If you have been thinking about expanding your market research investments but still aren’t quite ready to build an in-house team, another option is to build a virtual one.
If you have been thinking about expanding your market research investments but still aren’t quite ready to build an in-house team, another option is to build a virtual one.
Market Research Project Disasters: Common Cause #1
My premise is that one of the market research world’s greatest challenges is that market research departments spend 70% or more of their time on project management—as opposed to the strategic functions that would lead to more innovation.
RFPs range widely in terms of their level of sophistication and complexity. If your need is for a simple project, do yourself a favor: keep your RFP simple. It will save you a lot of time when the proposals come back and you actually have to read them.
At minimum, a market research RFP states parameters and requests responses to the basics:
Market segmentation is all about sales and marketing ROI. The premise is that to maximize success with a large population of customers, it is best to divide it into logical subgroups. By dividing one large, generalized market into subgroups, you can fine-tune your product, messaging, promotional, distribution and related strategies to meet the specific needs of unique customer groups.
There are several points in a market research project where you, as the client-side manager, need to be particularly cautious. Here are two of the big ones.
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.
Small market research 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.
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.
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.
