A / A / A : Change text size Log in Search GO Search help Home Jobs What's new Opinion Interviews Case studies Features Masterclass Knowledge centre About us Contact us Browse by topic: Branding B2B Creative Customer Digital Direct marketing Legal Management ROI Social marketing Psy chology You are here » Home » Articles » Masterclass » How to use market research tools How to use market research tools 29 June 2012 Whether it’s traditional surveys or tailor-made digital programmes, there are many ways to glean customer insight. But, as Kate Hilpern discovers, it’s the actions you take in response to the findings that really matter Related links Subscribe to magazine Subscribe to e-newsletter View a sample digital edition Institute Marketing Marketers have never been better served when it comes to Excellence Awards market research options. From online survey tools and eCIM Annual National Conference Events About us Contact us mailed questionnaires to social media, the digital revolution has opened up cost-effective options to better understand buyers or markets. But how do today’s marketers go about selecting the right tools and then integrate the insights and findings they produce into their strategy? The tools “While traditional market research methods are still important, the popularity of social networking means brands now have new and clever ways to stay abreast of customer insights in order to shape business strategy,” says Precise head of brand insight James Withey. Mesh Planning experience director Tak Ha points out that traditional market research methods involve “active” questioning and interviewing. “The participant is active in their feedback, whether they are talking face-to-face or over the phone, or filling in a survey online or via their mobile device.” But methods that are more passive and designed to track and monitor behaviour – most apparent in social media – are becoming more advanced and embedded in normal day-today life. “The monitoring of chatter and buzz is increasingly becoming part of a brand’s digital strategy and ongoing consumer dialogue,” says Ha. “Likewise, marketers can learn from monitoring an individual’s online browsing behaviour, using applications that run unobtrusively in the background.” Take traditional focus groups, says Withey. “It’s a rather artificial environment, in which consumers may not be entirely comfortable with saying how they feel. But by looking at the same issue on the social web, as well as – or sometimes instead of – conducting more traditional market research, businesses can get to a different kind of truth and form a more holistic view,” he says. For one client, Withey explored the conversations taking place across Twitter, Facebook and blogs to analyse the attitudes of owners to their pets, which helped identify insights that shaped a better understanding of the consumer. Monitoring tools such as Sysomos and Radian6 can be used to capture attitudes in social channels, Withey says, while Watermelon Research MD Mark Squires points to the benefits of text messaging, interactive voice response, gamification, eye tracking and QR codes. “Such new technologies offer clients the ability to benefit from ‘in-the- How to conduct effective research Five online research insights Get great results from market research Check out The Marketer Jobs Find career advice and the latest marketing jobs using our improved search functions CIM training Researchbased market insight Add comment Print this page Dos and don’ts Do remember market research is the prelude to the sale, giving you the information you need to make the right business decisions. Its significance should not be underestimated. Do define what you want to know. The first step in conducting effective research is working out what you want to find out from who. Do beware of bias. Survey respondents in particular will inevitably want to please you and will follow your lead converted by Web2PDFConvert.com technologies offer clients the ability to benefit from ‘in-themoment’ real time feedback, while representing a brand in a fun and engaging way. These tools are at the forefront of digital technology.” Ignore traditional methods at your peril, however. “The real winners in market research will be those who can provide insight from multiple data sources in the on and offline worlds,” says YouGov managing director Phil Rance. Getting plugged in The good news is that there are many plug-in tools to help augment CRM systems so that they can gather data from traditional and social media touchpoints. “So a salesman on the road can now use his CRM with customer details, but can also see the customer’s social media profile,” says Rance. This can help create a better understanding of the customer and ultimately expand the business network, by getting recommendations from the customer’s contacts, explains SAP Multichannel Solutions global marketing director Jamie Anderson. Tools such as Twitter, Facebook and UserVoice can also provide a route for customers to voice concerns or suggestions for improvement that can work together with your existing customer insight, says Yammer head of customer engagement Mike Graftham. “The problem here is that there often isn’t a clear route in organisations for identifying who can answer comments when they are raised. Although someone may be responsible for monitoring and replying to the Twitter feed, where do they find their answer? ” Linking this process with an enterprise social network (ESN) allows the question to find its way to the relevant experts within the company quickly. Focusing on developing something more sophisticated than off-the-shelf solutions can pay dividends, says Watermelon’s Squires. “These digital solutions can be bespoke, tailormade to link with any systems that may be in place. For example, one financial services client wanted to improve a research programme with the aim of receiving faster insight. We developed an interactive voice recognition solution, allowing them to make use of instant feedback from customers.” Which approach? “Your choice of tool must be entirely determined by what you want to know,” says Oxford Brookes University senior lecturer in marketing Ana Canhoto, chairman of the Academy of Marketing’s special interest group in CRM. “If you want to measure the size of something or spot trends, such as how many people prefer A over B, or how brand recognition has evolved over time, you should always use a survey. Use experiments, however, if you want to understand causes, or the effect of something on something else – for instance, if I increase the price by 10 per cent, how many fewer (or more) units will I sell? If I sell online, what is the effect on brand recognition levels?” If you want to understand what is happening, or why something happens, then qualitative methods such as focus groups, or better still interviews, are best. “Focus groups tend to be more cost effective than individual interviews, but there is the potential problem of group thinking, whereby one or two individuals will dominate the discussion and the quiet members of the group will not voice their thoughts.” If, on the other hand, you want to understand what people actually do (as opposed to what they think they do, or want to tell you that they do), then track behaviour, she says. “For example, eye tracking, following people on shops or websites or looking at transaction records. Indeed, one insight made possible with social media, but very difficult to achieve with offline methods, is sentiment analysis – monitoring feelings associated with the brand.” QuestBack director Daniel Hansen agrees, adding that when it comes to field sampling, online communities should not be overlooked. “Many research agencies such as Opinion Matters and YouGov already have these communities in place, allowing for strongly targeted research. These communities can be made up of any type of demographic, including C-level executives, business decision makers, consumers, parents and children. Although traditional surveys can also be used for online field sampling, they provide less accurate results as the survey may not be answered by the correctly targeted group.” Meanwhile, online focus groups are well suited to e-tail issues, he says. “Again, research agencies will already have Do remember insights are very different to information and these tools just provide the raw data, not the insight. Don't forget to give the respondent a chance to opt out. A “don’t know” option is better than forcing a respondent to answer incorrectly. Don't fail to get your audience right – your own customer lists for client service and satisfaction work, forums or special interest groups for nice or job-specific audiences, etc. Don't assume you have to spend a lot of money on good market research. DIY tools such as Survey Monkey and Toluna QuickSurveys can be used to gather useful information effectively, flexibly and affordably. Don't forget that social media channels enable marketers to identify research respondents based on known interests, brand usages and interactions as indicated by their online profiles and behaviours – a major benefit. Tips from the top Nick Baggott is director of Navigate Consulting. Twitter: @njbaggott 1. Start with the simple things. What is being blogged about, which web sites are at the top of the Google listings (meaning they are attracting visits and links from other sites) and what are people talking about on Twitter? 2. Think about your budget. Google Analytics is free and will be sufficient for many situations. If you have more budget and want to understand more converted by Web2PDFConvert.com issues, he says. “Again, research agencies will already have the correct panels in place.” For customer journey feedback, online pop-up surveys can be useful. “Nowadays, most online shopping sites will provide a pop-up survey to find out about the customer journey and collate the feedback to produce real-time data. This data can then be used to improve the customer experience and better understand customer behaviour. Online pop-up surveys are also a good tool to use in a multi-channel strategy when a business needs to target audiences through a series of channels.” Freeware If you want to be more precise with your research and conduct studies that meet the Market Research Society guidelines, Navigate Consulting’s Nick Baggott suggests online survey tools. “Survey Monkey is an example of a simple, low cost survey creation tool. Or you could get your web team to build a pop-up survey or a simple one-question poll into your website. I am also a big fan of LinkedIn Answers, which you can find on your LinkedIn home page under the “More” tab. This function allows you to write a survey question and post it to other LinkedIn users based on their business profile.” Baggott used it recently to survey hotel caterers about their favourite malt whiskies. “The results won’t be statistically significant,” he admits, “but these anecdotal answers will provide you with ideas that you can then put into a quantitative study.” Google has a suite of free analytics tools too, he adds. “I’m not just talking about Google Analytics. Insights for Search allows you to understand the frequency and seasonality of search behaviour.” For example, you can check whether more people searched for the Olympics or Euro 2012 over the past six months in any country of the world that you specify. The Adword Keyword Tool will allow you to understand what words Google’s search database currently associates with any site. “It is great to see how your site is doing, but, even better, you can use this model to see what competitors are doing too, since you can get the data free on any website.” Meanwhile, Google Analytics can be useful for small businesses, says Opinium Research senior researcher Henning von Arnim. “It provides free metrics, such as location, type of traffic (how did they find you?) and bounce rates. But it does not reveal anything about the user and their key demographic parameters.” Free analytics tools often only provide a top-level view, they can’t analyse actual interactions, trends and the causes of customers’ actions, whether that is through web chat, e-mail or social media, says Eclipse Marketing insight and digital director Simon Steel. “They can show you what customers do, but will not tell you why they do it.” Dragon Rouge senior researcher Crystal Evans points to a further challenge. “It’s great that Google Analytics is free and it lets you track multiple sites and monitor social networking activity, measure video content and track mobile phone users. But statistics are not in real time and support is limited to a help centre and user forum – unless support is hired from a certified partner. And site visitors can opt out of having Google Analytics track their online activities, as a code must be placed on any pages brands want to monitor. Also, it is not possible to collect data from users with JavaScript or cookies disabled – therefore analysis may not be a truly representative cross section of the brand’s target audience.” complex web behaviours on your site, then Omniture or Web Trends are worth investing in. 3. If you want your CRM tool to drive your business and provide salesforce automation and integrate with your billing system, look at Salesforce.com. That said, many marketers simply need to capture behaviours, segment customers and drive personalised automated responses to web users – Microsoft CRM Dynamics is a great low cost option for this. 4. Rather than taking a piecemeal approach to tracking what your customers are saying about you in social media by searching real time, you may want to create dashboards that cover all mentions of your brand or industry in Twitter, Facebook, blogs and the like. Sentiment Trackers are designed to do this job, but remember they can be better at the tracking (finding and quantifying mentions) than they are at the sentiment part (gauging whether the coverage is positive or negative). Radian6 is the most commonly used sentiment tracking tool among my clients, but others such as Buzz Metrics are also available. Analysis Most survey tools will give you a basic analysis package and a DIY approach should not be dismissed, says Toluna MD Mark Simon. “Depending on the size and complexity of your research and the business, you may not need someone to tell you what that data means within the context and what action should result from the findings.” But Withey argues that there is no such thing as automated analysis, insisting that only a human analyst can extract the right information, as well as distill insights that are found. “If a business doesn’t have the capacity or expertise, but is serious about understanding the opinions of its customers, then they’ll need to invest in someone who can do it for them.” Certainly in medium and large businesses, the role of a consultant to analyse findings should not be underestimated, agrees Verint Systems EMEA MD David Parcell. “In the era of converted by Web2PDFConvert.com multiple customer feedback platforms and passive information gathering, findings from market research for even a medium-sized organisation are large and unstructured enough to fall within the realm of big data. In what is a relatively new form of intelligence gathering, the role of consultants and software is huge – and the best analytics platforms can now be customised to suit the needs of almost any company. This, coupled with experience and best practice insight from consultants, is at the heart of a fully enabled analytics approach.” Marketers should remember that the challenge is not in creating data visualisations, generating statistics or even aggregating user quotes. “The challenge is in knowing how to interpret that data once collated,” explains Evans. “To the untrained eye, the smallest uplift or downturn on a line graph representing real-time data aggregation from a week’s social media activity can feel misleadingly critical for the brand. For those in the profession of analysing data, the key to success is being able to interpret, cross-check and translate useful findings into something that is truly actionable for the brand.” The real value, she concludes, comes from actually acting on the insight, and not just having a fancy report in a drawer. Ready to take on social media? You need to find out consumers’ perceptions about a new product, so you: (a) Send out a detailed questionnaire about the product to all of the customers on your database. (b) Set up a focus group and take note of the people who voice their opinions the loudest. (c) Track buying behaviour and consumer sentiment on social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs. You have decided to use online tracking tools and choose: (a) Google analytics – it provides information on metrics, location, type of traffic and best of all it’s free. (b) Use a low cost option such as Microsoft CRM Dynamics to capture data on buying behaviours and segment customers. (c) Invest in effective and flexible DIY tools such as Survey Monkey and Toluna Quicksurveys as well as sentiment trackers such as Radian6 and Buzzmetrics. You get a market report showing a spike in last week’s social media activity around your brand and you: (a) Look at what you did a bit differently last week and try it again. (b) Throw a party. (c) Hire a consultant to interpret, cross check and translate useful findings to prevent false perceptions about social media success and to determine future strategies for the brand. Mostly (a)s You are stuck in the past. It’s time to depart from traditional market research methods and embrace the insights offered by social media. Mostly (b)s You understand the potential of market research across social media channels, but you need to think carefully about the tools you choose and avoid kneejerk reactions. Mostly (c)s Well done – you have the right approach to social media focused market research and recognise the importance of investing quality time and resources in it. Help Contact us About this site Site map Advertise Link to us Privacy Terms and conditions Accessibility themarketer.co.uk is published by Redactive Media Group in partnership with The Chartered Institute of Marketing. All rights reserved. Reproduction of any part is not allowed without written permission. Contact us at [email protected]. Copyright 2012 Redactive Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved. converted by Web2PDFConvert.com