MarketTools Blog

More and more panel providers are using Facebook as part of their panel management process – we need to be where current and potential panelists hang out in order to recruit and retain great panelists to respond to our customers’ surveys. 

But at ZoomPanel we want to do more than just use Facebook to broadcast announcements or as a channel for one-off surveys, as many panel suppliers do. The ZoomPanel Facebook application provides a complete panel experience within Facebook, allowing respondents to take surveys, answer polls, and check their reward status without leaving the Facebook environment.  Facebook’s interactive capabilities also allow us to interact with panelists and deepen panelist engagement – which in turn helps build longer-term relationships with them and fosters loyalty. 

An example: when ZoomPanel recently launched a new rewards program, we wanted to get real-time feedback from panelists to refine the program during the initial launch phase.  Our Facebook community provided the perfect medium to get real-time feedback from our most vocal user base to refine the program during the initial launch phase. 

Back when the Internet was young, finding people to take an online survey could sometimes be a struggle. Today, everyone has a long list of potential survey respondents. To recruit them, they use email newsletters, CRM systems, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, corporate blogs and QR codes inserted into all kinds of places. The problem today, if anything, is that there are too many lists of survey-takers ‒ overlapping, constantly changing lists of respondents.

So where does that leave the survey panel provider?

Years before I worked in market research, I was a member of an online survey panel.  I took enough surveys to get a $20 check in the mail and once got a bag of potato chips as part of an in-home usage test. Perhaps my early days as a panelist have left me particularly attentive to the panelist’s point of view. 

Panelists have a lot to tell us about online market research and they find ways to make their opinions known.  Whether it’s through our panel support team, our ZoomPanel Facebook page, or the dropout rates in a survey, panelists make themselves heard. I’d argue that our industry is better for it. 

Here are four things our panelists tell us that make us better researchers.

Although it’s hard to imagine now, an article in Wired Magazine reports that “there was a time when casinos only grudgingly tolerated slot machines”.  Now slot machines represent two-thirds of all gaming revenue and three-quarters of the gaming floor acreage in Vegas. Market Researchers could learn a lot from the evolution of slot machines from novelty to casino gaming staple. 

Here are three slot machine innovations that have some interesting parallels in the market research industry:

Online research panel providers haven’t always had a straightforward process for researchers to identify the right panel attributes for their research projects.  Traditionally, sample vendors have used a book format – which can make it difficult to understand the full scope of attributes you have available to choose from.

MarketTools decided to try something completely different: an Online Market Research Menu that centralizes the majority of panel attributes for ZoomPanel Online Sample on a single sheet of paper. 

Guest blogger Jennifer Becker is the Director of Research, Brand Strategy at Airfoil Public Relations, a high tech firm in Detroit and Silicon Valley – and a MarketTools customer.

If you think that creating online surveys for public relations is totally different from market research, think again. Whether creating a survey to support media relations or launch a new product, the design fundamentals and purpose – to gain brand exposure – are the same, even when the end audiences are not. Whether it’s a story, or your product or service that you’re selling, you want that audience – be it media or customers – to buy!

A strong survey is a strong survey, regardless of how your business ultimately leverages the data. In fact, if you can approach a publicity-based research project with the same objectivity as a market research survey, you will ultimately produce the highest-quality data possible, something media gravitate toward. Your sample should be representative of the population and your questions as focused as possible to elicit data meaningful to the story you hope to tell.

So, you’re proactively using online surveys to get quick answers to questions about what your customers are interested in, or what they think about a product or service. Brilliant! Online survey tools like Zoomerang and online panels such as ZoomPanel sample are used by some of the world’s most respected brands and market researchers to conduct fast and easy online research.

But before you field your next survey, here are six signs your survey results may not be all that useful.

1.    Your mom is the only person that completed your survey
Um.  Yeah. At least she loves you, right? The truth is that relying on friends and family to help make product, marketing, or business decisions is probably not the best way to roll.  An online sample provider can provide survey respondents who are truly representative of the audience you want to reach. 

You also want to ensure that you’ve calculated the correct size for your sample population, which has a major impact on the statistical validity of your results.  Zoomerang offers Sample Size Calculators to make it easy to understand how many survey respondents you need to get more accurate survey results.

How can online market research help or hurt a new fad?

Probably one of the most unique and interesting fashion statements in the last decade comes from a small town in northeastern Mexico called Matehuala.  If you haven’t seen these bedazzled pointy-toed boots yet, the image posted here alone is worth 60 seconds of your day. There is something about these boots that absolutely fascinates me – yet just as quickly as they reached Yahoo News’ most popular stories, that same article explains that they are already being replaced by “high-heeled Ropers”.

Want to learn more about online market research?

The just-published first edition of The Essential Guide to Online Market Research offers practical advice to help you take full advantage of everything online market research has to offer. Although the world of online surveys and online market research is a vast topic, this e-book offers some nuts and bolts in a condensed format that’s easy to read.

Beginning with the basics, you’ll get a thorough understanding of why you should conduct market research (in case you are on the fence) and why online market research is taking the industry by storm. Then the book covers the pros and cons of “do it yourself” research versus hiring a service bureau or a full-fledged online market research firm to handle the heavy lifting for you.

The latest GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) Report got me thinking about the differences in the way market research clients and research suppliers think about online sample.

If you ask clients, data quality is high on their list of concerns: in the GRIT Report, 90% of research clients rated “provides highest data quality” as an important or very important quality in a research provider.  They ranked data quality 5th out of the 25 qualities tested in the survey, and only qualities related to customer service rank higher.

But suppliers placed much less importance on data quality.  Only 69% of the suppliers who provide clients with online survey sample ranked data quality as important or very important, placing it 18th on their list of priorities. Suppliers are also more likely to see market research as a commodity while clients are more likely to see distinctions amongst suppliers in the market.