Are Market Research Tools an Alternative for Social Media Haters?

June 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Social Media has been around for a number of  years now, yet many CEOs just don’t see the point.  Most of them leave the social media activities to the marketing folks in their organization.

In a post on DIYMarketers, we explore the idea the some of today’s newest, coolest market research methods can actually be a great alternative for CEOs who hate all the hassle of social media, but want all the results.

Here is a summary of the alternatives:

  • If you hate the idea of losing control of your message, then create your own customer community.  You can create a customer or user panel with whom you are in regular conversation.  Ask the panel questions, via survey, they will give you answers.
  • Still question the ROI of social media?  Create a crowdsourcing space on your site where your customers can tell you their ideas for improvements and new products and you can respond.  Create a real-live brain trust and conversation that gets your customer involved in creating a product they will love and talk about.
  • Sick of people’s stupid updates?  Run surveys and polls on a mobile platform like SurveySwipe.  You can blast out a question to their existing community or upload a list of your own. You’ll get feedback in less than 2 hours!
I was one of the first people in line to criticize CEOs who weren’t taking advantage of the power of social media.  But as I got to really listening to their complaints — I really GOT IT.
The alternatives I’ve described here use the social media platforms, technologies and elements of fun and then target them toward ROI rich, time saving and customer engaging results.
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Filed Under: Market Research, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

Agile Market Research – Are Smartphones the Answer?

June 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

When online surveys gradually replaced paper surveys, we saved money, increased speed and increased the efficiency of research. Mobile research has the potential to take that profit, speed and efficiency to a new level: to a point where you get true agility in market research, and one where you can get actionable answers to your questions within minutes instead of hours. In addition, most smartphones today are equipped with a GPS and a camera (in some cases multiple). As a result, we have an opportunity to get creative about how we ask questions in a medium that can always be reached.

comScore recently reported that more than 70 million people in the United States own a smartphone and the smartphone market is experiencing double digit growth quarter over quarter. We all know that the smartphone market is exploding but you may not necessarily know how to take advantage of this emerging research channel.

At SurveySwipe, we recently launched a new product called Instant Connect – where you can submit your questions and received data back within one hour. You can get raw data (Excel, SPSS) along with an optional PowerPoint executive report, with same day turnaround. Our hope is that this kind of instant return lowers the barrier to entry for new participants in mobile data collection and mobile research. If you’d like to try Instant Connect, you can get more details here.

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

What We’re Reading: Mobility, Asking Why, Social Media Research

May 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Normally, we’d be going through our reading list on Monday mornings, but given the glorious (and extended) Memorial Day weekend here in the US, we decided to postpone our reading to Tuesday. So without further adieu, here are some highlights from our reading list this week:

  • Mobilizing Market Research, Part 3 – In this third part of a nine-part series leading up to the Market Research in the Mobile World Conference, Carrie Robbins at the GreenBook Blog details the current uses and benefits of mobile market research. If you need to catch up, be sure to take a look at Part 1: Why Go Mobile? and Part 2: Industry Insights.
  • The Insight of Why - This excellent essay by Matt Ridings of techguerilla challenges the value of simple data in the absence of critical thought – specifically, in the absence of real people asking “Why?”  As Matt says, “…if you simply take data alone, and try to parse it in different ways all you really get is ‘filtered data’.  Useful?  Sure.  Interesting? You bet.  Insightful and/or Meaningful?  That remains to be seen and is arrived at only by human investigation *and* the context of the objective.” This piece is a thought-provoking, quick read. Be sure to add it to your list.
  • What is Social Media Research? – Ray Poynter over at the Future Place blog is in the process of writing a journal piece on the current state of social media research. As part of the process, he’s broken social media research down into 3 major “buckets” and he’s looking for your help and ideas to fill them. Go help him out.

What are you reading this week? Be sure to share your favorite articles/blog posts/chat discussions/etc with us, here in the comments or via Twitter (@researchaccess).

    Filed Under: Market Research, Mobile, News, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , ,