1 Options for Gathering Marketing IntelligenceMarketing Research Options for Gathering Marketing Intelligence

2 What We Will Cover What is Marketing Research? Why is it Important?Marketing Research Methodologies Marketing Research 2.0 Research Resources Caveats and Conclusions Next Steps Closing Thoughts This is what we will talk about today. My intention at the end of our time is that you will also be encouraged by the many options and ways by which you can gather market intelligence to make impact on your business decisions and your bottom line.

3 What is it? “Research is formalized curiosity, its poking and prying with a purpose.” — Zora Neal Hurston, writer Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of data about issues relating to marketing products and services.

4 Marketing Research Internal Factors External FactorsHelps to inform you about… Internal Factors Customers What is working/what's not Marketplace Unique selling proposition External Factors Competitors Industry Opportunities/Challenges Environmental Factors

5 The Importance of ResearchProvides competitive intelligence Informs marketing effectiveness Determines target market Can be the difference between failing or succeeding in business Affects the bottom line Identifies opportunities Minimizes risk Creates benchmarks and helps to measure progress Product and service innovation Market research is an essential part of any business that wants to offer products or services that are focused and well targeted Business decisions that are based on good intelligence and good market research can minimize risk and pay dividends. market research should be conducted throughout the lifecycle of a product or service Market research will help you better communicate – you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong.

6 What would help you to improve that rating?How would you rate your current research efforts on a scale of 1 to 7, with “1” being not very good and “7” being excellent (ex: we collect and use research on an on-gong basis) What would help you to improve that rating? Ok. Lets see where we are. Think about your answer and write it down Check with the streaming audience

7 Qualitative Research Qualitative - Seeks to understand the “Why?”Used to gain insight into people's attitudes, behaviors, value systems, concerns, motivations, aspirations, culture or lifestyles. Inform business decisions, policy formation and communication. Format: Open-ended questions gathered by focus group and in person/telephone or virtual interviews

8 Quantitative ResearchQuantitative – Measures “how” many people feel, think or act in a particular way”. larger sample size, over 50. The most common are on-street, telephone interviews and online Format: Structured questionnaires used incorporating mainly closed questions - questions with set responses.

9 What business question do you have that requires more information (data) to resolve?Ok. Lets see where we are. Think about your answer and write it down Check with the streaming audience

10 Changing Marketing EnvironmentPeople now have the ability to connect with one another over distances like never before. Customers are now stakeholders. Organizations need to engage and prove, rather than convince and sell. Thinking needs to shift from top-down to bottom-up.

11 Embracing…. the new! Learn new approaches to research provides a richer arsenal by which one can problem solve. Provides approaches that range in cost. Provides some do-it-yourself options.

12 It’s a new day……Implications!Traditional research is being supplemented with newer forms of gathering data. There is a new opportunity to gather information instantly. The industry is accepting more technology driven methods. RESEARCH 2.0

13 Using Technology to Leverage ResearchMarketing Research Using Technology to Leverage Research 13

14 Online Qualitative ResearchReplace in-person qualitative research with research conducted over the internet. Uses webcam technology and streaming video to provide real time “face-to-face” research. Conducted with assistance from third party or with conferencing service/webcam. Ideas for using online research: ENDLESS exploratory, evaluate concepts, communication testing, programming offerings, membership evaluations.

15 Online Quantitative ResearchIncrease in popularity due to lower cost (vs. focus groups), no travel, convenient, cash for opinions (heavily marketed) Collect and disseminate measurement data online Questions are constructed and participants can answer online

16 Online Quantitative Research: (Cont’d)Do-it-yourself (DIY) options suitable for small studies (limited questions and scope - FREE) as well as more complex features All the sources below offer such services: Surveymonkey.com Constantcontact.com Zoomerang.com Ideas for using online research: employee surveys, performance assessment, process improvement feedback, pricing research, service quality measurement, market data-size and share etc.

17 Articles and Blogs Write, Write, WriteBe interesting—write about trends, your ideas, the industry, provide feedback on others’ ideas, provide case studies, tips. Show yourself as the expert. Sites such as wordpress.com, blogger.com and typepad.com Ideas for using articles/blogs: Capture demographic information by setting up sign-up forms or newsletter forms. Ask questions of your audience Test ideas on your audience and gain feedback Draw a lot of attention from different markets simultaneously. An effective marketing research tool Assists with priority in search engines

18 Mobile Research More and more content is being accessed and viewed on mobile phones. Provides a way to collect real-time data. Participants are engaged over a period of time (days or weeks) using predetermined questions. (3rd party software often necessary Ideas for using mobile research: Studies on habits, activities or behavior, consumer preferences. Tailor to the audience Conduct studies about eating habits DURING the lunch hour Conduct studies on computer use at the office WHILE participants are at work Conduct studies on TV viewing habits DURING prime time while participants are watching TV Conduct studies on shopping WHILE participants are likely to be at the grocery store . Another way that mobile technology is being used is by having customers sign up for texts and they receive discounts and rewards, this is another way that retailers and other companies can now have a new source of information by which to contact and poll customers. The penetration of mobile is so high in emerging markets that it far exceeds every other channel except face-to-face – it is the natural equivalent of online research. In developed economies, there is an assumption that mobile research is a replacement for online. In reality, it seems to supplement it, and it is more of a replacement for telephone and face-to-face. Mobile research is not one thing – it’s a multimodal channel in its own right, embracing self completion, interview-administered, quantitative or qualitative, visual, textual, voice and image, or passive observational, which can be augmented with location or temporal data.

19 Online Communities One of the newest methods used to capture today’s social interactions. Made up of customer groups or target consumers, interact similar to other social media sites. The discussions are purposed around gaining insights and addressing research objectives. Members can be profiled and invited to participate in private, more controlled (research-driven) discussions. Ideas for using online communities: product/program development, observation of member’s interaction, go/no go decisions, gathering information, showing creative stimulus material. Involve larger groups of people (relative to traditional qualitative techniques), but are more actively moderated in comparison to public online communities

20 The Mini Insider …Online Community75% of Mini owners in the USA are members of the community. Improves brand and increases chances that another Mini will be bought. About 50% of all sales leads are actually generated by the site. A community formed as a result of owning a mini that becomes a portal for advocacy and of information.

21 Social Media You must first be socialBecome a part of the discussion and then integrate marketing research efforts Implement tactics along with other marketing strategies. (Not a stand alone effort) Many options—See where your customers socialize Hand out with demographic information

22 Social Media: FacebookFacebook has many rich options for insights. Options Include: Developing a page for your organization Participating in the dialog Creating a page for questions Joining a group – some require a “request to join” Creating a Facebook poll to get more input on a topic, you can also put a link to your poll or survey in an as well as your website to get to get more feedback. Creating unique and specific page, relevant for your business/customers to provide interactive ways to engage customers and provide information at the same time.

23 Social Media: Facebook (Cont’d)Setting up a page for reviews Creating a poll—also link poll in an Creating unique and specific page, relevant for your organization, program or offerings Creating a newsletter—collect demographic information ( address, age, city and state, and one pertinent fact) Creating a newsletter – collect demographic information such as address, age, city and state and one pertinent fact that deals with your topic or business . Ex Vera Wang– “asked what is your expected wedding day”

24 Example: Nike’s Facebookthere is opportunity for government agencies, reviewed quite a few and many lack an interactive component to gain information, the only page that came up in a few instances is a discussion page, where conversations can get started. There was also a comments policy that I noticed in a few, that would minimize concerns that may come due to the openness of facebook.

25 Example: Tesco SupermarketNew feature: Questions There is an option to pay for Facebook advertising for your Questions (via the URL), providing targeted response for market research efforts. Share questions with friends, potential clients, existing customers. Find people with similar mindsets.

26 Social Media: YouTube A source for sharing and viewing video communication. Amateur, advertisers, media producers and media giants provide content. Post video content or learn from videos posted. amateur home video, many advertisers and media producers are now providing professional content. Media giants CBS, EMI Group, Universal MG, Sony BMG, and Warner MG have all agreed to either provide content to YouTube, or to license their respective copyrighted material for use in independent videos released on the site.

27 Social Media: YouTube Sort By YouTube “Suggest” feature (key terms)Search Content Poster of Content Sort By Relevancy to query View Count Ratings YouTube “Suggest” feature (key terms) Use Insight and Analytics tool (free) Find out who is watching, when, where they are located, impact of promotion or news, viewer ship and more By using Youtube Suggest, you can gain insight into how users are searching on Youtube and which queries are most often performed.  These keyword suggestions can then be used to add to your video in order to increase the chances of targeting the largest possible relevant audience. You will notice that this feature is very much the same thing that you see when using Google Suggest, which has been available on Google Labs for some time. In fact, Youtube is using the Google Suggest functionality to power the Youtube Suggestions.  Because this is the case, you can also get these same suggestions by using the following JSON call, where q=the term being searched Source: Youtube Keyword Research Tool & YouTube Keyword Suggestions © ReelSEO Video Marketing

28 Social Media: Twitter Twitter is loaded with market intelligence for its users. Users who are talking about what makes them happy and what makes them angry – products, brands and market insights are all being discussed.

29 Social Media: Twitter Start conversations with users (participate and dialogue). Ask questions that may be answered quickly. Direct users to surveys or websites as a way to engage. Follow those that share your audience, or are tweeting about topics of interest to you or your clients. Become interesting to others by providing tweets that show you as the expert. Use hashtags (#) when tweeting to be searchable. (example ISOM #market #research tips). Use hashtags (#) when tweeting. This convention allows your comments to be searchable and will add tweets a database of information on the topic you tweet about.

30 Twitter-based ResourcesSearch.twitter.com Find mentions of product, company or topics. Search followers, those following, client, audiences of interest, competitors Twitterlocal.net Allows for micro-research, search tweets within a specific geographical area. Monitor events, political issues, news. Backtweets.com Search twitter for links posted on twitter. Backtype.com Allows you to see conversations by tweeters that appear on blogs, site forums and other social networks Using Twitter search, you can quickly find mentions of products or company in specific context, Twitter is full of publicly accessible data. Search the tweets of your followers or those you are following, clients, competitors or audiences of interest by going to search.twitter.com (search by twitter name). Perform a search for tweets within or around a specific geographical area. Monitor how different audiences are reacting to events, news, political issues, etc. TwitterLocal is a recommended tool for this type of micro-research Backtweets you can search Twitter for people linking to websites, and those who use URL shorteners to link to websites. You can see your competition and who is talking about whom. (Note:  This site does cost money to use, but they have limited services that are free and still quite useful) Backtype.com is like a Twitter search on other social media. Backtype allows you to see conversations by tweeters that appear on blogs, site forums, other social networks and in other marketing media. Allowing access to many different sites and not just Twitter. . searches for links posted on Twitter. If you search key words, your BackTweets results will match the URL that the key words are found in. If you search a URL or shortened URL, for example a company website, blog, videos, etc., the BackTweets results will track any links that are from that URL. BackTweets is free and provides millions of the most current tweets, which appear in chronological order according to the times posted. Searches even work through tweets that are in different languages The free features of BackTweets, which anyone can use is the Twitter link search. This basic feature finds links on twitter for a page or website you are interested in, for example the New York Times. The other free feature is the Tweet history, which is the time period the twitter link search works over. This feature can access results from the past two to four weeks, and if you are using BackTweets Pro you can access results from the past year and a half.

31 Twitter-based Resources (Cont’d)Twellow.com A business directory, that allows you to find Twitter users in your business by geographic area. Twitter Lists Build a list that can be tracked daily of key opinion leaders in your industry, competitors, brand advocates and naysayers. Search business directories for Twitter users in your niche business and geographic area. Twellow.com allows you to find people and follow them if you choose. You can also see who is following you All too often, Twitter is used only for distribution purposes. But in fact, it’s a valuable tool for keeping tabs on your competitors, as well as your brand’s existing fans. Build Twitter Lists- Invest several hours in building a few solid lists that you can easily track every day. Here are some types of lists: Track down innovators, influencers, those that break news in your space. Competitors and those that your competitors follow — both companies and individuals alike — are also key. Your biggest brand advocates and loudest brand naysayers. Get into the minds and lives of the people you are trying to serve or compete with, you will have a better idea of what strategies will and will not work. Be sure to update your list regularly.

32 Example: Twitter With Twitter you can potentially reach anyone in the world with a single 140 character tweet. Tweet messages can be broad or focused on a small select audience. Virgin America used Promoted Tweets toward their in-flight Wi-Fi customers. On launch, they put out three distinct tweets then promoted with carefully crafted keywords. Two of the tweets were meant to engage just their passengers at 35,000 feet. Just imagine how cool it would be to fly Virgin America and uncover a tweet that was meant just for you. That’s the power of talking to a smaller audience

33 Social Media: LinkedInThe most professional site of those spoken about today, where professionals share and seek information. Good source of information on industry, companies, and individuals Ways to use for research: Join groups to be a part of conversations or start conversations Ask questions and seek answers Appropriate for job search, candidate recruitment, research participant recruitment, polling, information gathering and sharing

34 Social Media: LinkedIn (Cont.)Follow discussions Use “Companies” tab—statistics on specific company and employees Use “News” tab to view trends, stories and topics in several industries (mktg, internet, IT, PR etc.) Utilize group membership to network and learn about topics, services or needs. Employee recruitment

35 Social Media: LinkedInUse “Polls” found under the more tab to canvas those topics you would like to know more about Example: Do you think a persons culture can add to their desirability when applying for a job? James Linton • 1 vote • 12 days left Yes No Potentially N/A Vote or View Results

36 An integrated example Tropicana rolled out repackaging using findings from their social media tactics. Example of a campaign that incorporates many social media platforms and cultivates it own forum, shows creativity, extension of a message and the interactive nature of social findings to inform the repackaging and launch of Tropicana. Tropicana rolled out repackaging that many shoppers complained looked like a generic brand and made the product much harder to find on store shelves. The resulting pushback led Tropicana to revert to its earlier packaging

37 More… Additional Resources 37

38 Social Media MonitoringThere are several search engines that comb the internet, including blogs, tweets and Facebook, for topics that may be of interest to you or your stakeholders. Here are some sources: BoardRreader.com Google.com/alerts Socialmention.com Icerocket.com Radian 6 Trackur Visit sites often to stay abreast of trends and or to canvas reactions, thoughts and attitudes about certain topics, issues or products. Blogs Mainstream online news, such CNN.com Video and Photo sharing sites, like Flickr and YouTube Micromedia, including the full Twitter firehose and Friendfeed Forums and Discussion Boards Blog comments Facebook public discussion forums Radian6 uses a combination of RSS and other data feeds in addition to proprietary crawlers in order to index the entire social web. If data is available publicly, we’ll capture it. (That also means that data the community trusts to stay behind a wall, will; we don’t crawl or capture sites like private portions of Facebook, private communities, or anything like that.) We capture over eight million on-topic posts and comments each day, filter out the spam and irrelevant data, and deliver results to you in near real time

39 Social Media Monitoring (Cont’d)NutshellMail will send an to your inbox with all your company’s social media activity. Google Alerts allows you to sign up with an address and receive s based on chosen key terms. Google Trends – reflects the keywords that are being searched on a daily basis by city or part of world. If you have an active social media site — Use a monitoring tool like NutshellMail, which will send an to your inbox with all your social media activity, allowing you to keep track of what’s being said without having to regularly log in to Facebook or Twitter to see for yourself. If you don’t have an active social media site — sign up for Google Alerts and let Google do the work for you. Provide your address and key terms you want to be alerted about (organization name and/or industry words relevant to your niche), and you will get s to know when and where people are talking about you.

40 Make a list of key terms that you would like to set up searches forMake a list of key terms that you would like to set up searches for? (Ex: can include your company/agency, industry, issues, topics, people or competitors) Ok. Lets see where we are. Think about your answer and write it down Check with the streaming audience

41 Recruiting Research ParticipantsUse social network to find people of interest for more formal discussions. These people can be seen as potential: Opinion leaders Industry experts Audience capturers (have a following you want to talk to) Early Adopters Influencers An added advantage for using social media platforms and conducting research on line is it provides the ability to canvas a large number of people quickly, find people of interest that you desire to speak in a more formal way or in a different format, these people can be seen as potential

42 Personal Websites Use personal website to collect and report findings.Post blogs, articles, and white papers, and ask for comments. Require readers to answer pre-determined questions before providing access to content. Add a polling feature to your website that allows you to ask visitors questions. Information from the blogs and/or polling feature can be used in a newsletter and for content on the site—you end up being a sponsor of your own research findings.

43 Check List Research Type Best for Quantitative – online or in personLarge sample sizes; Specific closed questions Answers: How Many? Qualitative – online or in person Small sample size; Open ended questions Answers: Why? Mobile Interaction with audience to determine habits, patterns and attitudes in real time Social Media Platforms Continuous engagement, test preliminary ideas, gather information for further testing Market Research Online Communities Understanding complex problems, issues or behaviors over a period of time; identifying needs and new ideas. Online blogs and written articles are good habits to cultivate for on-going interaction and engagement with targeted audience.

44 Who or what are you trying to find out more aboutWho or what are you trying to find out more about? (Ex: customers, potential clients, products, services, competitors) What research method do you believe would best inform you about them? Why? (Ex: the online forums such as online qualitative because my product is in the early stage of development and I need exploratory information)

45 Caveat and Conclusions…Putting It All in Context 45

46 Caveats and ConclusionsDo-it-yourself (DIY) surveys can compromise objectivity of questioning and impartial interpretation. The internet is a limited medium from which to draw a truly representative sample. There is still limited guidance governing the practice of internet research. Do it yourself (DIY) surveys (where the clients put the questions directly to the respondent without a researcher as an intermediary) compromise objectivity of questioning and impartial interpretation The internet is a limited medium from which to draw a truly representative sample. Research conducted via the internet can only target internet users and, more specifically, it can only target internet users who are prepared to answer online questionnaires. Due to its rapid evolution and the huge growth potential of the online research market, there is still limited guidance governing the practice of internet research. However, Market Research Associations offer Code of Conduct and specific guidelines on online research are a valuable source of information

47 Caveats and Conclusions (Cont’d)Social media content does not always authentically reflect the views of the people who posted it. Hidden intent or misdirected intent can lead to misleading content. Social media is not representative, only directional. Social media is best used early Social media content does not always authentically reflect the views of the people who posted it. Hidden intent or misdirected intent can lead to misleading content; this needs to be taken into account when analyzing social content. The volume of polluted content will vary significantly by brand and topic. Social media is not representative, only directional. You can try to quantify it to better understand the direction but it will still be qualitative. Social media is best used early in the market research process: to develop hypotheses to test with surveys or to use up front as a qualitative tool to more fully understand issues and to see what you might have overlooked

48 What strategy will you implement to initiate research goalsWhat strategy will you implement to initiate research goals? (Ex: I will form a team to canvas Facebook and start by listening to conversations about computer frustrations) What will you do with the information once you find it? (Ex: create a brochure, create a campaign, develop a product)

49 Next steps……. Identify next steps to include the following:Determine if you can do it yourself, or if you need the help of a marketing research professional and/or technological assistance? Determine how often you will engage in research and plan efforts into yearly plans and budgets. Understand how social media, blogs/articles and other research designs will be integrated with existing efforts to reach marketing objectives. Be clear about what you will do with the information learned.

50 Next steps……. Determine if your findings need further validation and or further refinement by conducting more research using other forms of research.

51 Closing Thoughts Research is a processMigrate research and insight activities from being episodic to continuous View new research options/methods as part of a larger, customer-centric process Call us if you need us!!

52 Research: Design, Strategy and ImplementationAudrey Burke Research: Design, Strategy and Implementation (202)