 48 hours, you will get a very different picture. Why? People don’t always like to admit—either to themselves or others—how few sources they use. Consider my Aunt Sally. If you asked Aunt Sally how she gets news, she would emphatically tell you that she reads The New York Times, The Economist, and watches the evening news. Well, what she really means is that she wishes she did, but in reality, most of her news comes from the radio and her Yahoo home page.

Sure, it’s still good to ask people what they want. But balance that with some actual behavioral data as well. What have you read in the past 24 hours? What websites have you visited today? Nice, concrete questions.

Understand the behaviors associated with different information sources. This can be very enlightening. For example, let’s say IT buyer Jack works for a large retail chain. He gets information about IT companies from trade magazines, business magazines, and CNET. But what does he do with the information?  Maybe with the trade magazines he tends to rip out anything of interest and throw the rest into recycling. Business magazines? Perhaps he occasionally forwards an issue to a colleague, but less than once out of every 4 issues. CNET? Turns out he loves the email feature (email a story to a friend), and forwards at least 3 CNET articles a week to his peers—internal and external. So if I wanted to get on Jack’s radar screen and optimize the chance of him sharing info, I now know what to do.

How about you?

So do you know what information sources your target clients actually use? Trust? Share? The topic of information sources is actually pretty complex, and there are lots of other cool research tricks that can be used to understand behaviors. But as Peter Shankman said today, simply finding out what sources people use is a huge step towards optimizing a communications strategy.

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This is my response to a well-meaning but misinformed article published in Forrester’s Groundswell blog. I address the 2 most obvious factual errors below.

*****

Yes, online research communities have their place.  I ardently believe that there are many organizations that can benefit from structured online communities (MROCs or ORCs, as many now call them), or even just well-run, online customer advisory boards (link). In fact, there are some markets for which I think online communities can be one of the best ways of getting honest, objective customer insights. But let’s not oversell it; if we do, we’ll only cause a lot of heartache (and wasted research dollars).

So, please, some reality checks:

“And if you worry about whether these collections of consumers function like real communities on the Internet, you shouldn’t.”  Well, I think what the author meant is that “some of them do.” But nobody thinking about funding (and we are talking about significant funding here) an online research community should assume they are guaranteed to have the same experience. Few communities have the defining bond that cancer patients have (the example cited in the Forrester blog).  Some organizations simply don’t have customer bases so eager to connect with peers for experience sharing, support, etc.  Some do—there are some brands that have very passionate customers (Apple comes to mind). So be real: does your organization have a customer base that will be self-motivated to participate? Does your product category engender “team spirit”? If so, great; online communities may be realistic for you.

The statement, “But research communities can do things no other form of research can do. You can ask follow-up questions to get clarification or more detail. You can look at the profiles of members, to put their questions in context”, is factually  incorrect. You can do that with most types of research. Doing focus groups or interviews? You can easily ask for more context or follow-up clarifications, and do so with the benefit of reading body language (follow-up is also feasible for surveys, though the response is generally not real-time). Any half-decent researcher knows to gather contextual information (either for focus groups, interviews or survey projects), and in many cases the screening process uses techniques to ensure this context is valid.  Doing online research? There are most certainly tools available that allow you to do real-time probing; two that come readily to mind are Invoke Solutions and iModerate.  Yes, online communities can do these things too—but to say “no other form of research can” is simply untrue.

Online Research Communities have a place. But whenever we gather customer insights, or insights from the broader market, we always need to first ask, “What are the objectives? What do we want to learn? What will we do with this data?”  The answers to those questions will drive the key decision about best methodology. Should the research be “blind” (the sponsor kept anonymous to avoid bias)? Should it be quantitative? Is directional insight sufficient? Should it be done in one country or many? Should it include our customers and/or competitors’ customers? Only then can you pick which tools, or combination, will be the best choice for your market research dollars.

For more reading about online research communities and their use I recommend these articles:

MROC talk blog: LINK

From Research Live and well-regarded market research thinker Tom Ewing: LINK

From Vovici, a balanced review of one happy online community client’s experience (ABC Studios): LINK

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Managing in-house market research is tough work. And your internal clients don’t make it easy, do they?

Your internal clients say they want powerful, fresh, objective customer insights. But too often, their behavior shows that they just want you to confirm their personal views.

Your internal clients are enthusiastic at project kick-off. But by the time data is delivered—even just a few weeks later in some cases—they seem to have lost interest.

They say they want current customer data to fuel an important decision. But then tell you that decision needs to be made next week.

They fund an important, time-sensitive research study, but neglect to tell you that they will be on vacation during the design phase. Oh, and that they want final approval on any instruments.

Sound familiar? I bet it does. You have a tough job.

If it helps, you are not alone. I work with lots of people who face these challenges daily. So we work on educating internal clients, establishing sensible (not onerous) customer research policies, and taking other actions to improve how market research is designed, managed and shared.  In some cases, some pretty dramatic changes are required. In others, just some minor tweaks.

Even a few small changes can make your tough job a little bit easier.

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A tricky part of successfully delivering client insight data is knowing how much data your audience wants.  So, be honest with yourself:  how well do you know your colleagues’ or clients’ data appetites?

Do your clients (whether internal or external) prefer 6 small “meals” a year? Or 2 giant ones?

Do they like a 4-course meal spread over hours, or everything stuffed onto one overflowing plate to be consumed in 20 minutes?

The frequency and size of meals varies dramatically country-to-country—as anyone who travels internationally knows.

And companies’ tastes for data vary as well.

I have worked with organizations where internal clients simply have no appetite for mega-studies. They simply can’t—or won’t—tolerate them. Fine; in those cases we just have to get a little creative and break their research (either how it is conducted or how it is delivered) into more bite-sized pieces.

I have also worked with organizations where the internal audience thrives on data. Where, in fact, the more elaborate and sizable the research, the more they respect it.

So what type of appetite do your clients have? Do they like to graze or gorge? Do they like to eat fast or take their time? And what does it mean for how you share customer insights and other data with them?

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I hate when I go to museums where other patrons crowd too close to the paintings. Don’t they know that you sometimes need a little distance to really see the art? Or that they are preventing others from viewing the painting from an appropriate distance? Very annoying.

This is especially true for art created using pointillism. I can stare at a pointillist piece for 20 minutes, easy. I can appreciate the technique—the way one group of simple dots can create a totally different dimensional feel than another equally labor-intensive group of dots.

Same with customer data. You may have collected thousands of data points. You savor them for a time (I know I do!), and that’s fine. But then it’s time to step back, and take it all in…unless something blocks you. It may even be that you have colleagues who are so hung up on examining the little dots up close, that you get stuck too.

Be bold. Break away from the crowd. Step back.

Read a book, and then come back to the data. Or take a walk. View a webinar on an unrelated topic. Read a favorite magazine. Anything to break the trance.

Those of us who spend a lot of time analyzing data know that too much time is wasted by being hung up on the small points. Then we risk running out of time for the creative thinking necessary to distill out the big “so what” findings.

With pointillism, the mind blends individual paint dots into a single image. With market research data, we have to let the data “dots” become our masterpiece of synthesis.

Are you too close to your data? So close that all you see is the thousands of little data points? What can you do to get the distance you need to really see the whole picture?

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Are you bringing more market research in-house? Relying less on outside market research agencies? That can be a perfectly reasonable choice—for many reasons. But before you cut yourself off from your research agency partners, be sure to have some realistic estimates for the time it will take you to do these tasks in-house.

The biggest miscalculation people make when bringing research in-house is underestimating how much staff time it takes to analyze and report research results.  Even for a simple quantitative project—one without any multivariate analysis or modeling—you can easily spend 20-40 hours doing the data analysis, quality checks, creating visual displays, and preparing deliverables. And again, that’s a low time estimate.

Even if you have great people on staff with the right skills to do the analysis and reporting, you will be setting them up for failure by underestimating the time they need for such tasks. And we all know the brutal truth about primary market research; no matter how important and groundbreaking your insights are, it won’t matter if your audience doesn’t get them delivered in a clear, compelling way.

So what are your options?

• As you bring more research in-house, be sure to have a realistic resource plan in place. Create a best and worst case scenario for staff requirements given planned research levels.
• Establish a pool of qualified market research freelancers/consultants who can augment your staff during crunch times.
• Provide some basic training to your internal clients on what to expect from market research projects (ok, that is a bit self-serving since I do this type of training—but I still think the point is valid).
• Consider options for how you can best optimize the mix of in-house versus outsourced market research. For your organization, it may make sense to bring more research in-house—but choosing how to strike the right balance given your internal resources will have a big impact on this transition’s success.

[As always, I welcome any questions or comments. Please leave them here, email me at kkorostoff@ResearchRockstar.com, or by phone 508.691.6004 ext 705]

Seth Godin’s blog post yesterday was about a topic I have been thinking about a lot lately. It’s inspired by the aphorism, “…to a person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

Some of the pain that market research is going through right now is precisely because of this. In the field of market research, we have hammers we are very comfortable with:

Full-service research offerings. Bang.

Quantitative research. Wham.

Focus Groups. Smack.

In-depth interviews. Bam.

The challenge is that the nails have morphed more quickly than our hammers. Now we have an increasing base of customers who don’t necessarily need full-service offerings. Or whose “full-service” needs are very different than what they used to be. Still, they get whacked with the same hammer.

I also see an increasing number of nails…I mean, customer needs…that can be met with excellence using newer tools, but many long-time research suppliers are still stuck on conventional methods. I just met a client this week who specifically shared such an experience, and how it has resulted in an “aha” moment of, “…we need to reevaluate all of our longstanding research partners to make sure they are giving us the best options.”

So for my market research agency readers, I wonder: do you have the right hammer?

And for my friends on the client-side, the fact that we are at an inflection point in terms of market research tools and applications is exactly why I recommend using RFPs these days (boy am I going to get hate mail for this!). But truly, if you are about to engage on some important research, send an RFP to a few different agencies with a few different profiles, and see what you get back. Agencies with different sets of hammers will give you some fresh perspectives. At minimum, you will get new ideas and maybe even some education. And perhaps you will even find a proposal that truly does hit the nail on the head.

Any market research professional will tell you that selling under the guise of research is a big no-no. If you approach people to participate in research, it’s research. The information gathered cannot be used for lead generation, sales prospecting or any other direct sales effort. So-called “sugging” is old news. There are codes of ethics and FTC laws about it.

While at the Marketing Research Association’s First Outlook conference this past week, I listened to some interesting stories from people using their online communities as both research and marketing vehicles. This dual-purpose approach leaves me feeling, quite frankly, conflicted. And a little ignorant; apparently this is a widespread practice. Until now, I had thought most communities were primarily focused on listening to customers to uncover their needs, behaviors, and attitudes. Instead, these dual-purpose communities appear to be marketing under the guise of research. So let’s call it “mugging.”

Market Research Ethics

As a market research professional concerned about research ethics, and how ethical practices impact the general population’s willingness to participate in research, the potential damage from mugging makes me uneasy. Companies running online communities need to clearly disclose the dual purpose (if that is, indeed, their intent). Recruiting people for the purpose of research, then using the community to generate buzz, sell product, or otherwise influence buying behavior, is unethical. If the community is recruited with the dual-intent stated clearly, then that’s fine. It’s the bait-and-switch that is objectionable.

Market Research Quality

As a market research professional concerned about research quality, I find the idea of dual-purpose communities very disturbing. I hear lots of clients with online communities talk about them as a great source of rich, qualitative insights. But if those insights are being gathered from people who are being screened up-front to be pre-disposed to creating positive word-of-mouth for the brand, that is a very narrow, questionable form of research. The biggest risk? Research results from such a skewed population being presented as “rich qualitative insights,” when they are “rich qualitative insights from those customers who already know us, love us, and want to help us succeed.”

Marketing Innovations

As a marketing enthusiast (someone who enjoys testing new marketing approaches), I think it’s cool. Inviting my most loyal brand advocates to participate in ongoing online discussions, getting to “leak” new product ideas to them to create advance buzz, “rewarding” them with product samples…what a great way to foster more direct client contact. It’s like creating a stealth sales force. And at a very low cost.

No Mugging Please

If dual-purpose communities are clearly disclosed as such during the recruitment process, fine. But even so, any “research” reported from these very skewed populations must be used very carefully, and not confused with more objective insights. It may simply be wiser to choose a single goal per community: one focused on research, another on marketing, and stop trying to mix the two.

I’ve been attending the MRA’s First Outlook conference in San Diego this week. From conversations with other folks here and some of the sessions I have attended, I’ve learned some interesting things. Here are just a few highlights before I hop on the plane home.

Cool: As airlines roll-out WiFi, they will also start doing customer satisfaction surveys in-flight. Capturing customer feedback in near real-time—very cool!

Trend: As more clients do research in-house, they are becoming increasingly knowledgeable about research tasks and their time requirements. And sometimes they learn that their agency has been taking advantage of them. One example: a client who found out that a task she had previously paid thousands for was a simple SPSS feature that takes just minutes. Yikes.

Sad: Some clients are referring to their online communities as research resources, but are clearly using them for both marketing and research. In one case, the client seemed very excited about how sanctioned “leaks” of new products to the online community creates buzz. She seemed far less interested in research integrity. Sigh.

Trivia: The famous Chevy Nova Spanish language fiasco is apparently a myth. Apparently the Nova sold very well under that name. Still, ALWAYS back translate your surveys!

Practical: In designing market research across multiple cultural groups, don’t equate language with culture association. For example, most second generation Latinos speak English well, but their cultural context is still distinct. Cultural sensitivity and context cannot be based solely on primary language.

Be There Next Year!

Overall, a great conference, good people, and a worthwhile trip. Next year’s MRA conference will be in Boston (June 9-11) Mark your calendars now!

Bored with bar and pie charts? Maybe it’s time to rethink the types of graphics you are using to display key research findings.

One graphic display that makes rare appearances in market research reports is the classic Venn diagram. It’s a wonderfully intuitive way to show overlapping groups. Attributed to John Venn, the Venn diagram was first introduced in 1880.

I have seen 100s of research reports, and written many myself, that contained statements about overlapping groups, like, “Customers who buy from retail stores and those who buy from our paper catalog increasingly prefer buying from online retailers.” OK, the statement isn’t so complicated. But wouldn’t a Venn diagram have more impact?

If your audience includes people who aren’t necessarily comfortable with lots of statistics, or who just have short attention spans, Venn diagrams are a powerful and simple way to convey overlaps, and trends in such overlaps.

In this diagram, I show how 2 customer groups increasingly overlap over time. It could be done as an animation for even more impact.

For more Venn examples in template form, check out this great Slideshare file: Venn.

And for more examples of various visual displays, please download the free eBook “Makreting Research Insights: 22 Visual Displays.” The ebook is available in the members-access section. Not yet a member? Sign-up for a free membership here: SIGN UP.

[All comments welcome! Every 2 weeks I randomly select a commenter to win a Rockstar Mug: PIC. Next drawing is 11/6!]

People like contests. I don’t know why. Must have something to do with why so many people like gambling.

People generally don’t like surveys. And it’s getting worse. How I long for the days when 20% response rates were considered “low.”

I’ve seen some creative strategies lately, to make surveys feel less, well…, like surveys. So the next time you need a quick customer insight blast:

• Ask employees for help. Those with company-related blogs and twitter accounts can post a link to a short questionnaire, along with a contest offer.
• Send out a one-question, open-ended poll. Here is a slightly paraphrased one that I saw recently, and it was quite effective, “What one thing would you like (brand) to do differently in 2010?” The client received lots of response, and found some surprising recurring themes. It wasn’t onerous for the respondents, and the client got some great insights.
• Offer an essay contest. A good topic might leverage the upcoming new year with a topic like, “In 500 words or less, describe your kitchen in the year 2020.” Or for more of a B2B angle, “…what will your work space look like in 2020?” What a great way to get customers engaged in brainstorming about future scenarios related to your product category.
• Lead with the contest. One company offered a photo contest. Then at the site where the online submissions were made, a relevant survey invitation popped up. While the example I saw was for a photography-related business, others could do it too. I can easily imagine a snack bar company hosting a photo contest, “Show us where you eat our bars!” The photos would be submitted online, and a survey invitation might read “We’d like your opinion on some new bar flavors.” A B2B angle could be, “Send us a picture of your ugliest office chair,” with a survey invitation about office furniture.

Obviously, these tactics aren’t a fit for all types of research, especially large quantitative projects. But making research fun and easy is a good way to get fresh feedback. And to the research purists: yes, these are self-selecting tactics, but so are a lot of panels and other sample sources these days.

Get the information, make it fun, judge is wisely, and use it appropriately—just like any other market data.

[BTW, if you do a contest, always be clear; we never want to mislead people about prizes. And be sure to abide by any contest-related laws. Contest laws do vary by country.]

[All comments welcome! Every 2 weeks I randomly select a commenter to win a Rockstar Mug: PIC. Next drawing is 11/6!]

What makes a useful marketing consultant? I mean, a really useful one?

Someone who…

Understands your product?
Knows how customers actually use it?
Understands customers’ perceptions of its strengths? Weaknesses?
Can see past your own biases?

Hmmm…maybe the most qualified consultant is a customer?

In market research, we are trained to treat customers as research participants. If they start to go off track by pontificating, we “re-direct” them to talk about their own personal experiences and opinions. In focus groups, we have various techniques for making someone stay on point. In survey projects, we carefully word questions in hopes that participants will report their own attitudes and behaviors.

And for many projects, it does make sense to keep participants focused on themselves. After all, a research participant can’t really know why their brother-in-law uses that brand of shampoo, or how her co-worker might feel about the price of air travel.

But if we are looking at some other marketing needs—like seeking input for improving word-of-mouth, or coming up with ideas for product improvements, the best “consultant” is one who really knows your company, your product. Sure, there are some great consultants out there. But sometimes, calling on customers as consultants is the best approach.

Calling on customers as consultants also has a hidden benefit: if your topic of interest is something that people may find too personal, too hard to be honest about—asking them indirectly can be most revealing. Jack may not be willing to tell you bluntly that he thinks your product is hard to use—that might make him feel stupid. But if you ask him how your product could be improved, he will be more comfortable suggesting that “some people” will find the product easier to use if the dials were just a little larger. It’s a twist on the old ploy, “It’s not for me, but a friend wants to know…”

What do you think?

[I welcome any and all comments! Every 2 weeks I randomly select a commenter to win a Rockstar Mug: PIC. Next drawing is 10/23!]

Word clouds are so cool.  The first time I found Wordle, I played with it for an hour.

But to be honest, I never really thought of it as much more than a curiosity…sort of a twist on trivia. What words are most frequent on a favorite blog’s page? Wordle would show it in cool colors and an appealing mix of horizontal and vertical lay-outs.

So when I saw that Tribe Research’s Tribal ToolKit now includes a word cloud tool, I was eager to take it for a test drive.  How could word clouds really add insight? Be more than just a toy?

CloudMaker is a word cloud tool that can draw input from web pages, Twitter feeds (though, alas, restricted to Twitter’s self-imposed 20 tweet limit), and CSV files.  The CSV files part is the important one—since this is what allows you to import any text you want…like open-ended responses from a survey you were loathe to tally the hard way.

To get started, I set up an account (you need to buy some very reasonably-priced credits). Once I had my account, my first use was to check my blog page.  Was my content well-aligned with my intended message? Well, let’s use CloudMaker to find out. Here is the result (I could have added colors but I chose to keep it simple):

(I am not sure why it is pasting in sort of fuzzy; the original image looks much better on my computer).

The process was easy. With no training, it took me 6 minutes to specify the web page from which to draw the blog entries, and set some parameters. For example, I only wanted words that appeared at least 5 times to be included in the cloud.  I also spent a couple of minutes blocking common words (“you,” “your,” “some,” “very,” etc.).

The real power will be for people with open-ended responses to analyze.  Simply create a text file (easy to export from SPSS), and upload it to CloudMaker. You can even opt to have CloudMaker include the frequency counts. I’d also like to try this for analyzing interview transcripts.

Small is Beautiful: The 1-question Survey

There is a survey option as well. Want to know what 3 words people associate with your product, service, or overall brand?  The survey tool in CloudMaker lets you create a 1 question poll that accepts up to 3 text answers (best for 1 or 2-word answers). You get a URL to forward to survey-takers, and the software has built-in security (like preventing the same computer from answering the survey more than once). One catch: write your question carefully—once you create it and start data collection, you can’t edit it. So if you want to pre-test, plan accordingly (either do the pre-test via an email version of the question, or plan to use your CloudMaker credits for a pre-test).

Overall, Tribe Research has created an easy tool for applying word clouds to real business.

[I welcome any and all comments! Every 2 weeks I randomly select a commenter to win a Rockstar Mug: PIC. Next drawing is 10/23.  Our last winner was Joy Levin—Congrats Joy!!]

I am a big fan of online training; the convenience (no travel!), the access (watch a class as many times as you want!), the immediacy (get the info you want NOW!), and the customization (skip the stuff you know; fast forward to the good stuff!). Oh, and it’s 80% of Research Rockstar’s business. So, yeah, I am a little biased.

But online training isn’t the best option for all market research topics, or for all learners. From time to time I do have clients for whom I recommend in-person training options. This is especially true for clients interested in focus group moderating and hands-on statistical analysis. Focus group moderation and hands-on statistical analysis do require teacher interaction, as the nuances can get complex and immediate teacher feedback is critical. And there is the occasional client who really does prefer attending 2-day seminars away from home (some people just learn better when they are in a different setting).

When I do recommend in-person training, these are the options I most often suggest:

• Burke Institute: I ran an agency for 13 years, and this is where I sent my employees for in-person training. Great content, excellent teachers.
• RIVA: Some of the best moderators I have worked with had their training at RIVA.
• SPSS: If you want hands-on training with SPSS, well, it’s kinda obvious.

And then there are market research conferences and workshops where some excellent educational content is available. Some of these are annual events:

• The Market Research Event (IIR)
• The AMA’s Market Research Conference
• The Marketing Research Association (MRA) hosts several learning events and conferences each year:
• CASRO hosts several conferences and in-person educational events each year as well.

The topics offered in Research Rockstar’s online training library are generally different from the ones offered by in-person venues. Research Rockstar classes tend to focus on:

• Practical considerations when designing projects
• Best practices for hiring and managing market research agencies
• Tips for managing specific types of projects (such as message testing, product concept testing, customer loyalty, and brand awareness studies)
• Recommendations for how to create and promote market research results within your organization
• Concise overviews of market research methods and techniques
• Strategies for maximizing market research success

These topics can be handled well in online formats. The content is precise and can be clearly documented. And these are topics that are convenient to have online as a reference tool; Research Rockstar members just log-in anytime they need a refresher.

So, yes, I’m an advocate for online training. But several excellent options do exist for in-person training on market research topics.

[Did I miss your favorite in-person market research training resource? Please add it in the comments. Thanks.]

[Seeking some type of market research-related training but having trouble finding resources? Email or call me with your topic of interest, and I’ll try to make a recommendation.]

[Read our recent News Release about Research Rockstar Online Training: NEWS]

If you have been planning a research project involving customer interviews lately, you may have found yourself debating: should I hire an outside market research agency, or use in-house resources?

It’s a debate I hear a lot lately. Even clients who have hired research agencies to do interviews in the past are now considering the in-house option.

And the reasons aren’t just money-related (though that is a factor).  Two additional reasons for choosing the in-house approach include:

1.    The desire for near-real-time feedback.
2.    The need to create direct learning opportunities.

When handling customer interview projects (or IDI projects, if you prefer) in-house, you do get the benefit of fast feedback. The folks making the calls may be right down the hall from you, and it’s easy to pop in and ask for updates.  As issues come up, you and the interviewers can choose to modify screening criteria, update the interview guide, or escalate discoveries—and do so very quickly.

And the learning opportunity for those folks actually conducting interviews? It is fantastic. And that’s true whether the interviews will be conducted by executives, middle managers or other staff. There is nothing like talking to even just 5 or 10 actual customers one-on-one to create deep, impactful insights.  More often than not, after people conduct their first customer interviews, I hear them say things like, “I never knew our customers thought that!”

Risks Ahead

Yes, the benefits of doing interview projects in-house are huge. But so are the risks.

The biggest risk: alienating clients. Folks who have not been trained to do customer interviews may have trouble asking questions—and listening to responses—in a purely objective way. Clients get annoyed if they feel they have been nice enough to cooperate with the research request only to feel manipulated or misunderstood by a company representative.

Another big risk: underestimating the amount of work involved. If you have never done in-house interviews before, you may not realize how much time it takes. You may need to write a screener. And then there’s an interview guide itself to create. Then recruiting and scheduling the interviews. Don’t forget arranging for recording and possibly transcribing. And how about reading and synthesizing the results in a way that can be shared? It really does take a lot of time and skill.  I have seen clients embark on these projects, confident that they can do them, only to have the project turn into a never-ending-nightmare because the staff involved simply could not take enough time away for their primary responsibilities to make it happen in a time-efficient manner.

So just be sure to consider the alternatives. There are market research agencies and freelancers that can handle customer interview projects very well—and have the skills and resources to do them professionally.

Be Honest with Yourself

So if you’re thinking about having non-researchers help out with customer interviews, it is certainly viable. And has some real benefits. But watch out for those common roadblocks, or the money you save on an outside agency could end up being more than risked with customer fallout and excessive staff time.

[Interested in learning more tips to manage in-house interviewers? Interested in training non-researchers to conduct research interviews? Check out Research Rockstar's latest online tutorials:   Training Volunteer Interviewers (Free!) and  Conducting Research Interviews: 12 Tips for Stress-Free Interviewing ]

In your organization, do you have a growing number of non-market researchers doing market research? You know what I mean: people using free or low-cost tools like Survey Monkey, Zoomerang and Wufoo to collect data without the sanctioning of the research department? Or those gathering customer insights from Twitter, Facebook, or their own personal blogs?

You are not alone.

It’s rampant. And the genie is out of the bottle.

Of course, if it gets out of hand, we have to be concerned about:

• Annoying customers too many research requests. Especially those that may be redundant.
• Inconsistent standards, such that data from different efforts cannot be compared.
• Poor questionnaire design, leading to misleading data, or worse data.

You get the drift.

So what to do? Try to stop it? I don’t think so.

Look, you now have a volunteer army of market researchers (even if they don’t know it). They are data collectors, insight mavens and customer listeners. GREAT!

Yeah, I know the familiar arguments: “…it takes training,” or, as someone tweeted to me recently, “…just because you could pull out your own tooth doesn’t mean you should.” Uh huh.

Look, I know it’s uncomfortable. We market researchers take a lot of pride in our skills, discipline and experience. But the genie is out of the bottle, and it isn’t going back in.

So we have a choice:
1.    Deny, complain, prohibit. (good luck with that)
2.    Find a way to leverage the trend in a sensible way.

So we should let it run rampant?

Does this mean we should sanction all DIY customer surveys? Encourage sharing of all market insights gathered from social networking sites?

No, of course not.

• We still have to make sure our valued customers are not over-surveyed, or subjected to bad questionnaire designs.
• We must make sure research is coordinated (no redundant studies, please).
• We have to help people understand what results are anecdotal versus reliably conclusive.
• We must make sure confidential information is protected (training people on what information is confidential and should not be shared or even hinted at on social media forums, etc).
• We need to make sure suitable data is shared, and shared appropriately.

And that’s where training and policies come into play.  With a little planning and common sense, success is absolutely feasible.

Embrace the Chaos!

[Research Rockstar now offers a one-hour online course to help you turn unsanctioned market research into useful insights.  Check out, "Leading Your Volunteer Army: Turning Unsanctioned Research into Market Insight Gold." Or email info@ResearchRockstar.com]

Are you planning your first Customer Satisfaction project? If so, please take a moment and check all that apply (well, mentally anyway):

– I feel confused by all of the different methodology recommendations I am getting
– I feel a bit stunned by some of the proposed budgets
– I am wondering how my organization will actually use the results when the project is done
– I am worried that I don’t know enough to anticipate likely roadblocks

If some or all of these statements apply to you, don’t worry. These are perfectly common concerns, and just show that you are thinking carefully about the realities of conducting a customer satisfaction project.

So to help you get started, I’ll address some of these items briefly.

What methodology will be best?

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Lots of methods can be used (including various qualitative and quantitative ones).  Your best mix will be selected based on:

• How you plan to use the research results. For example, a design meant to provide inputs to executive bonus calculations will be different than one designed primarily to inform organizational performance goals. In fact, any consultant or sales person who tells you their approach is the only legitimate one is only interested in sales—not insights.
• Your customer base. Its size, profile and geographic distribution all come into play. A customer sat (and yes, that is the vernacular) project designed for a consumer goods manufacturer in a highly competitive market with millions of customers worldwide will not be the same as one for a B2B software company with a primarily US-based client base of 500.
• Your budget. Yes, I said it. Any customer sat project can be designed (or, over-designed) to the tune of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. But maybe your budget is limited. If your budget is $50,000, or even $20,000, options exist. Not all research firms will be interested (some are operationally optimized for larger studies), but plenty will be. Be honest about your budget limits and you will get appropriate proposals.

How will my organization use the final results?

The most common real-world uses of customer sat data are:

• To set and track organizational performance goals. For example, a company may have as a stated goal, “80% of customers report they will buy from us again in the next 6 months.” (Of course, just because 80% say they will, doesn’t mean 80% will in reality. Still, the fact they think they will is important).
• To generate inputs for executive bonus calculations.
• To identify opportunities for innovation (sometimes based on areas of customer dissatisfaction)
• To identify which customer touch points most directly predict loyalty behaviors (such as repeat purchasing and positive word of mouth); this creates a prioritized list of areas for improvement, optimized for the most impact.

What roadblocks will I likely encounter?

Short answer: a bunch. But the single most common issue is sample source. Do you really have a list of customers you can recruit to participate? Do you have other direct access to qualified customers? If you do, great. But a surprising number of companies do not.  I have worked with some really big clients, and some have had pitifully poor customer lists.  And since this is a customer sat project, you do need access to valid, qualified customers.

Here are 2 problems I have seen many times each:

• B2B companies that realize their lists a) are out of date (more than 10% of the names/phone numbers/email addresses are incorrect) b) have bad contact info (the customer sat survey needs to be of people who use the product, but the list is comprised of purchasing agents who buy, but do not use). Result? Significant delays and budget overruns.
• Consumer companies that overestimate the feasibility of using purchased lists to reach their customers. The result? Significant budget overruns.

Want More?

If you’d like a little more of an introduction to planning your first customer sat research project, please check out this 10 minute video on YouTube: Research Rockstar on YouTube.

Or, for a 53-minute, comprehensive introduction, check out this link to the Research Rockstar store: Store Link.

[Any questions or comments? Leave them here or call the blog requests line at 508.691.6004. Thanks!]

I feel for Market Research Managers in charge of Brand Awareness trackers. It’s not as easy as it used to be. As the number of means by which brand awareness and familiarity are influenced increases, our ability to measure their impact becomes more difficult. Sure, you can still efficiently measure absolute awareness levels, but how useful is that if you don’t know what is driving them?

In the old days, it was easy, especially in consumer markets (versus B2B). Once upon a time, consumers generally became aware of and purchased products the same ways. Brand awareness came largely from in-store displays, TV and print advertising. Purchasing via traditional retail. Yeah there were some variations…radio advertising was more effective with some groups than others, and in some markets catalogs were king.  But still, compared to the present, pretty simple.

Today, the means of brand exposure and familiarization are amazingly diverse and increasingly out of the brand’s control. Both consumer and B2B marketers have complexities in this regard.

Here is an example from a client I work with in the B2B space—and this is just one client’s situation! We identified their known brand awareness sources as follows:

1.    Banner ads
2.    Billboards (yes, actual billboards)
3.    Expert blogs (not brand-sponsored)
4.    Company website
5.    Company-sponsored ezine
6.    Direct Mail
7.    Direct sales force
8.    Direct-to-consumer news releases
9.    Employee twitters (sanctioned)
10.    Online and traditional retail channels (several)
11.    PR campaigns
12.    Print catalog
13.    Product review sites
14.    Trade magazine print ads
15.    Trade magazine sites (mentions in articles)
16.    Trade shows
17.    Word of Mouth

Sure, this client has some pretty sound hypotheses about which of these are more or less influential. But ideally they would be able to precisely answer the question: What’s the most efficient combination of brand building activities for maximizing awareness among desirable customer groups?

Brand Awareness Research Options: Let’s Keep an Open Mind

So what’s a beleaguered Market Research Manager to do? What are the options?

1.    Conduct a traditional quantitative study. That’s the best way to get the most data for really comprehensive analysis.  But it may not work if…you don’t have access to great lists of qualified respondents….you have a hard-to-reach target market…your budget doesn’t permit it…you’re in a fast-moving market where the results can change just as the analysis is being done…your internal clients will balk if you can’t reliably quantify each source of brand awareness.
2.    Run experiments. A great option but takes time. And again, if you are in a rapidly changing market, results may be too slow.
3.    Focus on competitive benchmarking. If you have 2 or more pretty direct competitors, one option is to design your research on a smaller scale and focus on competitive comparisons. You likely have Competitive Intelligence on your top competitors’ brand-building tactics (if not, you should!). So you can conduct some pretty straightforward research to deduce what works. “Brand C’s brand awareness is up 30% since last quarter and their only new efforts are around driving traffic to their website and a highly-focused print ad campaign!” (OK, that example is overly simplistic, but you get the point).
4.    Conduct qualitative research with newly acquired customers. I can see the quant researchers rolling their eyes, but this is an option that helps capture the complexities of influence while being very affordable compared to a quant effort.  Can people reliably self-report how they became aware or increasingly aware of a brand? Nope, and this is a challenge in quant as well. But they can share stories about specific brand-related exposures that can be very rich. For example, I once conducted a small set of such interviews for a client, and we heard a fascinating theme about new customers gaining brand awareness through one sales person’s rather unconventional methods. Very actionable stuff!

In any of these cases, we just have to remember that people cannot accurately self-report how they became aware of, or familiar with, a brand.  They can report what they do recall, but that is likely to be incomplete (they may remember a flashy TV ad, and simply not recall a series of banner ads). Some methods deal with this challenge better than others, and a market research agency with a track record in Brand Awareness will be able to advise you based on your market’s particular nuances.

Making A Plan

Hopefully the examples above illustrate that there are several ways of researching brand awareness drivers given different budget and time-line parameters. But the reality is, for many companies, no perfect solution exists that can absolutely quantify brand awareness drivers. The variables are just too complex, and changing too rapidly.

Still, even for Research Managers in complex markets, research can get us in the neighborhood, even if it won’t be perfect. For example, in working with a client in this situation, we were unable to create an absolute, quantified rank order of brand awareness drivers. But we were able to identify 4 tiers of drivers: A “Top” tier (the top 4 drivers), a “Strong” tier (the next 3), a “Low” tier (the next 4) and a “Wildcard” tier (items that appeared to be low but were difficult to measure).  Ideal? No. Actionable? Yes.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for Market Research Managers with Brand Awareness projects is simply managing executive expectations.  Brand awareness measurement is a complex and moving target. And non-researchers often have unrealistic assumptions about how precise we can be—perhaps based on their previous experiences during simpler times. We need to re-set expectations with these folks, and inform them about more realistic outcomes. Heck, send them this article if it helps!

Any questions or comments? Please post them here or email me at KKorostoff@ResearchRockstar.com. Thanks!

[Thanks to Robin Brown at Environics Research Group for his feedback!]

Today I read a blog that stated, “… the utility of market research is often minimal.  Many times the data is worthless even before the survey hits the field due to quickly changing business conditions, and consumers are over surveyed and fatigued by the constant bombardment of surveys online or elsewhere.” The blog is from The Armory, and is authored by Brendan Miller. I like Brendan’s posts—he has strong opinions and clearly enjoys innovative thinking. But given how many blogs and articles I have seen lately that express a similar point of view, I just have to respond.

Look, traditional market research is flawed. We all know that. It has its issues—sample quality being a biggie these days. And Brendan sums up another one nicely,  “Traditional research only captures a moment in time.” True, true, and market researchers are well aware of this (and advise clients accordingly).

But let’s not pretend social media is the elixir…the magic potion to cure all market research ills. Yes, social media as a research tool has real benefits and the innovation is exciting for suppliers and clients alike (tip of the hat on a nice piece to Fresh Networks). I am particularly interested in techniques for monitoring online conversations (nice intro by Beth Harte here, plus do include Crimson Hexagon).  But if we set unrealistic expectations about how fantastic social media is as a market research tool, we will ultimately disappoint clients, or worse (deliver misleading or egregiously flawed research).

Yes, it sounds great to make sweeping statements about social media-based research  “…like creating online customer forums can help marketers take an active and continuous listening approach.  Their insights will be timelier and therefore more relevant.” Timely? Perhaps if people happen to be talking about something you care about when you care about it. But alas, these methods also have inherent limitations and biases.

Heresy, you say?! Yes, social media-based market research has real limitations. Two of the major issues:

1.    The Popcorn effect (well, that’s what I call it anyway). When someone is particularly frustrated or particularly thrilled they “pop” onto a blog or user forum or review site and share a comment online. Many online forums suffer from these extremes, so we have to be careful. (In contrast, surveys capture a fuller spectrum of response including neutrals—which are a legitimate response and critical context in many cases).
2.    Online personas. How people talk, behave and portray themselves online is very different than how they do these things in-person. Ask anyone who has been on an online dating site and then met the individual in-person; the gap between online and in-person can be shocking.  And usually not in a good way. As just one example, in some markets, monitoring online communities would suggest an extremely rational set of buying behaviors backed up by shared reviews and deep, objective product evaluations. But in (gasp!) a focus group, a little discussion leads to people confessing to each other that the tie-breaker between brand A and brand B was based on an entirely irrational input (“I wanted my new HDTV to be sleeker than my brother’s”, the knowing nods of the other group members allowing the moderator to use the group dynamic to probe further and peel the onion on customer behaviors).

Bottom-line

The market researcher who clings to conventional surveys and focus groups like a life raft on a turbulent sea is going to drown. Those who judiciously add various social media and ethnographic-based methods along with some of the other fabulous new qualitative research tools out there will be able to navigate through the storm—and best help clients choose the methods (or mix) for their unique needs. But let’s not pretend that social media-based research is a magic cure-all; too many snake oil salesmen will only ultimately turn off clients and lead to a backlash.  And that’s not going to do anyone and good.

Have you talked to your competitors’ customers lately?

You really should.

A.    It is feasible in many markets.
B.    They are the best source of real competitive insights.

Feasibility

Talking to competitors’ customers is a great form of market research and it is surprisingly feasible in many markets. So, how do you find these customers?

The most practical option is to buy a list. If you compete with large consumer brands, you can ask a panel or list company to estimate an incidence rate for you (for larger consumer brands they may know). Or you might estimate incidence for them given market share data you already have.

Are you in B2B? OK, that can be trickier. You can buy a list of people who are decision makers for your category (from a list broker or a panel company). And then, depending on your market, you might assume that 60% of them will buy from the top 3 competitors. If your market is not too fragmented, that can be a realistic strategy that doesn’t totally break the bank.

In some markets, you may have access to public, online user communities. They can also be a great source for reaching competitors’ customers, but always follow the community guidelines: if research requests are not permitted, don’t do it.

Competitive Insights

We have heard it a million times: perception is reality. You may disagree based on factual evidence, but that isn’t going to get you very far. If Competitor A is widely perceived as having attractive packaging but you think it’s as ugly as a moldy bread, you lose. It “is” attractive.

Whether you reach them through a quantitative and qualitative approach, remember:

• Competitors’ customers keep you honest about your strengths and weaknesses.
• Competitors’ customers know your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
• Competitors’ customers know what’s important (and before you decide what competitive edge you will promote, you really do want a reality check on which ones will resonate—you might be surprised).

Practical Considerations

• If you want the research to be blind (you do not want to reveal your organization as the sponsor), then you should hire a research agency or at minimum a market research freelancer.
• If you really only have one competitor you want to assess, and finding those customers is hard: look at your own customer base. Are there folks who recently switched from that brand? As switchers they won’t be totally representative of your competitors’ customer base, but they may still have valuable insights.
• Don’t forget to poll any employees that may have previously worked for your competitors. You don’t want to ask them to break any confidentiality agreements, but they may be able to point you in the right direction.

Bottom-line

Competitors’ customers will keep you honest as you update your competitive positioning. Even if you don’t have a traditional Competitive Intelligence program in place (which typically includes ongoing monitoring of competitors’ strategies and tactics), in my experience, talking to customers is a fast, efficient way of discovering real competitive opportunities.

[Have any questions or comments? Great! Please leave them here as a Comment or call our blog requests line 508.691.6004. Thanks!]

Have you found yourself needing to forecast a new product’s adoption potential? Sales volume by region for the next 3 years? How about the potential upside of a new distribution strategy?

Forecasting these days is harder than ever. There are simply too many factors that are uncertain. National and world economies. Energy costs. Shifts in basic consumer values. On and on.

What’s a forecast-needy professional to do?

Embrace scenario planning.

Scenario planning is not about creating your best estimate forecast. In structured scenario planning, you create 3 or 4—each based on variations of core assumptions.

Depending on time and budget, the amount of prep work can vary significantly. I confess, there have been cases when due to time constraints I created scenarios based solely on existing, readily available knowledge. In other cases, I have worked with teams that had the luxury of collecting relevant data for a few weeks ahead of time (using a mix of primary and secondary sources).

Building scenarios is like baking cakes. The basic ingredients are all the same: they all start with flour, eggs and sugar (goals, hypotheses, and assumptions). But you can modify the elements or change their quality. You can end up with a nice, basic pound cake. Or a 7-layer black forest cake with cherries on top.

Here’s my recipe:

First, I gather a team of folks who will be the ultimate “clients” for the scenarios. And we start by getting agreement on exactly what we are forecasting. It isn’t as easy as it sounds. When the exercise is done, what will the scenarios capture? Good example, “We want scenarios that will profile our top 3 customer segments in 5 years.” It’s precise and has a timeframe.

Next, I help the team do some creative hypothesis generation to identify the underlying assumptions that we will want to vary. A set of 5 to 10 hypotheses is perfect. Example: “We hypothesize that our small business telephony customers will want to see more intelligence in the carrier network and off of their premises.” Now we can vary that based on what percent of our small business customer base we think that could be true for in the scenario’s timeframe.

Third, we create the first scenario. I like to do this in Excel, but use whatever tool you prefer.  In my spreadsheet, I label a column for each assumption’s value, with the last column being the “end result.” The rows are the scenarios. Being an optimist by nature, I often start with the best case scenario, but that is fairly arbitrary.

Fourth, we create at least 2 more versions: I want to end up with at least a worst case, a best case and a mid-point scenario. The team will often do this as a group, with the spreadsheet projected on a wall. If you have a large group (8 or more people), I recommend dividing into two teams and doing your scenarios separately. The process will be more efficient, and comparing the end results can be very productive. Did the teams come up with similar scenarios? Or were any radically different?

After this, we usually take a break.

Then I recruit a group of 3 to 5 fresh minds to review our assumptions and scenarios. The team members do their individual assessments while one of us gathers the fresh feedback.

Sixth, the team reconvenes and we review the process from the beginning. In all, I usually go through 2 to 4 iterations before I feel the exercise is done.

One warning: As you go through this exercise, appoint one member of the team as a facilitator or “protocol cop.” This person needs to enforce some basic guidelines.  Most important: stay on point. It is harder than it sounds. But if your team is working on, perhaps, scenarios to predict a new product’s adoption potential, you can easily veer off track. A second item for your cop to watch for: excessive “devil’s advocate” syndrome. That’s when someone on the team feels compelled to basically challenge any ideas that are particularly new or creative. They may feel they are contributing by playing the devil’s advocate, but in my experience, it just ends up squelching creativity.

Why bother enforcing these policies? If you don’t watch out for those behaviors, you can easily end up in an unproductive meeting that produces no fresh or meaningful insights.  Or, as Bill Bryant is attributed, “We were arguing over the color of the frosting and we don’t even have a cake.” Get the scenarios down first; there is time to add icing later.

The Icing

BTW, the exercise is not only useful because of the resulting scenarios; it’s useful as a team-building experience. When you get a group of people engaged in discussing factors that will effect something they all care about—a sales forecast, a product adoption forecast—it creates energy around a common goal. And sometimes icing is the best part of the cake!

Market Research budgets everywhere are being assessed for potential savings. In some cases, the options for reducing the market research budget are obvious; cutting a program that was underused, or maybe reducing frequency on a tracker. In other cases, the choices are not so evident.

Do you need a little help identifying places where potential savings may exist in your market research budget? If so, here are some great questions to ask:

1.    Are you sufficiently leveraging existing research? Whether primary or secondary, there is certainly a lot of research out there. Some of us in the primary research world do have a bias towards doing research from scratch.  But existing research sometimes exists that will answer the questions at hand—if we look for it.  It is worth a perusal through research aggregation sites like marketresearch.com, mindbranch.com and the-infoshop.com. You might also check with your trade associations.
2.    Is it time to ask existing research suppliers to get creative? What can they do to help you manage your budget? On one hand, if they come up with some great ideas, you might be a little annoyed that they didn’t share them sooner. But sometimes just asking gives them the motivation.
3.    Which departments are paying for which research? I have one client who was able to push a huge project from the central market research budget to the product development team’s budget—since that was the only internal client for the particular study.
4.    Have you started to incorporate social media into your market research strategy? Either as a means of collecting data, collaborating on analysis, or sharing results?
5.    Should you be rethinking your mix of quant versus qual research? Sometimes savings comes from rethinking the overall mix of quantitative versus qualitative research. For example, a client who has traditionally preferred quant has been having increasing issues with sample quality. Her projects often include hard-to-find populations, driving costs up immensely.  We are rethinking her choice of methodologies for certain projects so that we can both reign in her budget and be more realistic about how best to reach hard-to-find respondents.
6.    Would different payment terms help you better manage your budget? For example, your agencies may be open to delaying some invoices so you can stretch into your next quarter.
7.    How satisfied are your internal clients with existing research programs? Are there some programs with which they are not satisfied? Or feel are simply no longer relevant? If so, you now have a list of places that may be worth cutting.
8.    Do you have a complete view of what research is being done, formal or rogue, throughout the organization? Could some be consolidated? Or could fees with a specific agency be negotiated based on volume/minimum commitments?

If your answers to 7 and 8 are “I don’t know,” it may be worthwhile to conduct a Market Research audit.  What is a Market Research audit? A MR audit is an objective process for A) identifying all of an organization’s Market Research resources and activities so that B) they can be assessed for effectiveness and alignment with organizational needs. They often pinpoint areas of over-and under-spending, and are used to craft guidelines for future MR investments.

Blatant plug: if you want to do an audit but need a little help, see the Research Rockstar workshop offering (The Market Research Audit Workshop, a 2-hour on-site session).

And as always, please add a comment or question here, or call our Blog Requests line (508.691.6004). Thanks!

Has your market research budget been cut? If so, one of the programs most often impacted is Customer Satisfaction tracking. For firms accustomed to tracking on a continuous or quarterly basis, cutting back on this program is often a necessary, though unfortunate, reality.

So what to do? Here are 8 options to consider:

1.    Reduce frequency. Changing data collection frequency from 4 times a year to once a twice a year may be enough of a cost-savings.
2.    Reduce complexity. How long is the current survey instrument? Do your really use all of that data? How much of the data is nice-to-have versus must-have? Ask your market research agency for an option to dramatically simplify the questionnaire-how would that reduce their fees? After all, data collection, data analysis, and reporting fees would all lower. And it is not an either-or decision; maybe once a year you do the big daddy version, and 3 times a year you do the mini-version.
3.    Reduce deliverables. Have your deliverables been overkill anyway? I know many clients that fund large Customer Satisfaction trackers, and they get an overwhelming number of deliverables. Cross-tabs, models, online reporting tools, slide decks, reports by region, various forms of scorecards.  Do you really use all of it? Really? Maybe simply cutting back on deliverables will do the trick. Ask your market research agency to get creative.  If your budget for deliverables were to be cut in half for the year, what would they recommend? What options can they give you?
4.    Consider re-bidding the project. I know, if you have an ongoing program, switching agencies is painful. And the disruption costs can outweigh the fee savings. But it is an option. Be sure to include a couple of off-shore suppliers to compare fees.
5.    Evaluate your use of quant versus qual methods. Has your customer satisfaction research primarily been based on quantitative methods? Maybe now is a good time to consider qualitative research. Sure, there are important trade-offs. But if budgets are tight, it might be a good time to gather deeper information from a smaller number of accounts. One option: enlist some executives to do customer interviews. I’ve helped clients design such programs in the past, and the executives often have a very good experience. Many report that while taking time from their busy schedules is hard, there’s no substitute for hearing customer feedback firsthand.
6.    Go DIY. Yes, I said it. DIY. Hire a market research consultant to design a very simple questionnaire, 7 questions at most. And do the data collection yourself using Wufoo, Survey Monkey or Zoomerang. Keeping the questionnaire short is critical if you do-it-yourself. Be honest: you likely don’t have the staff time, skills or even tools do manage a large scale project in-house, let alone do the data analysis and reporting that would be necessary. But you could probably handle a mini-survey approach. It still gives you valuable input. Ideal? No. But it is an option.
7.    Leverage Social Media tools. While reducing conventional customer satisfaction tracking-or even putting it on hold-consider using social media as a way to encourage direct customer feedback. Have a company blog? Post requests for feedback (be sure to require moderation before comments appear, just n case you get inappropriate responses). Have a company Twitter feed? Tweet a request for feedback and provide an email address. Yes, analyzing volumes of open-ended responses is challenging, but there are tools for doing it if you really get that many responses. And if you only get a hundred or fewer, you can read through them.  It may be enough to give you a heads up about a new problem area before it spreads. And it is also a great way to hear customer requests you may not normally get.
8.    Leverage your Customer Advisory Council, as mentioned in my previous blog post.  Don’t have one? Ouch! Maybe now is a good time to get started.  Need help? Venator Partners and CustomerAdvisoryBoard.org are two companies I happen to know of that help with planning or improving customer advisory council programs.

Cutting back on Customer Satisfaction research budgets is hard. No doubt about it. Disrupting these trackers risks slower response to new problems, or slower recognition of new efforts’ successes. And since these programs often tie into executive compensation and bonus plans, any change to them can cause unrest. But these days, it may be a necessary evil. Luckily, with a little fresh thinking, some creative options do exist. You may even find that giving your Customer Satisfaction program a tweak results in some new insights.

Q: Our market research budget has been slashed. The greatest impact is on our Customer Satisfaction tracker, which we had to reduce from once a quarter, to once a year. So we are thinking about revitalizing our Customer Advisory Council, maybe re-purposing it a bit  towards market research. Any suggestions for how we can use our Customer Advisory Council?

A: First, I love this idea. In fact, just last week I had lunch with a longtime business pal, and he too commented that many customer advisory councils seem to get stale and become neglected. But with so many companies facing market research budget cuts, it’s a great time to get creative and leverage these councils for market insights. Cutting back on Customer Sat tracker frequency is unfortunate, but if it’s the reality, options do exist.

I have 2 suggestions to get you started:

Conduct a Mock Survey Exercise at your next Customer Advisory Council Meeting: This is a great, fun way to get people to share their insights.  First, create a very short (5 question max) Satisfaction Survey. Be sure to leverage content from your tracker.  For example, one question might be, “How likely are you to recommend our service to your friends?” But instead of asking them to fill in the responses for themselves, have them estimate the results, as if an actual survey project had been completed.  So say Jack is on your Council. Jack might write, “Definitely will: 10%, Probably will 60%, Neutral 10%, Somewhat unlikely 20%, Would not 0%.”  Have each participant fill out their estimates individually. Then, as the facilitator, have each person share their answers. Write the High and Low responses to each value on a white board or flip chart.  Then you can moderate a fantastic conversation on the responses.  Were all of the responses consistent? Were they different? Why?  “Hmmm…Mary, I see that you expected only 5% of all customers would definitely recommend our service to others. Can you help me understand your thinking here?” You will hear some great stuff from this exercise! (BTW, if you can, I do recommend hiring an outside facilitator. That way you and your colleagues can focus on observing, and the council members will perhaps feel more inclined to be brutally candid).

Start/Stop/Continue: This is a classic exercise used in various types of meetings and workshops. And it works. Also, this is so simple you can even facilitate it by email if you don’t have quarterly in-person Customer Advisory Council meetings. First introduce the exercise: “We are eager for your candid feedback on how we are doing.  In this exercise, we are asking you to write down 3 things our company should START doing, 3 things we should STOP doing, and 3 things we should CONTINUE doing. There are no wrong answers, we welcome all feedback.”  This exercise is great because it is short (you are not asking for an onerous amount of time) and open-ended (you will hear things you never would have captured in a traditional questionnaire).

Do the above 2 exercises replace a Customer Satisfaction tracker? Of course not. But they will help you identify ways to improve customer satisfaction, and perhaps even identify new sources of satisfaction or dissatisfaction that have not yet hit your radar. And all while being respectful of the Council members’ time.

The whole issue of lower-cost Customer Sat tracking is a great topic; I’ll address that in my next post!

Market research is a useful tool, and when properly applied can yield business-improving results. But of course, it is a big investment: taking the time and money to do it right. So how can you make that go/no go decision with confidence? Complete these 4 easy tasks and you’ll be in good shape.

1. Write down your “Then what” statements.  For example, are you thinking about a project to gauge potential interest in a new product? OK, so imagine it is the end of that project: then what will you do? If the market research results come back negative, how will you use them? Will the product’s attributes be modified based on the market research results—or are they already set in stone? Will the results notably influence how the product will be marketed? Be honest: if you do this research, then what? Will your organization actually use it? Too often people just do research to confirm what they already know.  Do you really want to spend the time and money if the research is going to be ignored anyway?
2. Check for existing research. Check with your internal market research department, professional associations, and ad agency. Also check market research aggregators (like marketresearch.com, mindbranch.com and the-infoshop.com) and trade journals. Be sure you know what relevant market research already exists.  First, you may find that the data you need is already available, and for a lot less money than doing a new study from scratch.  Second, existing research might be available that provides important context.  For example, let’s say you are in the alcoholic beverage business, and you want to do some ad testing for a new vodka brand. Wouldn’t it be helpful to know if a market research firm recently published a study about your competitors’ advertising effectiveness?
3. Assess your team’s commitment. In most cases, research involves a team of at least 3 or 4 people. One person acts as the project manager (which may mean managing an outside market research agency or corralling in-house resources), usually 1 or 2 as content area experts (who may contribute to questionnaire design, etc) and usually at least 1 or 2 intended internal clients are involved (the people who will use the data at project conclusion). Now considering who is on your team, do your realistically think they will give this project their time and attention? Will they contribute to decision making? Attend milestone meetings? Be supportive when the final results come in? I have seen some potentially great market research projects fail because the person driving the project received inadequate support from internal colleagues.
4. Confirm your budget parameters.  How much budget do you have? If the project hits a roadblock, is there extra budget available? Do you have enough money to realistically hire a market research agency or do it in-house?  If you do, great. If not, you may need to just dig deeper into desk research and other  data sources.

So that’s your checklist. If you can answer these four questions, you should be in good shape to make your go/no go decision:

1. Will the market research results be used?
2. Is it true that no existing data is available that can be used instead?
3. Do you have a team that will allocate enough time to the project?
4. Do you have adequate budget?

I welcome any feedback or questions. Add them here, or call the blog requests line at 508.691.6004. Thanks!