experience matters

Abbey Klaassen at Ad Age wrote a great article on June 29, 2009, “Forget Twitter; Your Best Marketing Tool is the Humble Product Review” about how the humble product review is one of your best marketing tools. She distills much of the article into a poignant insight (“marketers are learning to listen”) while also pointing out that some listening channels such as Twitter or Facebook have less structured information and can be difficult for marketers to implement into their processes.

But when it comes to listening (and I mean really listening), there are times (as I believe Abbey would agree) that product reviews may not be enough. We believe MROCs (market research online communities) are able to bridge part of the gap between the richness and depth of qualitative consumer feedback and structured information.

With many of our clients expressing interest in learning more about these private communities, and after my last post, we thought it might be worth a quick discussion. So, we’ve put together this simple checklist to help you determine whether a market research online community is right for you.

1. You want to know all about your target audiences – deeply. Communities are about evolving with your customers rather than doing point-in-time research. They are ideally for clients that are committed to continual learning, or have the desire for it – because consumers don’t wait until your survey or focus group to have great feedback or ideas.
2. You need to control the conversation. Our clients often need customers to focus on their questions, which is much harder to do in public communities. Community clients also rest much easier sharing confidential information or assets when members have at least agreed to non-disclosure legalese.
3. You need to know who’s talking back to you. Community respondents are profiled in depth (demographics, attitudes, behaviours, etc.), so we can look at how comments and discussions may differ among subgroups (gender or generational differences). In public communities, you may know a person’s screen name, country, and maybe age at best.
4. You need decisions faster. One of the most beautiful benefits to private communities is that you can have data coming back in hours instead of the weeks needed to plan and implement traditional research methods. Market researchers, rejoice!
5. You wish your best customers were sitting beside you. The flexibility of communities allows you to ask whatever questions you want, whether large and in depth or quick one-offs that wouldn’t normally justify a traditional research budget. This means you can get meaningful consumer feedback on your specific needs before making important or even not-so-important decisions.
6. You are looking to control costs. For companies that gather the right amount of consumer insight to inform decisions, the cost of building and maintaining communities can often save over a given year compared to traditional methods. Sometimes communities can replace other methods, and sometimes they build in incremental context. But consider a (slightly oversimplified) example of spending $15-$25K in a traditional, 2-hour focus group with 20 people, with the same amount for a month of time with 200 people.
7. You want to look like a star at your company. Trust me, I’m still reaping the benefits at Critical Mass for getting our own (first) community off the ground. But in all honestly, my brilliant team of researchers is entirely responsible for the continual homeruns.

We’ve got clients ranging from CPG to financial services to automotive, and we’ve used online communities to gain insights about everything from shopping habits to desired product features.

So I’m curious to know: What’s holding you back from considering an MROC?

Last 5 posts by Arif Hirani

• Are You Curious? We Are. – July 16th, 2009

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