Something to Tweet About

September 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Twitter users are some of “the most influential online consumers,” according to a study by ExactTarget. Twitter users compose a relatively small portion of the online audience, only accounting for 14.6% of total internet users, however, Twitter users are also active, digital evangelizers who blog, comment, evaluate, and praise companies or products. As Morgan Stewart of ExtactTarget stated, “what happens on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter.”

Staying connected to the Twitter audience is actually a very useful practice and most Twitter users are there to stay informed and get updates about the company that they follow (over 38%). After that, Twitter followers are looking to receive discounts, get notified of sales, receive free samples and coupons, and generally stay apprised of all brand promotions. That’s the content that they’re looking for, so hopefully, that’s the content that companies will serve up.

How are you using Twitter as part of your social media strategy? Building a following isn’t necessarily the hardest part – staying connected is. What’s your approach? And how are you learning from your customers via Twitter? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

How To Get People to Like You (At Least on Facebook)

September 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Facebook is, at the core, an entertainment destination where people connect. That’s the primary goal anyway for the average Facebook user, but there are plenty of ways to interact with companies as well. A new study by ExactTarget and CoTweet finds that one of the key drivers to get a Facebook user to “like” a brand is to offer a coupon or a discount in exchange for fandom.

With “64% of all U.S. consumers, and three quarters of Millennials” creating a profile on Facebook, it has now become the “default” social community and a great place for brands to connect directly with their consumers. But half of those users only “like” between one and four brands. The most direct route to their fan box is through any special offer. According to the study, 40% of the respondents were prompted to like a brand based on an offer for a discount or promotion, even for a promised upcoming sale or coupon.

The other primary motivator to like a company or brand on Facebook, however, is simply to publicly display affinity for a brand to friends. It’s an endorsement that is motivated primarily by affection for the brand.

So what can you offer to your potential fans? How do you attract the attention of your brand advocates? Can you afford to miss out on the average Facebook fan who provides a brand $136.38/year (which can optimally fluctuate to $270.77)? What are you doing to attract attention on the default social community?

Filed Under: Market Research, Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

How We Shop for Groceries

September 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Shoppers are feeling like they’re buying smarter instead of simply feeling like they’re buying less. The 2010 American Pantry Study conducted by Deloitte and Harrison Group reveals that although grocery shoppers have responded to the state of the economy in their spending habits, they’re not necessarily feeling too constrained by it. 89% of shoppers feel that they have become “more resourceful because of the economy” and 79% stated that they were “feeling smarter” about how they shop.

Overall, the study is optimistic about how Americans will continue spending (cautiously) as the economy recovers, but also states that the keys to this kind of spending are the customers’ loyalty cards and coupons. With 67% of respondents reporting an increase in their coupon usage and 84% of the respondents reporting at least one loyalty card, grocery stores will have to ensure that these tools are included in their marketing plans.

Have you implemented any loyalty or incentive programs within your company, either for your products and services, or for participation in research? We’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.

Filed Under: Market Research, Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Free Webinar: How to Use Online Survey Tools to Hire a Diverse Workforce

September 27, 2010 By 2 Comments

The beauty of market research is how broadly its power can be applied – to learn about customers, to gather feedback about existing products or services, to test the market capacity for a new product, and more. When we introduce new market research techniques, including online survey tools, the application potential continues to increase.

Join Personified, a division of CareerBuilder, for a free webinar tomorrow, September 28th at 9am Pacific (12pm Eastern), to discuss new ways to use online survey tools to hire new talent. Presenting the session will be Brian Di Bartolomeo, Director or Talent Intelligence and Consulting, and Andrea Briggs, Project Manager, Talent Intelligence and Consulting. Brian and Andrew will discuss the following:

-How the recruitment experience differs by demographics (i.e., gender, ethnicity, and generations).

-How your recruiting strategy must be tailored to these specific populations.

-Using benchmark data, best practices, and additional insights Personified will provide intelligence on where to spend your recruiting dollars based on desired messaging of different demographic groups and organizational initiatives.


Sign Up Today!

Filed Under: Events, Market Research Tagged With: , , ,

How To: Use Google Suggest for Market Research

September 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Recently, I was amused by the site suggestoftheday.com. It’s a site that shows Google Suggest results and pokes fun at the suggestions generated by Google users. The results range from “My hair is a bird your argument is invalid” (generated by the suggestion “my hair” to several variations on “is it impossible to lick your elbow” (generated by the keywords “is it impossible to l”). What is most interesting, however, is thinking about what these results say Google users are concerned with, how we free associate, and how we can apply this to market research.

Although it’s likely that you already know how to use Google Suggest, there are some ways that Google Suggest can be applied in order to provide insight and keen perceptions on a variety of subjects. One way is to type your keyword and then add different letters from a to z to see how others free associate with that search term. Fortunately, Think Pragmatic has also created a keyword application called UberSuggest which is powered by Google Suggest that does that work for you. This tool will add each letter of the alphabet to your search term on your behalf and generate a total list of primary results. It’s very simple:

1. Visit http://suggest.thinkpragmatic.net/
2. Type in a keyword that you would like to investigate
3. Click the box (below the search bar) that says “expand” in order to receive complete alphabetical results.
4. Click the next box that says “txt” if you would like to download the results into a text file.

The results are the top keywords associated with any search term which means that they could reveal trends about brands, customer insights, provide context for your thoughts, and more.

So what would you search first? What do these results reveal? And what does “my hair is a bird your argument is invalid” even mean?

Filed Under: How-To, Market Research, Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Seems statistics in MR don’t matter…..

September 24, 2010 By 2 Comments
I was reading Ray Poynters excellent blog article here:
about the Likert scale. Ray stated:
“If a researcher makes the wild and unjustified decision (IMHO) to treat Likert numbers as an interval scale…”
I took this as him saying he agreed it was wrong to treat Likert as an interval scale, he did only say that it is “wild and unjustified” to treat them as interval. This is a decision that is made constantly in MR. I will go further and say it is plain wrong and bad statistical practice to treat Likert scales as interval data. It is an ordinal scale. It should be treated as such. You can’t take the mean and standard deviation of ordinal scales. They don’t have them. They have a mode (sometimes two modes), they have a median, they don’t have a mean.
I got these radical ideas some years ago. After my degree in Psychology and post graduate work I worked in a medical research facility called the “Institute of Neurology” (ION) in London UK. I worked in the “Computing and Medical Statistics Unit” in a basement in Guildford Street complete with IBM card punch machines, cockroaches and CDC UT2000 remote RJE terminal for the University of London Computer Center. I think the drum printer on the UT2000 gave me hearing damage, it sounded like a machine gun.
I worked for a medical statistician called Liz. I was what I called a “data monkey”, I ran programs, wrote them, cleaned data, killed cockroaches and generally helped out. Liz had worked with Sir Richard Peto, who is currently Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford. Liz was passionate about her profession. I recall several studies we worked on together. One was a drug trial for a drug to cure Multiple Sclerosis, another was a long term epidemiological study of Multiple Sclerosis, another was a drug trial of a chemotherapy drug to be used against a particularly evil form of brain cancer called Gliomas. Then there were studies about stroke models in rats, muscular dystrophy and Tourettes syndrome.
We had a strict procedure for all data. First all interval data variables were plotted and looked at. Then these variables were tested for normality of distribution, if they were not normal appropriate transformations were applied to correct any anomalies and then they were re-tested for normality. If they still didn’t pass the normality test they were only analysed with non-parametric techniques. Other data variables were plotted too, and the histograms looked at carefully for anomalies. I can recall Liz spending quite some time researching if you could use a T-test on percentages. She concluded you could not. She decided percentages belonged to the Cauchy distribution, which has no mean or higher moments. Thus a T-test would be statistically invalid.
I asked Liz about this procedure of treating data and the rigour she applied. I came from psychology, we were a little more lax in our approach. She said we had to remember that the results we obtained mattered. They could be life and death decisions. A type I error on a drug trial could lead to more people dying because they were given a drug that didn’t really work. A type II error on the epidemiological work may miss an important antecedent to Multiple Sclerosis, a crippling disease.
We were working on data for the drug trial for treating Gliomas, a form of brain cancer. Gliomas remain a deadly form of cancer, with only a 50% survival rate within one year of diagnosis. We were using something called Survival Analysis to test the effect of a chemotherapy drug. Liz said we had to wait for more events to be sure of the results. An event was someone dying. I happened to look at the columns in the data which contained the ages of the subjects. 18, 19, 21 – these were people only a little younger than I was at the time. We had to wait for them to die to be sure the conclusions that were made about the drug (Vincristine) were correct. The results really mattered.
It seems to me the question about Likert scales is not so much about if you can treat them as an interval scale rather it is this: do the results matter ? Do you care that the results are correct ? Do the results matter enough to do the work properly ? If the results do matter, do it properly.
From what I can see very often it seems market researchers think the results don’t matter……
Filed Under: Market Research

Collecting Data on Mobile Platforms

September 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Last week, Research Access contributor Vivek Bhaskaran told us why he thinks that paper surveys are dead. His point (as always) was spot-on: the prolific spread and decreasing cost of mobile devices, combined with the benefits we get from collecting data in electronic form (ease of collection, immediate analysis, the list goes on…), means it won’t be long before using paper to collect market research data simply makes no sense.

Today I’d like to draw you’re attention to another approach that supports Vivek’s premise. IdeaScale, an industry leading in crowdsourcing platforms and software, recently released a casestudy about the OpenMaps iPhone application. OpenMaps leverages the IdeaScale crowdsourcing platform to gather user feedback directly from within their iPhone application.

According to Zsombor Szabó, creator of OpenMaps:
“We collected feedback via email, Twitter and GetSatisfaction too, and still do. The IdeaScale iPhone widget was simply supposed to be an experiment. It turned out to be a hit as we received much more user feedback than before. It seems people really like giving feedback right from within the application.”
I definitely recommend that you take a look at the casestudy. And I’d love to hear examples of how you’ve started to use mobile platforms, including iPhone/iPad applications, to collect data from your customers or sample groups. Please share your stories in the comments.
Cheers,
Josh
Filed Under: Market Research, Marketing, Mobile Tagged With: , , ,

6 DIY Marketing Research Trends You Can Put in Your Marketing Plan

September 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I wanted to draw your attention to a must-attend, free event coming up next Thursday, September 30th, at 9am Pacific (12pm Eastern time). Ivana Taylor from DIYMarketers will be hosting a free webinar discussing 6 DIY marketing research trends that you can start leveraging immediately. As Ivana very aptly points out, “Interactivity, collaboration and open source concepts are changing how we collect feedback.   Marketing research is evolving.  It’s more than surveys and focus groups. It’s more than those thousand dollar reports produced by Freedonia or The Conference Board.  Today, finding out what your customer is thinking is a hands-on process.”

We couldn’t agree more. I hope you’ll consider attending this webinar. I’ll certainly be there.

6 DIY Marketing Research Trends You Can Put In Your Marketing Plan
Thursday, September 30th
9am Pacific (12pm Eastern)
Free Registration

Cheers,

Josh

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: , , ,

10 Major Marketing Strategies We Can Learn from Today’s Celebrities

September 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

There are people who truly deserve to be famous because of their talent and contributions to this world. Oprah, Kanye West, Steve Jobs are a few examples of people who are well deserved of their notoriety. Then there are those who for some god-forsaken reason the media loves to follow: Kim Kardashian, Speidi (Barf!), Ashton Kutcher, and all those “Housewives,” to name a few.

The word celebrity is used very loosely these days because there is such a crap shoot of “famous” people out there.

Setting aside guilty pleasures of reading smutty celebrity news, let’s take a look at these celebrities objectively – What kind of marketing strategies can we learn from people like LeBron James and Jennifer Lopez? And as a socially conscious marketer how can we implement celebrity marketing strategies into my everyday work environment?

Here are 10 major marketing strategies used by celebrities today:

1) Control What Gets Leaked into
the Press

Let’s face it everyone. Mel Gibson is pretty screwed right now. His baby momma’s got all the power with the leaked tapes and her exclusive interviews with Radaronline is making her boku bucks. Lebron James and his PR team sure know how to rile up NBA fans by making a big fuss about his free agent announcement. I was bored to tears with the NBA until all this crazy buzz about Lebron started happening. Where is he going? Chicago, New York, or staying in Cleveland? Leaks upon leaks came through but nobody could confirm any stories. ESPN PAID King James to televise his announcement! He is quite the “balls” handler, eh? David Stern, commish of the NBA, denounced LeBron’s actions, but secretly, I bet Mr. Davey’s pretty jazzed about it.

Lesson: Control the leaks/Control the story. Simple.

2) Be Everywhere

How can you miss Kim Kardashian‘s sweet sweet uh….smile on every red carpet?
I don’t even know what she’s famous for, but for some reason she’s always striking a pose on every red carpet around the world. And she looks good. Girlfriend definitely knows how to work it and get into all those super market magazines with a tight outfit that shows off her “assets.”

Now I’m not going out there wearing stilettos and hot pants to get people to notice my marketing efforts. I’m going to leave that to Miss Kimmy. Instead, I’ll be looking into more work-appropriate opportunities to like local happy hours, promoting and doing online presentations, blogs, commenting on other blogs, and associate myself to anything and everything positive related to my company’s industry.

Lesson: Go where the action/buzz is whether online or in-person and make an appearance.

3) Pump Ample Time and Effort into Social Media Networking

Can you name one adolescent female who hasn’t caught Bieber fever? OMG, this Justin Bieber kid is the new Jonathan Taylor Thomas of our time (I grew up in the 90′s with Home Improvement). Even my 14 year old nephew went out and got his hair cut like Bieber’s to appeal to the ladies. Bieber fever started with this kid posting performances on YouTube and the next thing you know Usher and Timberlake all wanted to record this kid’s album. His YouTube videos are #1 and he puts in time to tweet and update his blog regularly, or at least he has Bieber minions keeping him plugged in with his audience. The kid’s got a genius marketing strategy…and he’s not a bad singer either.

Lesson: Spend more time connecting with others through social media outlets and see your core audience grow.

4) Stay Relevant by “Reinventing” Yourself

Heidi Montag, Madonna, Jennifer Hudson, Lady GaGa – What do all of these ladies have in common? Reinventing themselves! JHud lost a ton of weight and she looks spectacular, Lady Gaga not only entertains us with her music but also with her never-ending display of outrageous costumes, and Madonna never stopped reinventing her music, personal style, and along the way she tried out a couple of religions (Kabbalah, anyone?) and adopted a Malawian baby. Who ever spoke of Malawi until she went there?

Unfortunately for Heidi Montag, whom many of the tabloids now call Franken-Heidi, not all reinventions (ie. 10 plastic surveys in 1 day) garner expected results.

Lesson: Don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself or your company to stay relevant within your niche. Also know that reinvention can also come with pitfalls that may unhinge you from your core audience so choose your reinvention strategy wisely.

5) Publicize Comments on News, Blogs, and Press Releases and Turn it into News About Yourself

Nothing annoys me more than stories on celebrity’s comments on other celebrity news. Do I really care about Michael Lohan’s opinion on the Tiger Woods cheating scandal? No but I saw that he commented about it anyways. Yes, it’s sad that I know the name of Lindsey Lohan’s parents. Nobody really wants to see this grubby man’s face all over TMZ, Perez, Radar, etc., but he keeps popping up all over in a terrible attempt to reconcile with his daughter. So far his strategy has not worked. Sorry Michael, but if my dad ever did this to me I’d pretend he didn’t exist too. (Picture of him not included in this section…purposely.)

Lesson: Comment and share opinions on press releases that are in tune with your marketing goals. Be clear with your intentions and you will become well-known and respected by PR firms, readers, bloggers, and other commentators.

6) Quickly Come Clean when
Scandal Breaks

Who doesn’t love to read about a good scandal these days? But when the tides turn and the scandal happens to you, what would you do? Despite the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton is still considered to be one of America’s all time favorite presidents. How did he do it? Simple: He televised a carefully crafted statement of what he did, asked Americans to forgive his actions, and showed everyone that Hilary supported him 100%.

Lesson: Carefully choose the words to address the scandal and make sure your strategic partnerships will stand by your side during this time.

7) Build Partnerships with other Brands that Compliment You

Before the massive cheating scandal, everyone wanted Tiger Woods to promote their product. Money from golf tourneys paled in comparison to the endorsements deals he pulled in. At his peak Woods earned over $100 million dollars a year from his endorsement deals and it is estimated nearly 90% of his income comes from endorsements. Tiger’s team strategically selected endorsements that fit his former squeaky clean image. Gatorade? Nike? Gillette? Yes. Online gambling website? No.

It’s said that Tiger instantly lost over 30% of his endorsement revenue after the scandal broke. Yikes, that’s got to hurt!

Lesson: Network and partner yourself with other like-minded firms and promote like crazy. Also re-evaluate partnerships. Ask, “Does this partnership remain strategically significant to my brand and overall goals?“

8 ) Accept That Any Kind of Media is Good Media

If you love reality tv (like me), then you recently finished watching Ali pick Roberto during The Bachelorette. Her show was the highest rated Bachelor/Bachelorette show ever. It wasn’t because Ali’s personality and good looks that made it the most watched show. Rather, it was the major media buzz on smutty magazines and blogs such as RealitySteve.com (awesome blog, BTW) that really had people watching. ABC tried everything to shut Reality Steve down and forced E! to cut his segment out of an E! special”Bachelor/Bachelorette: Where are they now?” In the end, ABC should have sent this blogger a fruit basket for it’s success.

Lesson: Publically acknowledge media coverage from others with appreciation and clarify the truth if needed.

9) Give Back to Your Community &
Tell Everyone About It!

Angelina Jolie is modern day’s Mother Theresa. The UN really hit PR gold when they asked Jolie to become one of their prestigious ambassadors. Nobody ever talks about her pre-Maddox days when she was married to Billy Bob Thornton and wore a drop of his blood around her neck or that she used to cut herself and was slightly manic depressive at times. Nope! Instead she’s really turned her life around and is giving back and shining light on those who are less fortunate and desperately need help. As a result, she is one of Hollywood’s top-paid actresses.

Lesson: Find a charity or opportunity to give back and share with all your fans and readers via press release, website, and share why you are involved in these programs. People like spending money with companies who do good deeds.

10) Bring More Than One Talent
to the Table

Hello J.Lo! Jenny from the block markets herself as the ultimate entertainer: singer, actress, dancer, clothing designer, restaurant owner, co-producer, the list goes on and on. Sure, her notoriety has died down a bit, but she’s still around making money “entertaining” the masses. How many girls from “In Living Color,” do you know ever reached the height of J.Lo’s success? Sorry, but the judge, Cari Ann, from Dancing With The Stars doesn’t even come close. In an uncertain economy we need to show everyone that we don’t play just one note on the keyboard.

Lesson: Be flexible and offer a whole array of untapped talent or skill your employer could use to further the business. More than likely you will be the one to get/keep the job.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Look Who’s Talking

September 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Americans are gabbing away on their cell phones according to this Nielsen report. The particularly interesting part is who’s doing the talking. Women (perhaps unsurprisingly to some) talk 22% more than men, and teens are texting more than anyone else.

Usage also varied by location. The South loves to talk with most of the Southern states using more than 800 voice minutes each month. The highest text messaging states, however, are spread throughout the country in states like Utah, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania, which are averaging more than 800 text messages each month. These powerful trends actually vary significantly by who’s doing the talking, which means an additional level of strategy needed for marketers hoping to tap into the mobile channel.

The report also shows how the minutes break down by race: “African-Americans use the most voice minutes – on average more than 1,300 a month. Hispanics are the next most talkative group, chatting an average of 826 minutes a month. Even Asians/Pacific Islanders, with 692 average monthly minutes, talk more than Whites, who use roughly 647 voice minutes a month.”

What does this tell you about your audience? Is a mobile platform now the best route to your customer? Let us know what you think.

Filed Under: Market Research, Marketing, Mobile Tagged With: , , , ,
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