The focus group (online or in person) is a tried-and-true method for gleaning qualitative insight from a subset of your target audience.  One of the most attractive benefits of the focus group is the presence of a trained moderator, who can direct and manage conversations so as to target specific questions. The answers to these questions can produce valuable insights that drive marketing decisions and fuel additional quantitative research, both of which ramp up business performance.

But what are your options when you need qualitative reactions from a larger group of people?  Or if you’re not exactly sure what your focus should be?   What if you don’t even know what issues you need to address?  How do you reach your target audience and get them talking freely about what they like, what they don’t like, and what they’d like to see in the future?

For many companies, the answer to this dilemma is to develop an online community. In an online community, your customers can interact not only with a moderator, who sets the ball rolling on precise exercises, but also with each other.  This produces dual benefits. First, it lets researchers drill down on specific issues. Second, it provides ample opportunity for community members to raise new topics that may not previously have been considered priorities.  Keeping these communities invitation-only allows researchers and their clients a way to interact with customers within the proverbial “walled garden.”

FGI’s suite of community products offers additional twists on the private online research community: the opportunity to run topic-driven sessions for short periods of time to deal with a specific set of concerns, or to run the community as a permanent website that is always available to members.  The short-term session is an excellent method both for defining the parameters of an upcoming quantitative study and for identifying future research paths to be explored. Long-term communities, meanwhile, let customers bring up concerns as they arise, allowing businesses to monitor subjective feedback in real time. Each type of online community has specific advantages that respond to different needs. Whether your intent is to keep a constant eye on customer satisfaction or to gauge their opinion on a time-sensitive decision, FGI can help you build a community to satisfy your objectives.

Heather Woodward
Director, Online Research
FGI Research

To learn more about online communities with FGI Research, contact one of our representatives. You can also join FGI’s own SmartCommunity, our proprietary online community where SmartPanel panelists contribute to independent qualitative research and offer their views on the latest trends.

Not today.

If you’re not being discussed online, something’s up.  Whether it’s about your latest product, recently published research report, or company, or if it’s positive, neutral, or negative feedback you want to have your fair share of the social media pie.  If people are talking about you online then that means you can directly tap into what your customers (and potential customers) are saying about you – with no censorship.

This easy access to your customers’ opinions gives you an opportunity that businesses a generation ago didn’t have – the ability to respond almost immediately to questions, concerns, and responses to your business.  Whether the feedback is positive or negative you can respond accordingly and quickly.

So how do you dive into the social media pool?  Create accounts for your business – make a Facebook page, a Twitter account, Youtube videos, etc. and start publishing information about your business.  Invite clients and other business in your industries to be part of your networks.  Maintain dialogues (not monologues) with those people in your networks.  Respond quickly, succinctly, and efficiently to their feedback.

In the world of social media, no news is bad news – start a conversation today!

Emily Varney
Social Media Intern
FGI Research

• 156,000,000 The average number of Tweets per year on Twitter
• 200,000,000 The number of active Facebook users
• 133,000,000 The number of active blogs
• 346,000,000 The number of people who read blogs

As I think we can all agree, today’s market research toolbox must include some type of social media monitoring solution, including sentiment mining and the ability to quantitatively validate key social media trends.

David Wilson
CEO
FGI Research

Customers are comfortable meeting in online communities to share their thoughts and ideas. Unlike quantitative studies, participants are free to share ideas and insights that go beyond the highly structured questionnaires used in online surveys. Unlike traditional focus groups (in person or online), participants have more freedom to express their opinions without being dominated by groupthink or strong personalities.

Used correctly, and smartly integrated with other methods, private online communities can unlock needs, ideas and insights that simply are not possible via traditional means (quant or qual) and even newer methods such as social media mining. As a result, online communities deserve to have a prominent seat at the market research table.

David Wilson
CEO
FGI Research

In the midst of these multiple layers of continuous change, you must use every means possible to stay connected with your customers. In order to keep pace, you quickly move beyond the status quo of market research. At the same time, you must keep pace with such rapid flux in customer thinking, As you will see below, this includes the use of both new and traditional channels and methods. And, it includes both passive listening and active collaboration with your customers.

So here’s our strong advice and point-of-view about the future of successful market research: 1) embrace the new innovations today, 2) blend the new and the traditional, and 3) don’t go it alone.

David Wilson
CEO
FGI Research