Segmentation is a market research method that is a tried and true way to understand your target audience. A segment is a group that shares one or more characteristics (e.g., demographics and psychographics). It acts as a useful way to split up consumers into separate groups for marketing purposes. 

Whether you are a company that is launching a new brand or re-evaluating a different path forward, segmentation can give your brand insight to inform your marketing strategy. However, like any research method, segmentation has specific use-cases, and it isn’t always the proper thing to do. Continuing our blog series on the pros and cons of research methods, read on for the advantages and disadvantages of segmentation!

Segmentation Research Pros

Creating Personas

One of the most illuminating parts of segmentation is bringing them to life in personas. Segments are split based on their similar answers to questions, which includes demographic questions. A persona consists of similar traits, beliefs, behaviors, values, and attitudes. Visualizing this persona and giving them a descriptive name can make your marketing strategy simpler to understand and implement. This is one example of the power of segmentation. 

Ability to Prioritize Segment Groups

Once you are able to segment the population into separate groups and focus on a particular target audience, you can prioritize the list of segmented audiences. Prioritizing segments can be done in many ways; one way is to order the cohorts based on propensity to purchase your product. 

You can also project the size of each segment to determine if this audience warrants the investment. This can also help to prioritize segments and create a marketing map based on each group. Most importantly, this can indicate which segments to leave out and focus energy elsewhere. 

Augment Segmentation Research with Secondary

Segmentation is the type of research that pairs very well with outside sources and databases. Supplementary information can bring new information to your personas, such as media habits, geographic information, and more. The addition of external information to your survey data is robust and leads to great results. 

Segmentation Research Cons

Cost 

Segmentation research is typically more costly than other survey methodologies. Segmentation isn’t as easy as it looks. To segment the data, you will need a significant amount of sample- often having over a thousand participants completing the research. The advanced analytical process is not simple. Typically a segmentation study uses a factor analysis to uncover themes followed by a cluster analysis to create sizable cohorts. 

Other Issues

When you develop a segmentation, you need to make sure:

• You do not exclude prospects simply because they are not your key targets.
• You understand that consumers’ attitudes and beliefs may not be fixed. That being said, it’s vital to know how psychographics can change over time. As a result, you may need to refresh the segmentation after a certain number of years or have significant changes to your business. 
• Finally, you have a way to target or reach the segment that you created. In other words, a bad segmentation is when you have a robust study but have no way to identify who is each group in your prospect and customer database. 

Read some of our blogs from this series here:

1. June 17th, 2020: The Pros and Cons of Online Focus Groups
2. February 6th, 2020: The Pros and Cons of In-Depth Interviews
3. July 13th, 2020: The Pros and Cons of Online Survey Research
4. June 28th, 2020: The Pros and Cons of Message Testing

Thinking about conducting market research?  Check out Provoke Insights research services here.

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Knowing a company’s current brand equity compared to the competition is essential for success. You need to know how it is growing, stagnating, or diminishing and what is causing these changes (or lack of variance). To gain a full picture of your brand is not always as simple as it may seem. A myriad of factors influences equity and perceptions over time. As a result, any brand that invests in extensive marketing efforts should have brand tracking research in place. Read below to learn more about the pros and cons of brand tracking research. 

A brand tracker is a survey that is conducted at a regular cadence (e.g., every quarter, annually, or even continually) that evaluates a company and its competitors’ performance. The research allows you to consistently understand all activities that impact awareness, consideration, purchase, and retention. 

Pros

A Deeper Understanding About Your Brand & the Competition 

Consistently evaluating your brand allows a detailed understanding of your brand overall performance in the market.  When you are tracking, you know your awareness, market share, profits, and retention and why they are at the current levels that they are at. 

Understanding KPIs, Performance, and Goals

How do you know if your advertising and public relation efforts are working?  Every company has specific metrics that they look at to help determine success. Brand trackers are a way to monitor if your marketing is meeting its expectations consistently. 

Brand tracking include performance-based questions, typically including measurements such as unaided/aided recall, perception, purchase intent, and likelihood to recommend.

Comparisons Over Time

A tracker is like a snapshot of a brand’s continuous health. What makes brand tracking research powerful is this ability to differentiate what may influence your company’s performance. For instance, if there was negative (e.g. bad PR, a recession) or something positive ( product development, new good commercial) you get feedback in the current moment, and compare it to past performance.

Continuity

Developing brand tracking research takes time, but maintaining the survey for the next round is simpler after the first study. While some questions will change from iteration to iteration of the tracker to address particular concerns in a moment, the vast majority remains the same. This continuity streamlines the process of understanding and evaluating your brand equity.

Competitive Analysis

The key to any robust brand tracker is competitive analysis. The brand is evaluated alongside its primary competition to see who stands out and how. Learning how your competitors’ image evolves is informative and instrumental to brand strategy. It also gives a view of how your competitors may be strategizing in a particular moment, or how plans change over time.

Cons

Need to be Consistent 

Trackers need to be conducted consistently.  Some brands may find that there has not been much change from quarter to quarter and then only track when they feel an issue comes up.  Regardless of what the cadence is, consistency is crucial.  If too much time has lapsed, there can be many factors that cause variation in results. 

Get Too Complicated

It is vital to keep trackers streamlined and simple. Evaluating too many competitors or asking too many detailed questions may cause boredom during survey taking.  Also, the results may get too much into the weeds. Therefore, the end-user is not looking at what the bigger picture is saying. 

Too Generic

Often research companies have standard tracker templates.  Provoke Insights disagrees in a one size fit solution.  It is essential to make sure that the tracker is looking at your company’s individual goals when developing the tracker.  Also, the research should take into consideration the specific industry needs and trends. For example, some sectors are entirely transactional online, while other industries in-person sales may be more critical. A tracker needs to take this type of consumer behavior into account. 

If your company is interested in a brand tracker study, please reach out to [email protected], and we will be happy to schedule a call to discuss the research objectives with you and decide on the best methodology to achieve the goals. 

Read some of our blogs from this series here:

1. Online Survey Research – The Pros and Cons
2. Online Focus Groups – Advantages/Disadvantage
3. The Pros and Cons of In-Depth Interviews

Thinking about conducting market research?  Check out Provoke Insights research services here.

IF YOU WANT TO, SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTERS HERE!

and finally, follow our social media accounts:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/provokeinsights

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/provokeinsights/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/provoke-insights

Research for Content Marketing

It is difficult for a brand to stand out from the competition in today’s saturated media environment. Many brands, especially B2B, also want to be seen as a thought-leader in their industry. Original content marketing research is a way for brands to generate awareness and position your brand as a differentiator – this ultimately leads to higher brand engagement. 

Why Content Marketing Research? 

The real value of content marketing research is that your target audience engages deeper with your brand. It can improve awareness, engagement, search rankings, and ultimately conversion. 

As there is so much clutter online, the challenge is producing content that isn’t redundant and unoriginal. Brands are competing in a crowded marketplace. There are 54.2 million blog posts written monthly just on WordPress alone, 350 million photos are shared on Facebook daily, and over a million podcasts (30+ million episodes). As a result, brands must generate new, compelling information, which draws the audience’s attention to want more.  

It’s not just other companies competing for the consumer’s attention, but consumers themselves: social media is filled with posts about their latest vacations, baby pictures, restaurant reviews, and more. This is where market research plays an essential role in the content marketing revolution.

Market research studies bring novel, thought-provoking ideas to a comprehensive content marketing initiative. They provide new and original information, keeping the reader’s attention. One research study can be broken up into several content marketing stories and spread across various media channels (e.g., web, emails, news, podcasts, infographics, videos).

By leveraging market research to provide content that your target audience wants to engage with, your company can make it’s content marketing initiatives work significantly better. 

Research for Content Marketing Method

If you decide to conduct research for content marketing, you should follow the following steps:

1. Assess the Landscape

Research potential topics beforehand; this is a crucial component to the success of a content marketing research initiative. Discover trending topics that have high engagement. Also, determine and steer clear of overused topics. Pouring over available research can spark unique ideas or new perspectives on a subject.

2. Develop Headlines to Craft the Questionnaire

Headlines need to excite and interest readers. Focus on the topics discovered during the secondary research process. These headlines can be geared to cover issues that have yet to be addressed. This guarantees a fuller, more exciting picture of your industry. When developing headlines, keep SEO in mind for the best results. 

3. Write Multiple Stories

Once the survey is closed, and the data is collected, you can create more than one story from the research. That means developing a series of mini-decks for each topic. Storytelling is an art form. It is crucial to keep your audience engaged. Many times, researchers are hyper-focused on the details of the numbers as opposed to the big story. It is essential to write the research report in a way that makes the readers want more.

4. Leverage Research for the Highest Awareness & Engagement

Even before the research is completed, it’s important to determine multiple channels to help get the stories out. It is vital to discuss a plan where the study can also be leveraged for all media.

Multiple Media Channels

Content marketing research provides a plethora of opportunities to repurpose the information for multiple channels, including:

• Podcasts
• Blog entries
• Infographics
• Newsletters
• Direct mail/email
• Social media posts
• Online ads
• SEO/SEM
• Sales collateral

The Metrics & ROI Are Proven

• 7X higher article engagement (Readership)
• 6X more engagement on social media (Shares/Likes/Reposts)
• 13X more viewership on social media
• 43% increase in website visits
• 15% increase in new leads from a website providing contact information to get more information.

If your company is interested in content marketing research, please reach out to [email protected], and we will be happy to schedule a call to discuss the research objectives with you.

In addition, check out Provoke Insights research services here.

Read some of our latest blogs here:

1. Content Marketing Research for Tech Companies
2. The Pros and Cons of Survey Research
3. The Pros and Cons of Online Focus Groups

IF YOU WANT TO, SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTERS HERE!

and finally, follow our social media accounts:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/provokeinsights

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/provokeinsights/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/provoke-insights

When referring to market research, online survey research is often the first methodology that comes to mind. Survey research is compelling and dynamic if executed correctly. Like all research methods, it has its advantages and disadvantages. 

Pros

Timely

Companies often realize that they need research too late. They usually require the findings at the moment that they conclude that market research is the only way to get the insights they need. This immediacy leaves researchers in a conundrum. Research projects can take time to kickoff, set up, put in the field, analyze findings, and write a detailed report. So, anywhere that you can make up time is valued. 

Survey research takes less time to execute. The survey goes into the field and will collect responses quite quickly. Unlike focus groups that need about three weeks of recruitment time and then hours of moderation with groups plus travel time, survey field time is significantly shorter.

Results Representative of the Population

While qualitative research is directional, survey research provides a representative look at the population you are interested in analyzing. On the back end of the survey, it is possible to implement quotas to ensure that the sample represents the demographic makeup that you are interested in (e.g., age, gender, household income, region, etc.). The quotas help you project conclusions about the greater population you are looking at. 

Cost-Effective

Incentivizing research participants is a large portion of the cost involved. The value of the incentive is dependent on the type of research you are asking people to participate in. If you ask participants to travel to a facility to take part in a two-hour-long focus group on a specific topic, the incentives typically start at $75 and go up as high as $500 for B2B specialists. 

That is big money – they are time-consuming and taxing. However, if you ask people to take part in a 10-minute online survey (from the comfort of their own home), the incentive will be much lower.  

No Borders

Survey research makes it easy to reach “hard-to-reach” audiences. As long as the participants have an internet connection, they can participate in the study. It allows participants to get involved despite being unable to travel or to avoid travel by the client.

Diverse

Having a larger sample size allows for more varied analyses. With a dataset from online survey research, it is possible to conduct advanced analytics to understand the drivers and correlations that may answer the research objectives. 

Quality

While some question the quality of survey research, it is the easiest to control. At Provoke Insights, we include red herring questions to flag those who do not pay attention to the survey. We also include an open-ended question at the beginning of the questionnaire to remove participants who might give nonsense answers. We will monitor the study to ensure that the participants do not provide all ‘straight-line’ responses or patterning their choices. Finally, we will track how quickly the participant responds, and if they answer too fast (not enough time to read the question) – they will be excluded from the findings. 

Cons

Lack of Probing

In qualitative research, you can ask the “why’s” or modify the guide in real-time. While you can include open-ended questions as a follow up to a survey question, it still has its limitations. The amount of open-ends you can include in a survey is limited. No one is going to fill out 20 open-ended questions in a study. They would stop participating or write very short responses.

In qualitative research, you can follow up and dive deeper into the answers given to get to the bottom line of the question you are seeking to answer. 

Engage Participants For Short Time

It is not easy to keep research participants engaged in an online survey that is longer than 15 minutes. Therefore, most survey methodologies will limit the length of the study to 10 to 15 minutes. This time limit ensures that participants are engaged and answering the survey thoughtfully throughout. However, this limits the number of questions is it possible to ask and the depth of the findings. 

Local or Very Specific Audiences

Online recruitment can be difficult if you are looking for a tiny geographical area or if your audience is extraordinarily specialized or senior business leaders (e.g., business leaders of large retail companies in Austin). In that case, the methodology may need to move to the phone or in-person. 

If your company is interested in content marketing research, please reach out to [email protected], and we will be happy to schedule a call to discuss the research objectives with you.

In addition, check out Provoke Insights research services here.

Read some of our blogs from this series here:

1. The Pros and Cons of Online Focus Groups
2. The Pros and Cons of In-Depth Interviews

IF YOU WANT TO, SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTERS HERE!

and finally, follow our social media accounts:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/provokeinsights

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/provokeinsights/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/provoke-insights

Brand messaging is the brand’s voice. Accurate messaging allows consumers to understand the brand’s value (why it is useful/worthwhile) and what it stands for. Successful messaging will portray the brand promise and encourage purchase intent. Message testing research among the target audience is important. There are many advantages to this methodology and one disadvantage that you should be aware of. 

Pros

Quick Feedback

Using an online survey to test methodology is a quick process. The questionnaire is often standard and the research company updates it to incorporate the brand messaging that your brand is looking to test. Other methodologies in market research can take up to two months to complete. If brand messaging goes through the express route, a brand can have a preliminary report about the findings within 2 weeks of kickoff.

Nuanced Understanding

There are a few key survey techniques that allow for an in-depth understanding of your messaging.

Highlighter Tool

The highlighter tool will allow for participants to highlight the exact parts of the messaging that they like and dislike. Additionally, they can also include open-ended feedback to give further understanding for why they like or dislike a certain aspect of the messaging. 

MaxDiff

Using a MaxDiff methodology will also allow the brand to understand exactly how much a message will lead to sales.  The MaxDiff is a trade-off analysis technique that can help determine which messaging or attributes directly influence the decision process. The MaxDiff is an alternative to a standard rating scale that often leads you to believe every attribute is essential. This questioning forces respondents to make choices between attributes, which results in a more robust data set.

Use this technique to prioritize which benefits/value propositions to incorporate and determine what messaging to include. A brand can test up to twenty succinct messages using this technique. 

• Randomly present ~5 attributes (at a time) to respondents. This is where the Max Diff is utilized – this analysis predicts the response for each possible combination (there are 3.2 million possible combinations).
• For example, the study could tell that a message is 2.9 times more likely to lead to a sale than another message.

Normative Data

In a message testing survey, respondents can assess the concept against a series of attributes such as learn more, innovative, etc. Compare these attributes against overall norms.

In market research, norms (also called normative data or benchmarks) are baselines established to compare your data against. It allows you to determine if the results are above or below par. They are particularly popular in advertising and brand testing and allow a better understanding of how brands and advertisements compare against the rest of the market.

Establish norms by creating an average aggregate of all the surveys commissioned by clients that ask the same questions.

Cons

Removes Polarizing Options

When you’re trying to please everyone, you can end up pleasing no one. Therefore, it is important to remember that polarizing messaging can be a good thing. It allows a brand to stand out from the crowd. In order to avoid this happening after testing, make sure that the messaging is unique and differentiating. For example, the winner of a message test is often low-cost or discounts – pick the next most popular message. Low cost is not differentiating. 

If your company is interested in content marketing research, please reach out to [email protected], and we will be happy to schedule a call to discuss the research objectives with you.

In addition, check out Provoke Insights research services here.

Read some of the latest blogs in the Pros and Cons Series:

1. The Pros and Cons of Survey Research
2. The Pros and Cons of Online Focus Groups

IF YOU WANT TO, SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTERS HERE!

and finally, follow our social media accounts:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/provokeinsights

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/provokeinsights/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/provoke-insights

An Online Focus Group is a type of qualitative research. The methodology is especially beneficial during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it provides a contactless way to conduct exploratory research. However, this methodology has its advantages and disadvantages. 

Pros

Closest Online Equivalent 

Online focus groups are the closest online equivalent to in-person focus groups. While the fundamentals of in-person focus groups are getting a group of people in a room with a moderator leading a discussion. The fundamentals of online focus groups are the same – a group of people and a moderator leading a discussion. 

Lower Cost

Online focus groups are a lower-cost alternative to in-person focus groups. One of the significant expenses of focus groups is facility rental and travel. Without needing to be in-person, there is no need for a facility and no need for travel. Travel for the moderator and the observers can add up as you need to pay for a hotel, airfare, car service, and meal cost. 

Increase Efficiency

In-person focus groups take longer because of the travel involved. For in-person focus groups, the researchers, moderators, and stakeholders all travel to the focus groups’ location. The participants will be locally recruited and have to go to the facility (by car or public transport). Online focus groups are much more efficient – researchers, moderators, stakeholders, and participants can all partake from their home or an office. 

Geographical Independency

When choosing to conduct in-person focus groups, the researchers and stakeholders have to select a few cities that they can feasibly travel to and will have a population of their target audience to recruit. This (somewhat arbitrary) selection means that the insights are gathered from these specific cities’ residents, leaving out any randomness of the sample. Online focus groups allow for research to be conducted nationwide or globally – depending on the brand’s target. 

Deeper Insights

This pro is not guaranteed, but there is an argument that participants are more comfortable when they are at home and will give more honest and open responses. Any factors like being in a focus group facility or being in-person with other participants may be intimidating and lead to some participants remaining silent out of the picture. 

Cons

Technical Difficulties

Participants are often using new technology when joining online focus groups. This learning curve can lead to trouble downloading the software, signing in, or getting set up. As a result, it is vital to have technical support for all participants when entering the session. It is also often advised to incentivize early log on times – this means that participants will be more willing to join the group early, and iron out any kinks with the technology. 

Internet Instability

While we do live in 2020 and internet speed is rapid, there can always be instability. This fluctuation can lead to participants or the moderator cutting out mid-sentence. It is another reason that tech support needs to be present for the entirety of the session. If this happens, tech support can try to help get the person re-connected. 

The other issue that slow or unstable internet can cause is long lag times. Sometimes the video will be moving, but there is no sound or vice versa. This is not as severe of an issue; however, it can make transitions difficult and often leads to people speaking over one another. The moderator can think that someone has stopped talking when in reality, the video or audio just lagged. 

Distraction

In contrast to participants being more comfortable at home, there are often many more distractions for participants when they are online. They are signing in from their house. While we ask them to remove any distraction, there can still be a family member or a pet that can interrupt their train of thought or make them have to step away from their computer for a moment. 

Conclusion

While these are the pros and cons of online focus groups, at Provoke Insights, we believe in looking at each business need/objective individually and deciding on a case-by-case basis the best methodology for the specific research requirement. 

Another excellent alternative to in-person focus groups is AI focus groups. It is a live chat session between a moderator and participants, but it allows for up to 100 participants and includes a voting system that will enable participants to agree or disagree with each other quantitatively. Make sure to assess all of the options before deciding to invest in research.

If your company is interested in content marketing research, please reach out to [email protected], and we will be happy to schedule a call to discuss the research objectives with you.

In addition, check out Provoke Insights research services here.

Read some of our recent case studies and blogs here:

1. NPS: An Explanation & Its Importance
2. COVID-19 and Conducting Market Research
3. Sunpower: An NPS and Competitive Assessment Study

IF YOU WANT TO, SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTERS HERE!

and finally, Follow our social media accounts:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/provokeinsights

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Retaining a customer is five times cheaper than acquiring a new customer – that is why brand loyalty is crucial. While we know its value, how do you measure brand loyalty? Often by using the measuring technique, Net Promoter Score (NPS), is an important indicator of success.

NPS is a rating on a scale from -100 to 100. It informs how likely a consumer is to recommend a product or service to a colleague or a friend. This powerful number has a surprising history and can go a long way to inform brand strategy.

History of NPS

In a 2003 article for Harvard Business Review, Net Promoter Score was devised by Frank Reichheld, a fellow of the consultancy firm Bain & Company. He also continued his exploration of and correlation to success in the book The Ultimate Question 2.0 (co-authored with fellow Bain & Company employee Rob Markey).

What makes this score so important? To paraphrase what Reichheld wrote in his original article;

Loyalty by a customer is about more than just reoccurring purchasing. Even if someone buys over and over, they may not be loyal. They might be doing so out of indifference or barriers to exit. 

For this reason, loyalty must be measured by recommendation. A loyal customer will not only re-purchase but they will promote the brand among friends, family, and colleagues. By doing so, they are not only saying they will re-purchase, but they are putting their reputations on the line. 

NPS asks about likelihood to recommend. In other words, NPS measures not just whether a customer is buying a product consistently, but if they feel strongly enough about the product to risk how others view them to recommend the product or service. It’s both an indicator of brand usage and resonance.

What Makes NPS Beneficial

Reichheld links the score to company growth and success. NPS is a great company indicator, and it’s also a yardstick to compare to competitors and other industries. Understanding your own brand’s Net Promoter Score compared to direct competitors can show how you stack up in terms of loyalty. 

In addition to just your competitors, it’s essential to see how your industry’s NPS stacks up to other sectors to get a full contextual understanding of not only loyalty to your brand but relative to other brands/industries. For example, cable companies often rate much lower on average than other businesses, so a cable company may have a particularly low NPS but it may be higher than competitors. Knowing where it places among competitors and then among other industries allows for a fuller picture.

Calculation of Net Promoter Score

To calculate a brand’s net promoter score, respondents are asked to rate how likely they are to recommend the product/service to a friend or colleague on a scale of 0 to 10. After the data is collected, answers are grouped into three; detractors (answered 0 to 6), passives (answered 7 or 8), and promoters (answered 9 or 10). Further, the percentage of respondents who are detractors is subtracted from the percentage of promoters. Finally, that percentage is taken as a whole number, giving us an NPS.

Ways to Utilize NPS

One way to utilize NPS changes is by conducting a benchmark study to highlight how a brand is either progressing/regressing. An annual tracker that highlights Net Promoter Score for both the brand and its competitors gives a great view of changes in the market. Just the score itself is a view into how brands stack up.

What drives the score is essential to understand. Often, areas of the company, such as purchase process, customer service, and different product/service attributes, impact the score. By analyzing multiple attributes for your brand and the competition, you can tell what your brand is doing better and worse among the competition. You can also conduct correlations to determine what is driving each score.

Another way to use NPS is to isolate high propensity users based on demographics/answers to other questions in your survey. For example, maybe your company performs better among users from urban areas instead of suburban. Or possibly, if your product is online software, those that primarily use your software for one feature rate you higher or lower. Or even if users had issues signing up for your product, how that affects NPS, and if a big enough group of people are affecting your score due to one issue. This is the power of NPS.

NPS is a robust market research tool that can be used in conjunction with others. It is not the be-all and end-all, but it can help your company spot issues upfront and increase loyalty. 

If your company is interested in an NPS study or other market research, please reach out to [email protected], and we will be happy to schedule a call to discuss the research objectives with you.

In addition, check out Provoke Insights research services here.

Read some of our recent case studies and blogs here:

1. COVID-19 and Conducting Market Research
2. Sunpower: An NPS and Competitive Assessment Study
3. Segmentation and Finding Your Target Audience

If you want to, Sign up for our newsletters here!

and finally, Follow our social media accounts:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/provokeinsights

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/provoke-insights

COVID-19 Impact on Market Research

In these unprecedented times, ‘business as usual’ is not always the case. At Provoke Insights, we are continually committed to providing you with the highest quality strategy and research. 

As our company has always supported our team working-at-home for a couple of days of the week, the transition to working virtually entirely has not been an issue. Our colleagues meet multiple times throughout the day to provide statuses on projects and give feedback and assist in initiatives.

We would be lying if we said COVID-19 has not impacted market research. However, at Provoke Insights, our agile approach has allowed us to adapt quickly. We are also continually assessing how we can develop the most effective research during these changing times.  

In-Person Research

Focus groups and in-person in-depth individual interviews have come to a halt due to the need for social distancing. At Provoke Insights, while we conduct online qualitative often, we have recently had to transfer an offline 30-focus-group project online in just a few days to online due to COVID-19. 

The virus impacts the recruitment process for online focus groups. The show-rate is much lower than the average show-rate (before the pandemic). Some of the causes are the following:

• Essential workers such as warehouse and supermarket staff are often called in for extra hours at the last minute.
• Parents had difficulty finding childcare as kids no longer had school or any daycare.
• Overall, people are stressed due to income strain.
• Some had to pull out as they fell ill due to the virus.
• Participants under the age of 25 years old are less responsive, as many are undergoing an unusually large transition, moving home from college back into their parents’ homes.

At Provoke Insights, we have put the following procedures in place:

• Over-recruit the number of participants per group by a significant amount
• Additional reminders for those whom we recruit
• Higher incentives to improve show-rate

Using Technology During Online Qualitative

Participants’ WIFI service may be slow due to high usage, or specific audiences are not very technologically savvy. As a result, at Provoke Insights, we take the target audience into account. For particular audiences, we recommend using qualitative technology that does not require high-speed wifi or is not too complicated.

The Research Topic & Questions   

COVID-19 is on many people’s minds, and it impacts the way people respond to questions. When developing guides and questionnaires, you need to understand the objective of the research and look at feedback regarding how the world is currently or diving into insights that are more long-term. Consequently, it is more important than ever to write questions smartly to understand the bigger picture rather than focus solely on the immediate environment. We review all initiatives to ensure that the current climate will not impact the project’s results. 

Refreshing Findings

While in a ‘normal’ year, it is crucial to update your research and findings to see if behaviors and the market have changed. This year, it is especially essential to understand that the research you may have conducted last year may no longer be relevant. Consumers’ mindsets are changing, and the way they behave will shift over the next few months.

If you are considering researching during this time, please reach out to Provoke Insights to address any concerns you may have. You can reach us using the contact page or by emailing [email protected]. 

In addition, check out Provoke Insights research services here.

As mentioned in previous blogs and webinars, market research is best when its results are applicable. Research needs to have real-world significance for it to be worth conducting. Particularly when it comes to allocating marketing dollars, research can be a great tool to determine your target audience. Thankfully, there are research methods like segmentation that do just that!

Segmentation research is a way to better understand your prospects, current customers, as well as competitors’ target audiences. It provides a method to map out brand position and develop a deeper understanding of segments. Segmentation can also help drive customer growth by determining the right level of marketing investment required based upon the segment’s growth potential.

How does Segmentation work?

There are a few ways to conduct a segmentation study. First, you need to have a dataset. Usually, quantitative surveys are the best way to gather an adequate audience to segment potential markets. Additionally, you could segment a company database, although that will be a segmentation of your current/past customers vs. including your prospects. 

Once you have your dataset, the first step is to uncover themes using an advanced analytics technique called factor analysis. To generate the segments, you then conduct a cluster analysis in order to create cohorts that are not only manageable but also sizeable (making them sufficient to warrant the investment). This statistical technique is used to separate groups by clusters of answers to find groups that have similar behavior. As a result, you can segment your dataset into customers who have different consumer behaviors, and understand who might be your ideal customer.

On top of the dataset you are using, you can supplement your primary research with secondary research. This can include additional research on personas with the behaviors you found, including where they live geographically, as well as detailed media habits. Thereby accompanying your primary research with real-world results to better understand the bigger picture, and have strong results.

The Value of Segmentation

The value of segmentation research is that it directly ties into the usability of the findings. We provide direction to bring the segmentation alive and off the page. The end game is to ensure that all segments are “actionable”, meaning your company can easily target these prospects and customers. For instance, once your personas are created, using their behaviors, you can create personas and assign them names and bring their behaviors to life.

As a result, you will have a group of personas into which you can separate your overall audience. Their purchasing and consumer behaviors will pair with their demographics to help you understand exactly who your company needs to be prioritizing and omitting in terms of audience.

You can create a predictive algorithm (typing tool) to help group prospects and customers into a distinct group. This way your marketing is better targeted to their needs. 

In this case, you will be able to create a marketing strategy based on who you find to be your target audience, and who you find to be a disaffected audience. Likewise, you will find out who you should spend less time targeting. This is because your return on investment in terms of marketing dollars will be poor.

Conclusion

In conclusion, segmentation research is a great way to split your audience into different personas, leading to an actionable marketing strategy. In terms of market research methods, it’s a great way to combine both primary and secondary research methods. As a result, you will understand the consumer audience that your brand will draw.

If your company is interested in content marketing research, please reach out to [email protected], and we will be happy to schedule a call to discuss the research objectives with you.

In addition, check out Provoke Insights research services here.

Read more about segmentation on the Provoke Insights’ blog here:

1. Segmentation Research: Why is it so Important?
2. Segmentation Research and Creating Personas

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While quantitative research helps companies quantify their business needs, qualitative research is necessary to dig into more specific information. Qualitative research can be accomplished in many different ways, one of the most known methods is focus groups. However, sometimes it’s worth it to conduct in-depth interviews with consumers.

An in-depth interview is exactly what it sounds like; a long conversation with participants about the specifics of what you are researching. Typically ranging from 15-60 minutes, a one on one interview of a participant can give you profound insights. The interviews are conducting using a discussion guide, that is prepared before the meeting. This acts as an outline for how the conversation will go and the interviewer will use it as a guide but can include additional prompts if they deem it necessary. The information gathered, like all qualitative, is directional in nature. Here are some pros and cons of conducting in-depth interviews.

Pros 

In-Depth Insights

It’s no surprise that an in-depth interview would lead to in-depth insights. Oftentimes, surveys get answers on a wide range of questions but they are not flexible enough to get as detailed and specific with each respondent. As mentioned, if a respondent says something and the interviewer would like to gather more information, in-depth interviews are flexible, and they can prompt the interviewee to expand on the topic. Sometimes the most information lies in the details, and a long interview with a participant is the best way to get those details.

Additionally, in-depth interviews will force the interviewer to think creatively about what research they’re looking for. For example, if a consumer in an interview brings up reasoning for a decision that the researcher/brand hadn’t thought of before, now the researcher can explore that reasoning clearly with the consumer. 

Immediacy of Results

You know what the outcome/perspective is from each interview, and it can lead you in other directions and themes within your research.

Pairs Well with Quantitative Results

In-depth interviews can also humanize survey results in a way that is otherwise difficult to understand. For instance, if your survey includes answers to questions about your product or brand, the in-depth interview is the best time to investigate those discrepancies/points with a real-life consumer who may give you additional insight. In-depth interviews can be used for stand-alone research, but they are probably best used in tandem with other research.

Cons 

Time Commitment

One of the difficulties with conducting an in-depth interview is the time it takes to do.  It is not just time-consuming for the researcher, but also for the interviewee. Typically, larger incentives are provided for in-depth interviews than other forms of research.

Randomness of Sample

One of the main issues with in-depth interviews is the randomness of the interviewee. Randomness is a key to surveying in an unbiased fashion. However, outliers do appear in a random sample, and an in-depth interview risks highlighting an outlier very closely. 

For example, your brand could select an interview of someone who holds an extremely negative view of your product or had a specific experience that informed their views. As a result, it’s important to correctly interpret an interview for what it is; a closer look at one person’s experience and perspective. It’s vital to understanding new perspectives on your product, but it is still just one perspective.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are both pros and cons to in-depth interviews. In the end, it’s important to weigh all of them before making a research decision. They are a great tool that, if utilized correctly, can lead to great insight.

If your company is interested in conducting in-depth interviews or other market research, please reach out to [email protected], and we will be happy to schedule a call to discuss the research objectives with you.

In addition, check out Provoke Insights research services here.

Want to read more from Provoke Insights, find some more blog posts linked below:

1. Sustainability Marketing: Adapting to the New Consumer Mindset
2. Don’t Let Your Marketing Dollars Go to Waste
3. 2020 Trends: Advertising & Marketing Industry
4. The Power of Census Data
5. A New Way to Test Significant Differences
6. Fin-Tech: How to reinvigorate your brand in a sea of sameness

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As climate change makes news every day, consumers are deciding to take action into their own hands. As a result, consumers are more interested in the sustainability of the products they purchase, and it’s affecting their decision process. 

It’s important in this new world that companies adjust, and many are. Consequently, new subscription services are banking on sustainability as a marketing point to sway environmentally conscious customers. How can your brand keep up-to-date with sustainable marketing?

Sustainability: The New Consumer Mindest

Consumers are more concerned with how companies are affecting the environment. For example, 90% of consumers believe that companies and brands have a responsibility to take care of the planet and its people. Similarly, 83% of consumers, when deciding between brands, will always pick the one with a better sustainability record. In addition, 70% are willing to pay more for products and services that help protect the environment or don’t infringe on human rights. 

Certainly, these results are the sign of a new consumer mindset. Generally, customers are very concerned about how their providers are affecting the world around them. Brands have fallen victim to their own unethical behaviors being brought to light. For instance, Starbucks decided to get rid of plastic straws after a viral video of a turtle choking on plastic in the ocean. Fast fashion clothing brands like Forever21 and Urban Outfitters have also been criticized for their hostility to workers and harmful clothing material. Moreover, companies have to be careful about their practices, because consumers are watching.

Sustainability Marketing

As a result, brands are deciding to double down on sustainable and environmentally sound practices in order to appeal to this new generation of conscious consumers. This has resulted in a few different things; new companies starting with a message of sustainability, and legacy brands making an effort to revamp as sustainable and eco-friendly.

As an example of new brands, startups recently raised record numbers to deal with packaging waste, with hundreds of millions raised across ten different companies. But there is also the clothing brand Rent the Runway, which sells customers on renting dresses so that they can still wear what they want to an event without participating in fast-fashion. There’s Feather, the furniture rental company which rents out furniture on the premise that furniture will not go to waste.

As for legacy brands, Burger King has recently launched Impossible Burgers, using fake meat in order to appeal to vegetarians and carnivores who are worried about the environmental impact of meat production. And there is Patagonia, who has made news for donating millions to combat climate change.

A New Hope

It’s important that your brand keeps up to date with sustainability marketing. In order to stay on top of the climate crisis, as well as sell to customers, this new trend in branding and practices is good for everyone involved. Let’s all hope for more sustainable and ethical practices, for the planet and people’s sake!

Want to read more from Provoke Insights, find some more blog posts linked below:

1. Don’t Let Your Marketing Dollars Go to Waste
2. 2020 Trends: Advertising & Marketing Industry
3. The Power of Census Data
4. A New Way to Test Significant Differences
5. Fin-Tech: How to reinvigorate your brand in a sea of sameness
6. Research Norms: What are they and what they can tell you

Read an excerpt from our blog on the power of census data:

“The census is conducted out every 10 years. It counts all people – citizens and non-citizens. It is mandatory for citizens to respond to the census so that the government will have an accurate count of the population. This serves as the backbone of fair political representation and it plays a role in many other areas of public life.

Census data is some of the most reliable out there. As a result, companies including market research firms find this information essential. The statistics provide information such as gender, age, and household income. Also, it is possible to drill down the data by state, country, city, or even zip code.”

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So, you brought a new idea to the market. You have even gotten it funded. However, long term success is determined by finding the correct audience, identifying the right unique selling point, and understanding your purchase funnel. Research is a crucial way to make sure that your marketing dollars are spent correctly (and not wasted). Market research (at its best) is directly related to your marketing strategy. 

There are multiple steps in the research process that are important to take to make sure research is strategy-based. It’s not just your research methods, as any research could be used to inform marketing but it’s the overall approach to your research that will make sure that your marketing dollars don’t go to waste.

The Market & The Consumer

When launching a new project, there are two areas to consider: Where should you launch your product? And who are your customers?

So how do we answer these questions? Before commissioning any expensive primary research, it may be best to analyze secondary research (information that is already out there). For example, in a recent blog, we detailed the power of census data. You can learn a lot from existing studies!

Second, survey research gives an in-depth look into consumer insights. Surveys should be designed around a topic and with a clear strategic goal as a result. In other words, a company looking to design an ad strategy can use survey data to find out which media their target customers use, and advertise through those channels.

Third, qualitative research (e.g. focus groups, in-depth interviews) bring your consumers and data to life. In this type of research, you see people’s expressions and hear the consumer’s tone of voice. It also allows you to probe deeper into questions your company might have about consumer behavior.

Having a Clear Process so it Doesn’t go to Waste

Before even getting into the research, it’s very important to map out a timeline and the process of your research and stick to it. Marketing strategy depends on clarity, and having a step by step plan to accomplish the research is the first step to a direct conclusion (without any waste). 

Setting out time for each step, and understanding what each step in your research process is are key to obtaining results that help inform your strategy.

Having Clear Objectives: Spending your Marketing Dollars

One of the most important steps in this process is to map out what you are looking for. What are the objectives of the research? What will you do with the research? Make sure you are not researching for the sake of researching, research for a purpose. For example, if your research is too broad, you will end up just reporting facts without any actionable strategy points.

Conclusion

Clear objectives, clear processes, clear distinctions, lead to actionable strategy! It’s important to have clarity when conducting your research in order to have actionable results. You don’t want to muddy the research, or else you will not have actionable results that will ensure an efficient marketing strategy. 

Want to read more from Provoke Insights, find some more blog posts linked below:

1. 2020 Trends: Advertising & Marketing Industry
2. The Power of Census Data
3. A New Way to Test Significant Differences
4. Fin-Tech: How to reinvigorate your brand in a sea of sameness
5. Research Norms: What are they and what they can tell you
6. How Black Friday Can Hurt Your Brand

Read this excerpt for a blog from our series on Generation Alpha!

“Knowing your audience and prospects is a key way to improve your profitability! As a result, different generations have different behaviors, attitudes, and preferences. Thus, understanding the generation gaps will help you understand the needs of your customers. Generations give marketing strategists an easy way to target and focus their methods. 

Baby Boomers do not want to see texting acronyms; they are swayed by clear video, they care about their in-store experiences, and they like to compare prices. On the other hand, Millennials want to care about the product they’re buying, and want to have a positive impact on their community. In addition, Generation Z (those born after Millennials and before 2010) is most influenced by social media, as that’s where they receive most of their news.

There is a new generation on the block! Brands need to know how this audience differs from their current audiences. Provoke Insights will be releasing a three-part blog series to help marketers understand the newest generation, to reinvigorate interest. Generation Alpha, the children of Millennials, are making waves recently in the news. Coupled with their Millennial parents, a marketing buzz has started to precipitate around the arrival of these youngsters. But how do they differ from their parents? In other words, what differences will there be in marketing to Generation Alpha versus marketing to Millennials?”

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Happy New Year, everybody! As 2019 and the past decade comes to a close, a new one begins. And as is a tradition here at Provoke Insights, time for our annual advertising and marketing trends article. In other words, a comprehensive look at what can you expect over the next 12 months. That is to say, what are in-house marketers and ad agencies up to?

A Decade of Change

The 2010s were a decade of change in the marketing and advertising world. Ad spend has shifted almost entirely to digital, in large part due to social media. Advertisers spend around $30 billion on advertising on social media. And advertisers spend a total of $57 billion on programmatic advertising (includes banner ads and advertising on Google and Amazon).

Surprisingly, video advertising is the end of decade trend for online ad spend, as connected video advertising is expected to reach $6 billion by 2021. It comes as cable cutters have driven down television’s stranglehold on the media marketplace.

5G’s Impact on Trends

The first big invention of the 2020s will be 5G. 5G is the upgraded cell service technology that will make phone speed incredibly fast, and is going to be further integrated in 2020. A study even projects that sales of 5G devices will increase to 73.7 million units by the end of the decade’s first year! 

How will this affect advertisers? Well, phone streaming is going to hit incredible high speeds, with better sound, and higher definition. Now advertisers will have to react to the market by developing more interactive creative, with high-resolution graphics and better sound. This leaves possibilities for a whole new wave of creative advertising to try and hold consumer’s attention. 

Amazon: How will Retailers Respond?

Amazon may have killed retail this last decade, as their online shopping service is now ubiquitous, and in-person retailers have notably struggled to keep up. What Amazon may have done best is integrating with brands to sell their products and taking a piece of the profit in the process. 

However, 2020 is the time that companies fight back against the omnipresent online technology giant. For example, Microsoft will be launching cashier-less checkout and dynamic pricing displays. The company Neighborhood Goods specializes in partnering with companies to create pop-up shops, which have made an impact as apart of the new experience-based shopping economy. And the Canadian direct competitor Shopify’s launch of fulfillment services makes it a strong challenger. Will they have a shot of dethroning e-commerce king? Unlikely, but they sure will try!

Research Trends

As the marketing world shifts, so will the world of research. And the research world is getting much more creative. As so much spend has shifted online, and as surveys generally have shifted online, new technologies are allowing market researchers to be more creative in how they collect information. 

One of these new trends is online artificial intelligence focus groups. New companies that have created focus groups that utilize AI are taking the research world by storm and allowing researchers to conduct larger focus groups and get results in real-time. Focus groups can consist of dozens of people now, take less time, and be conducted online from anywhere. Other utilizations of online surveys are launching, as quick surveys on websites as pop-ups are becoming more and more popular. Look for that to continue in 2020.

We hope you had a refreshing holiday season and are recharged and ready to go in the new year!

Sources: 

Fisher, Lauren. “US Programmatic Digital Display Ad Spending.” Nov. 21, 2019. Available at: https://content-na1.emarketer.com/us-programmatic-digital-display-ad-spending

Ryan, Jillian. “Ten Key Digital Trends for 2020 What Marketers Need to Know in the Year Ahead.” Dec. 9, 2019. Available at: https://content-na1.emarketer.com/ten-key-digital-trends-for-2020 

Read some of our most recent blogs here!

1. Research Norms: What are they and what they can tell you
2. How Black Friday Can Hurt Your Brand
3. Why Trends are so Important in Marketing
4. Experiential Marketing & Retail

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The last census that the US conducted cost the country $13 billion. It is no surprise that the census data is important.

So, what is the census?

The census is mandated to be carried out every 10 years by the US constitution. It counts all people – citizens and non-citizens. It is also mandatory to respond to the census so that the government will have an accurate count of the population. This serves as the backbone of fair political representation and it plays a role in many other areas of public life.

The information that is produced by the census is some of the most reliable data that exists because it is the only research study that encapsulates the entire population of the United States. As a result, companies including market research firms find this information vital. The statistics provide information such as gender, age, and household income. Also, it is possible to drill down the data by state, country, city, or even zip code.

Below are some examples of how market researchers use the extremely useful resource of census data:

Quotas

Market researchers use the census break down of the population to ensure that their sample is representative of the demographic make-up of the population that the study is targeting. In some cases, researchers use a sampling technique called weighting to help ensure accuracy.

Projections

When conducting survey research, often new segments or audiences are found. Using the census information, a researcher can calculate an estimation of the size of the population.

Where to Find the Census Information

The Census data is easily accessible to everyone. It is data that you have free access to, no matter who you are. The information is readily available here data.census.gov

The platform was recently updated and now includes several tools to analyze the data. Below outlines how to use the new website.

How To Use the New Census Database

The new census database makes it easy to find what you’re looking for with a table of options to mix and match from. There are a couple of ways to start your search. For example, if you are looking for general demographics and all of the different census surveys, click on the “View Tables” option on the home page. This will come up with a table and an option to pick a particular survey to view. This is the simplest way to get the general information if that’s what you are looking for.

On the other hand, if you are looking to dig deeper into a particular category, use the advanced search, shown in the figure above. There is a range of filters for you to look at it, including years and geography. Within the geography, you can make your search as broad as the whole country, and as granular as a census tract, giving you many options.

Topics are within these filters, where you can choose between different categories, including the economy, education, employment, living arrangements, health, housing, and more. Once you choose a topic and geography, the platform will direct you to a corresponding table for what you picked.

The table feature is very easy to use. However, there are still a few glitches with downloading tables when you want to. Hopefully, because this is a new system, it will be fixed in the near future!

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