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Cross Media Marketing is a Great Way to Get Customer Information

October 23, 2009 · 3 Comments

iStock_000003739214XSmallHave you ever considered using direct mail as a way of gathering demographic and psychographic information?  If not, then this is your opportunity to really get some bang for your marketing budget dollar.

With the advent of on-demand printing and publishing, we’ve been able to literally convert mass-marketing to a more personal one-to-one experience.  All it takes is a list, a database and some creativity and for a relatively small budget, you will be on your way to:

1. Getting more information about your list (email address, buying preferences, job title)

2. Learning  how to better communicate with your list (how would you like to be contacted?)

3. Drive list members to your website

4. Present them with a specific offer

5. Invite them to an event

6. Register for a conference or event, including break-out sessions, etc.

All of this can be yours by exploring “cross-media marketing.”  Don’t worry, this isn’t anything radically new.  What’s new is our ability to create a three-dimensional, relationship-building experience with our target audience by creating a single “themed” campaigned aimed at leading our list to water and then making them drink.

How Cross Media Works

A Cross Media campaign is powered by a database engine that will collect all kinds of information for you. First off, it will tell you who responded, and who didn’t. It will also track exactly how far each respondent goes into the pURL, and it will collect all of their responses to the questions you ask them on the pURL.

The database engine can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be, collecting information and using that information to trigger
subsequent events.

Cross Media campaigns utilize a variety of means of reaching your list members, and allow you to further qualify your list, and gain more information about its particular members. Your purpose is to learn as much as you can about your individual list members so that you can communicate with them on a meaningful and relevant level. This is the essence of 1:1marketing.

How to Start Your Own Cross Media Campaign

To run an effective Cross-Media Marketing campaign you will need three solid, experienced team-members.  First, you’ll need a marketing or product manager who knows your company, its strategy which information to collect and what you’re going to do with it.

Next you’ll need the one-two punch of a creative agency that has the capability and blend of solid creative ideas and design coupled with a technical team that can translate that creativity onto the web.

Finally, you will need a strong technical component to create this powerful list database that will be your money machine.  This technical team will be working closely with the design agency and if you find a design agency that has such a team – you are in luck.

What a Cross Media Marketing Campaign Looks Like

  1. Set an objective. For example, you have a list of 100,000 people that you want to whittle down to just your ideal customers.  Your budget has been cut, postage has gone up and you can’t afford to be mailing stuff that’s getting thrown away.
  2. Get your list. Let’s say our list has only addresses and no names.  To get to our ideal customer, it would help to have some names and some basic information that would qualify them for our offering.
  3. Send a simple mailing with a pURL (personalized URL). Since we have addresses and we want more information, we send a simple postcard to the address and since we don’t have a name the pURL is actually a “code.”
  4. The postcard is written to appeal to our ideal customer. The customer receives the postcard and goes to the web site. Once there, they have the opportunity to receive a “gift” in exchange for some more information; contact name, e-mail, and perhaps an answer to a question.  Don’t over-task the recipient, there will be opportunities for more touches later on.

At this point you have reduced the size of your list significantly and identified those people who have the most interest in your offer.  In addition to that, you’ve opened up a line of communication where you can ask them questions and they will answer in exchange for more goodies.

How to Get Started

Here are some resources to check out:

There are still wonderful opportunities to connect with your ideal customer without breaking the bank.  Consider a cross-media marketing campaign in your marketing plan this year.

About the Author: Ivana Taylor is CEO of Third Force, a strategic firm that helps small businesses get and keep their ideal customer.  She’s the co-author of the book “Excel for Marketing Managers” and proprietor ofDIYMarketers, a site for in-house marketers.  Her blog is Strategy Stew.

Categories: Branding · Newsletter · customer research · marketing strategy
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Using Customer Insights to Ignite Employee Passion

October 14, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Group of happy people isolated on white backgroundToday’s guest post is by Kathryn Korostoff, founder of Research Rockstar.

Keeping employees motivated is no small task. The current economic environment creates job security concerns and family pressures that can leave the most dedicated employees drained. Sure, incentive programs help—but those budgets are tight, and as important as money is, it’s not always the best motivator.

So now is a great time to think creatively about re-igniting employee passion.  One option? Brining employees closer to customers.

Customer Insights as Fuel

In most companies, only a small percentage of employees have direct customer contact. And even of those that do, such as in retail, they are so busy that it is hard for them to really observe customers and get a sense of their attitudes and behaviors.

Yet I can tell you from 20 years of experience, that when people get the opportunity to listen to and observe clients—amazing things happen.  Here are some examples I have witnessed:

  • Engineers erupting into a productive debate about how an existing product can be modified to meet an emerging customer need.
  • Sales people excitedly specifying new customer training materials that they want to deliver personally.
  • Executives formulating new pricing models on the spot.
  • Product managers devising new, hard-hitting product roadmaps.

And that’s just a few examples.

So yes, the mood in companies these days is a little down. But with a relatively small investment, we can re-ignite employee passion.

How?

There are several options, but the fastest track is to simply use updated versions of a conventional research technique: focus groups.

Do you think of focus groups as a kind of dated methodology? Yeah, they can be. But there are also lots of very cool, new techniques used in focus groups these days that make them fun for participants, and will generate lots of “aha!” moments for observers.  And focus groups are fantastic because you can have a group of employees observing in real-time, and get a DVD to those that were not able to attend (though I promise you, the DVD is far less likely to inspire than real-time observation).  Many focus groups facilities have observation rooms that can comfortably sit 15 or even 20 people.

If you don’t have a research agency partner that does focus groups, you can find some on the Quirks.com or the QRCA sites, or shoot me an email and I’ll give you some suggestions. If you are on a really tight budget and want to do it in-house, you can contact focus group facilities on your own—and they will connect you with freelance moderators in their locations.

About the Author: Kathryn Korostoff is a 20+ year veteran of the ever-evolving market research industry. She is the founder of Research Rockstar, the only independent firm dedicated to online market research training. She welcomes any questions or comments here or via email, at KKorostoff@ResearchRockstar.com.


Categories: Best Practice · Newsletter · customer research
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The Looking Zone

October 12, 2009 · Leave a Comment

iStock_000000138631XSmallToday’s guest post is by Maria Duron, the chief buzz officer, coach and speaker with buzz2bucks.com.

Research numbers give us so much rich information providing insights and basics on clients and contacts.  I’ve always been a fan of market research from my days as a market researcher in the media industry. Understanding “the who” and “the what” is so fascinating! And, the benefits garnered from that research are not  just limited to large companies.

How can small companies and solo professionals make the most of research data?  The demographics provides us some of the basics of who a client is yet even more interesting is the psychographics – the “why” behind what they do.

Whether you’re connecting for work or for your own business, there are people who are beneficial for you to connect with.  I always recommend that you deepen your connection with those who already know you – those who you already have some degree of “know, like and trust”.

These are your current customers or contacts.  After all if they did business with you or connected with you, you’ve established some level of “know, like and trust”.  It’s a much higher starting point then starting from nothing.

Further, spend some time really understanding who you would like to connect with that would be an asset in your goals.  For example, identify who would be a great connection for you.  Who would make a decision or be involved in a major project, position or department you’re interested in. Or, who would take you further connecting with leaders in your industry?

Most important is finding people prior to the time that they’re in the “looking zone”.  This applies to employees and entrepreneurs alike.  For entrepreneurs, what does your ideal customer “look like” before they’re in the looking zone?  If you’re a realtor, before someone has an interest in selling their home, what do they look like?  Maybe they just found out they were pregnant and are now thinking their current place is too small; maybe their child just graduated and are off to college and now their home is too big; or maybe they just were divorced and realizing they want to start fresh or find a new place.   It’s important to connect with people prior to them looking.  When people are approached to connect when they are in need of something, they are leery of the intention for the connection.  They wonder, is it genuine?  That’s why the connection and the relationship must develop prior to the need. Thus, you are seeking to develop your connections prior to the looking zone.

To maximize this connection, when your connections are in the “looking zone” – where is it they spend time with others just like them?  For example, in keeping with our realtor situation and targeting someone who is going to have a baby and wants to sell their current home, let’s say before they’re in the “looking zone” they might look like parents with younger kids already, or they might have been married a couple of years and are thinking of starting a family.  So, where do they hang out with a great number of others like them?  It could be at a doctor’s office, Lamaze class, elementary school or day care or even a kindermusik class.

Now, take one step back from that and ask yourself, “where are they spending times before they’re in the looking zone?”  This is a vital question to ask because everyone wants to make contact with your prime customer when they’re in the looking zone. Everyone wants to talk, meet or sell them what they need.  Yet, if you have a relationship already established with them prior to their need; if you have developed some “know, like and trust”; if they’ve had chance to sample your character and competence, then when the needs arises and you are visible and credible to them, they will call on you.

About the Author: Maria Duron is author of the book “Mouth to Mouth Marketing” and the eBook “Social I.R.A.” She’s been quoted as a marketing and word of mouth expert by Entrepreneur Magazine and contributes to several publications and is the creator of #brandchat, a weekly twitter conversation about all aspects of branding. She broadcasts weekly as the business coach with CBS7. Duron will speak at the 2009 Massachusetts Conference for Women.

Categories: Branding · Newsletter · customer research
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Survey Sample Sizes: How Many Respondents Do You Really Need?

September 25, 2009 · 2 Comments

iStock_000007851694XSmallToday’s guest post is by Gary Angel, Gary co-founded Semphonic and is president and chief technology officer. You can read more articles by Gary at the Semphonic Blog.

We just finished our annual web analytics conference – the Web Analytics X Change. The conference is unusual in that it’s all small group discussions with enterprise practitioners. It’s a great format for hearing what’s really bugging people. As part of the conference, I attended a session focused on survey research and online behavioral integration. One of the most intensely debated topics was online survey sample size.

It’s a big issue because many organizations find themselves deploying almost as many different surveys as tags and they don’t want to suffer too much from “uncertainty principle syndrome” – damaging the user experience that they’re trying to measure.

How many respondents are really enough?

There are two schools of thought about sample size – one is that as long as a survey is representative, a relatively small sample size is adequate. Perhaps 300-500 respondents can work. The other point of view is that while maintaining a representative sample is essential, the more respondents you have the better.

This is a big issue because it impacts all sorts of decisions including the length of your survey, your collection mechanism, and, of course, you’re sampling rate.

So what’s the right answer?

If you aren’t integrating your survey data with web behavioral data, then a relatively small sample size might be okay (I’d emphasize the might). But if you want to combine behavioral analysis and survey data, then forget a sample 300 or 500 respondents. Those numbers simply won’t work.

Let me give you a real-world example showing why that’s true. We’re working right now with a client that samples approximately 1000 site visitors a month for their satisfaction survey. They asked us to do a study of the impact of using one of two internal search tools on their site on both overall site satisfaction and visit accomplishment.

On this site, search is used in about 10% of visits. Since the site gets more than 10 million visits a month, that still yields a heckuva lot of behavior to study – more than 1 million search visits every month. No problem there.

But our representative sample only captured about 100 respondents who’d used search.

Between the two search tools, one served about 70% of the queries. So for the second search tool, we had about 30 respondents to deal with. Getting the picture?

For our analysis, we wanted to track visit reason vs. satisfaction vs. outcomes for searchers. With some visit reasons only accounting for about 10% of visits, there were cases where we were supposed to analyze the outcomes for all of 3 visitors.

And that’s with a survey size of 1000 and a relatively simple cross-tabulation of visit intent and one fairly common behavior. Sure, we could add lots more months to the picture. But tracking behavior over extended periods of time adds all sorts of complications to the analysis. The combination of seasonality, site change and macro-economic change make this dangerous. Very few of our client sites remain constant for six months.

If doing behavioral analysis with 1000 survey respondents is challenging, imagine what it would be like with a sample size of 300. Impossible.

So what’s the right answer?

If I had my druthers, I’d recommend that high volume sites strive for a much higher sample size – something like 15K would be nice on a monthly basis.

Is that too much for your user experience to bear? Obviously, the answer depends on your site volume and your take-up and completion rates.

You can’t do much about volume, but if your survey length is impacting your take-ups or completion rates, then I’d be willing to sacrifice a whole bunch of questions to get to the increased size. The fact is that on many 30-40 question surveys, we’d only expect to use at most 5-10 of those questions in a behavioral analysis. I’d bet even money that your analysts feel that same way and that a heavy majority of questions on many long surveys hardly ever get studied at all.

At some point you may have to make a decision: do you want a whole lot of really shallow information or do you actually want to do analysis on a narrower set of data?

So when it comes to behavioral analysis combined with survey integration, the right answer is pretty obvious. A representative sample is essential, but size really does matter. Let yourself get talked into a 300 person sample, and you might as well throw all that work you did to integrate online survey data with behavioral data in the junk pile.

Categories: Best Practice · Newsletter

The 5Ps of Marketing When You are the Product

September 23, 2009 · 3 Comments

Today’s guest post is by Maria Duron, the chief buzz officer, coach and speaker with buzz2bucks.com.

Marketing, by definition, is creating a positive environment for exchange.  It could be exchange of goods and services.  Yet, in today’s economy, it also includes the exchange of human resources for financial resources.

Viewing yourself as the product that you are marketing, might help you in wrapping your mind around the power and the necessity for personal branding.  You could be transitioning to another position and look for positive exchange with a potential employer; it could be you as a referral partner looking for a positive exchange with someone who services the same target client that you do in a non-competitive industry; or it could be you developing the foundation of your expertise looking for advisors to your personal board.  It could be you as a non-profit executive director who is the face and voice of your brand to your local market.

Let’s look at your personal brand with you as the product.

Product:  What’s your deliverable?  How do you benefit people?  What makes you so unique that if you were in a room with 250 of your competitors or colleagues that you would stand head and shoulders above the rest of them?   What is your unique promise of value?  And, how do you address the question that is on anyone’s mind that you are looking to exchange time or talent with – “what’s in it for me (WIIFM)”? As the product and professional at what you do, how you benefit people and who you are, it is your job to connect the dots for others so that they immediately know what you can do for them.  Product development is key to an effective marketing strategy.  A poor product that is positioned well will see a short success moment because the foundation is not congruent with what the product actually delivers.

Price:  When thinking of price, it’s not just salary, it’s the cost of doing business with you.  Does it take tremendous time to connect with you?  Are you accessible and in the geographic area?  Are there things that a potential contact would have to overlook that would involve an investment of time and/or treasure on their part?

Place:  These days, place is more than being in the geographic area it is also timing.  It also means do you have a presence where the people that you want to exchange with spend a majority of their time.  Just like a store front that must research in depth this location, location, location question – so must you.  If you’re looking for a position with a certain industry, where do the industry “movers and shakers” (in great quantity) spend time?  Is it in a social service organization like Rotary?  Or, are they at an industry based association?  Research where to find them and be where they are so that you are fully immersed in the place that they feel comfortable associating with others.

Promotion:  Does the way you promote yourself honor your personal brand?  If it doesn’t feel right, it might work for someone else but it might not be a good fit for you.  When someone else, just learning of you, experiences that disconnect caused by positioning that’s not congruent with the product, they will tend to shy away from you and often advise others to do the same.  Word of Mouth is the most powerful form of advertising.  In fact, 92% of people, according to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, make purchases because of a word of mouth recommendation. Yet, word of mouth is also a double-edge sword. Are you positively buzz-worthy?

The fifth P is one that is new to the mix in a recent #brandchat conversation on Twitter.  The fifth P is Participation.

Participation:  No longer do brands see great success from merely blasting out promotional messages or broadcasts (which by definition is to cast out a large message to a broad audience) their benefits.  Brands now require participation.  According to Unilever’s Chief Marketing Officer – Simon Clift (in a recent Advertising Age article), “Brands are now becoming conversation factors where…key opinion formers discuss functional, emotional and social concerns.  The conversation is no longer one way.”  He goes onto say that “listening to consumers is more important than talking at them.”  Are you and your brand engaged in the conversation?

There are numerous posts here on this blog alone that provide excellent practical tips on how to jump into the social conversation and how to engage others.  Examine your five Ps to determine at what level you are now and then determine what are you going to do to get to the next level you want to be at?  Someone once said that the definition of insanity is to “do the same thing the same way and expect different results.”  What do you need to do to move forward?

About the Author: Maria Duron is author of the book “Mouth to Mouth Marketing” and the eBook “Social I.R.A.” She’s been quoted as a marketing and word of mouth expert by Entrepreneur Magazine and contributes to several publications and is the creator of #brandchat, a weekly twitter conversation about all aspects of branding. She broadcasts weekly as the business coach with CBS7. Duron will speak at the 2009 Massachusetts Conference for Women.

Categories: Newsletter · Uncategorized

How to Uncover Your Company’s Competitive Advantage

September 18, 2009 · Leave a Comment

iStock_000005051077XSmallToday’s guest post is by Ivana Taylor, President of Third Force Marketing a boutique strategic marketing firm that helps companies become the obvious choice for their ideal customer.  She runs DIYMarketers.com a how-to resource for marketers.  Her blog is called Strategy Stew.

Do you know why your customers choose you?  You might think that you do, but chances are you would be wrong.  Janie L. Smith, author of “Creating Competitive Advantage” discovered that only two CEOs out of the thousand that she asked could clearly articulate a competitive advantage.  This is a critical point because understanding why your customers choose you can mean the difference between getting or losing the sale.

What’s Competitive Advantage?

A solid competitive advantage has four attributes:

  1. Must be objective.  This means that it’s a statement of fact; 3 locations, open 24 hours, etc.  If you think about it, it’s kind of like a “feature” of your business.
  2. Must be quantitative. Specify how much, how many of anything you’ve got as a feature.  In the example above we made some specifics here are a few more: each service representative has at least 20 hours of training (specify what kind), your pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less or it’s free.
  3. Not claimed by any other competitor.  This is where it gets tricky,  your competitive advantage could truly be something that no one else is doing OR it can be something that they are not claiming – or focusing on.  This gives you a lot of creativity.
  4. No cliche. Stay away from empty phrases like “your solution provider.”

Now that you know what constitutes competitive advantage, it’s time to start a list of what you think your company’s competitive advantages.  To get your brain bubbling, take a moment and list as many “factual features” of your business.  Aim for a list of 49!

  • How would you respond to your customer when they ask “Why should I buy from you?”
  • What’s most important to your customer when they are buying what you are selling?
  • What features of your business give the customer what’s most important to them?
  • In what ways does your business deliver what’s most important to your customer?

But getting a list of what you think your company’s competitive advantages are is only half the battle.  A competitive advantage will only get you chosen if it’s an advantage your customer cares about.  In other words, the things that differentiate you and set you apart have to matter to your customer otherwise – you won’t get the sale.

The best way to be sure that the competitive advantage that you’re going to use in your marketing strategy is viable is to test it with your customers.  A great approach is to hire a third party to run a blind research study which asks customers to rate what attributes are important to them and how well a variety of “brands” perform against those attributes.

It just so happens that QuestionPro has an advanced question in that exact format.  It’s called a “Side-by-Side Matrix” question and you’ll find it by adding a new question and clicking on “Advanced Question” type.  The side-by-side matrix question is already pre-formated to measure how important an attribute is to your customer and how satisfied they are with that attribute.

Have you used this type of question to uncover your company’s competitive advantage?  What did you learn and how did you implemented it?

Categories: Branding · Newsletter

What is National Representative Sample?

August 28, 2009 · Leave a Comment

iStock_000007719390XSmallToday’s guest post comes from Chris DeAngelis, an expert in designing sampling solutions for a wide range of telephone and online research projects for commercial research firms, government, and academia. You can reach him at www.surveysampling.com.

When researchers ask for a nationally representative (“nat. rep.”) sample, they mean that the population of interest is the entire population of the country in question and that the sample should reflect this in its structure. At its best then the nat. rep. sample will “look like” the population irrespective of how it is viewed. The numbers of men vs. women will match the national proportions, the percentage in each age group or each region will exactly match the population etc. On non-demographic measures (such as product ownership or psychographics) the sample should match the population.

To achieve this, textbook theory requires a large random sample and a high response rate to minimize systematic error and reduce the risk of unsystematic error resulting from bias. In the “real world” of marketing research response rates are not high and differential response rates by demographic result in most pure random samples not looking like the population (however sophisticated the stratification techniques). It is typical in marketing research therefore to use quota samples. A quota sample will be 100% guaranteed to look like the population on the demographics you choose to target. However, everything else is subject to sampling error. Take the example of age: If the quotas are set at 16-34, 35-54, 55+ the sample will be representative within these proportions, but if analysis is done on age ranges 16-20, 21-30, 31-40, etc., there is no guarantee that the sample will still look correct.

The extent to which it is possible to quota control a sample depends on the sample size and the reference data available. Six age breaks, two genders and 15 regions creates a grid of 180 cells. If the sample size is only 100 it is not possible to fill all the cells. Even with a larger sample size a cell may require only half of a person, and therefore will have no data in it. To make a sample more representative, weighting can be used. As an alternative to interlocked cells, quota cells can be structured independently. The disadvantage here is that there may be large “holes” in the sample – if all the young people are men for example – and it won’t be possible to use weighting to correct the holes.

What variables should be used to get a “nat rep” sample?

There is no single definitive answer – it depends on the research objective and the geography. For example age, gender, region and social class may be used in the UK; age, gender, region and ethnicity in the US; or age, gender, region and language spoken in Belgium.

Age, gender and geographic region are often allied with something that differentiates by economic wellbeing. This could be income, education, social class or home ownership REP

What SSI recommends:

In the absence of other instructions, in North America, SSI will use age, gender and one additional variable which differentiate by economic well-being. (In North America, representation by geography falls naturally.)  In Europe, in the absence of other instructions, SSI will use age, gender and region, since “economic wellbeing” data is not available from the census in all geographies.

Categories: Newsletter · Uncategorized

7 Ways to Be Great At Social Media

August 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment

iStock_000002807197XSmallIf you’ve ever wondered how you’re going to build your brand using social media, then pay attention to our our guest columnist today.  Staci J. Shelton is a social media expert and blogger who specializes in building and maximizing online relationships.

There is a great benefit to being active as a business in Social Media.  As a business, there are amazing opportunities to create a Global Network and control more of your marketing activity, and for a great deal less than traditional marketing and PR.

Social Media is a great place to engage, promote your brand and even build relationships. But the “hows” of engagement can be a little sticky. There are a lot of people talking, but what makes a brand great is getting people to listen.  There is a difference between just being on Social Media and being great at Social Media.  Here are some tips to help you move along from just being part of the chatter and being part of the conversation.

  • Be Relevant- You’re a Brand

There are lots of applications on Facebook and Twitter.  No matter how much you’re tempted, you are not allowed to poke, prod, give gifts there, if you’re interacting as a brand or trying to build a brand image.  If you give gifts of any kind, be sure that they tie into an overall promotional strategy.

Consider your content before you post.  Does what you’re saying fit into your overall brand strategy?  Be sure that grammar and spelling are correct.  You want to be taken seriously.  Provide great content.  Talk about what you “are” about.  If you are a business related to green living, talk, blog and post strategies on that initiative.  There is no substitute for great content.

  • Be Creative

Creativity gets attention.  Be creative in your word usage be a good copywriter.  There’s a great difference between saying:  “Getting ready to survey our customers to find out what is important to them” and “Want to be in charge of our company for the day?  Give us your feedback and tell us what we need to be doing!!!” Use creative contests and give-aways to encourage people to interact with and even promote for your brand.

  • Be Consistent

If you’re married or in a relationship, you would never go a day without talking to each other at all (hopefully).  Remember, that followers and friends of your brand are real people.  Build great relationships by showing up consistently.  If you blog, post regularly.  Post statuses daily or a few times during the day. Whatever you do, don’t start to engage then walk away from the relationship.

  • Be Brief

Although we need to be consistent, we don’t want to overwhelm our readers.  Make posts and updates brief and easy to digest.  If you’re on Facebook, update sparingly.  Some companies and people update every hour on the hour, which burns people out, or worse, causes them to tune out.

If you like talking a lot or have lots of links/content to share – Twitter is your playground.  It’s a great place to talk, engage and share information quickly without overwhelming people.  But still be sure not to over post.

In most cases, even outside of Twitter, keep it to 140 characters or less.  If you have a lot more to say, place the content in a note, not a status update.

  • Be Engaging

Talk with people.  Listen and comment on content other people post.  Show interest in what people are talking about and join the conversation.  Nothing makes brands shine more than listening and interacting in meaningful ways with customers.  By watching your friends and followers, you find out what is important to them, which gives you a great opportunity to do market research of some sort.

  • Be Meaningful

Once you’ve engaged and listened, you’re now in a great position to meet the needs of your friends and fans.  Post things that are of value or interest to your readers.  Create and or tweak products to meet the needs that you’ve discovered.

  • Be Polite

It can be tempting in Social Media to feel like you know people much better than you do.  While it is very possible to learn about people, get to know their personalities, likes and dislikes, until you’ve met, you don’t truly know them.  Move into relationships using good etiquette.  Talk to people publicly in the stream when the information is relevant, supports your overall brand or is applicable to more than one person.  When your content, conversations or questions are not relevant to the entire community or if information you want to applies only to one person, consider a direct message, e-mail, phone call or in person conversation.  Don’t ask overly personal questions.

Using these simple but effective ways to engage, interact and promote on Social Media, you’ll not only be GREAT, you’ll be FABULOUS!

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Categories: Branding · Newsletter · Social Media
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Can You Really Get Good Sample from Social Networks?

August 17, 2009 · 1 Comment

iStock_000001940991XSmallMark Houston from Peanut Labs says “YES!”

You probably didn’t think the answer to that question would be yes – but it is!  Social Networks and Social Media are indeed a wonderful source of sample for market researchers.  This guest post from Mark Houston of Peanut Labs will show you what a great resource socailly networked sample can be.

Social Networks, Social Media and Great Sample

Market research folks often ask, “what is the difference between social media and social networks and how are these impacting online market research?”  After speaking with various social media and social network experts, we can tell you the lines between social networks and social media are often blurred.  One of the best definitions we have found is from a social media expert, Lon S. Cohen, “Social media can be called a strategy and an outlet for broadcasting, while social networking is a tool and a utility for connecting with others.  Essentially, you can lump both terms together under the umbrella of Web 2.0.”  An example of this would be, LinkedIn versus YouTube, LinkedIn is a social network since it is a tool for connecting with others – whereas YouTube can be classified as social media since it is an outlet for broadcasting.  Then there are sites like Facebook which blend the two together.  If you are interested in reading Lon Cohen’s full article on the definition of social networks and social media, please click here:Lon Cohen’s article

How does all this impact online market research?  One, the way people communicate is changing and communication through social networks now exceeds email.  This has made it increasingly difficult to reach survey respondents via email.  Two, the incentives that respondents receive to complete surveys has changed.  And three, the recent 2009 Industry Survey completed by Cambiar, MROps and Peanut Labs showed that 67% of MR firms said they will be doing more online research using respondents from social networks. Over 83% of the Peanut Labs social network respondents take surveys because they want the virtual currency of their network or they enjoy taking surveys within the social network site.

Below you can download the new Peanut Labs PowerPoint presentation which guides you through the many ways they get great sample from over 120 social networks.

Download presentation: http://www.peanutlabs.com/peanutlabs/Cookie?link=Socially_Networked_Sample_7_2009_Final.pdf

Categories: Best Practice · Newsletter

QuestionPro University Partnership – Free Access to Students and Faculty

July 31, 2009 · 2 Comments

Over the years, we’ve offered QuestionPro free for Non-Profits and Students (on an individual basis) – Over next few months, we are planning on phasing out the Individual Student License and focus our efforts on the University Partnership.

The University Partnership License is an easy model for both universities and us to engage students and faculty members to collect data and analyze them. With the current belt-tightening and reduced budgets  universities can offer their students access to QuestionPro across the board free of charge.

What is the catch?
Nothing is really free – correct – yes. We actually gain two important aspects:

a) Visibility – Students using QP usually after graduation come back to use us in a commercial setting. B-School students often take up jobs as Product Managers or decision makers that need data – Surveys are obviously an easy model to collect data.

b) Cutting Edge Enhancements – We are obviously big believers in “keeping ahead of the curve” and a lot of our enhancements that we’ve done are a direct response to users asking for them. Typically students and faculty members are more inclined to try out new models and ideas for data-collection than commercial counterparts. This allows QuestionPro to be in tune with trying new ideas.

Unique Challenges in the Academic Environment
One of the single biggest challenges doing a human-subject study is IRB Approval. If you’re a student or a faculty member – you know the process and the challenge. We have designed a few specific ideas  that help you with the IRB Approval process:

a) Having an INTRO QuestionType with an “I Agree” Checkbox – This is almost a requirement by most IRB’s of Universities that human subjects explicitly agree to the survey process.

b) Standard agreements with some universities for IRB and Data-Collection Standards.

c) Details on Privacy and Compliance – than can be submitted to the IRB’s as part of the approval process.

http://www.questionpro.com/compliance/

What participants have said

“QuestionPro survey builder is much
easier than other products I have tried, and the level of support was
quite impressive. From creating the survey to analyzing the data, QuestionPro made the process simple yet professional.”

Bret Roark

Director of Assessment

Oklahoma Baptist University


Getting On-Board with the University Partnership
We’ve also streamlined the on-boarding of the partnership. If you are the dean or a faculty member (or if you are a student – please ask your faculty member) please see:

http://www.questionpro.com/corporate-sponsorship/

All the details are there. You can apply for it online and we’ve also a dedicated Point of Contact for all University Partnership Requests – You can email Naeem Shaik – naeem.s [at] surveyanalytics [dot] com – he can guide you through the process and answer any questions.

Additional References:

  1. University Partnership Details
    http://questionpro.com/corporate-sponsorship
  2. FAQ on University Sponsorship
    http://questionpro.com/help/211.html
  3. Partnership Inquiries:
    naeems [at] surveyanalytics [dot] com

Categories: Newsletter · QuestionPro