We are excited to announce our recent move to new offices!  The move allows us to take advantage of updated facilities and accommodate our expanding team and client base. 

We’d like to give a special thanks to everyone who has helped contribute to our growth.

Please stop by and visit us anytime in our new offices at 14555 Avion Parkway, Suite 125 in Chantilly Virginia.

 This March, we will be fielding the first independent syndicated federal market study of its kind.  In addition to very detailed preference data on traditional and web-based information sources, the study will measure federal employees’ purchasing behaviors across a wide variety of products and services, including IT, defense, telecom, aviation, logistics, HR, finance, and travel. The goal of this study is to measure the media habits of federal government employees along with their purchasing habits. Click here to review the study prospectus for more details.

We think you and your organization will find the results of this survey to be very insightful and useful in assisting with your strategic media and marketing decisions.  The report will release in June.  Those that purchase the study will be able to use an intuitive online report tool to cross-tabulate the results into many different demographic views to better support their decision making.

Pre-register now for an early-bird buyer discount of $525 off the study purchase price!

Tailored targeting based on gut feelings and assumptions is all too common and, unfortunately, typically fails. You don’t have to be a marketing expert to know the more that you personalize your approach to your prospect, the more they’ll prefer your brand. And, what does that equal? More sales.

Companies that truly succeed at market segmentation use strategies built on facts — facts derived from solid segmentation studies. These studies explore many different variables to provide a host of insights including:

• the most promising segments on which you should focus your efforts
• the characteristics of those segments
• their buying and usage behaviors and preferences
• which of your offerings will likely appeal most to them
• the value propositions that best resonate with them
• the most effective marketing messages and tactics

Your research partner will help you structure the study to ensure the segments it explores are:

• identifiable – they have differing attributes that can actually be measured
• accessible – they can be reached through available marketing channels
• substantial – they are large enough to justify your dedicated resources
• unique – they are different enough to make segmentation practical
• durable – they change infrequently, thus minimizing your investment as much as possible

Like other types of studies, segmentation research requires expert analyses by a research firm, to deliver meaningful segmentation results. Certainly, it can be more expensive to slice your target into multiple segments and market to them each differently. But, it enables you to be highly relevant to your target audiences. And that means you’ll always hit the bulls eye!

If you are a federal contractor, you won’t want to miss the upcoming issue of Research IT, our monthly e-newsletter, releasing on Thursday, February 21st.  We’ll be announcing our new one-of-a-kind syndicated federal media and buying habits study.  The insights from this independent, reliable and affordable report can help you perfect your strategic marketing campaigns.  The e-newsletter will also contain details about how you can lock in an early-bird discount of $525 off the purchase price!

To subscribe to our e-newsletter, click here.

We’re not ones to brag, but when it comes to federal agency decision makers, we’ve got the insights.   How do we know what these folks are thinking?  Well, we’ve interviewed them annually for the past 4 years.  Lucky for you, we’ve consolidated our key findings  into two different briefs for each of 11 different federal agencies – one that reports on most-valued vendor attributes, and another that reports on the most popular sources of IT information.

These affordable briefs offer contractors fact-based intelligence and insights for effectively marketing to the agencies of specific interest to them.  Not to mention,  you’ll save a cool 15% when you buy.  Visit our site for more information.

You may be anxious to get started on a new  research project, but have you thought about timing?   Most studies require a minimum of 8-10 weeks from the kick-off to report, and that’s  a best case scenario.  We know it can be tempting to rush into a research study in order to make business decisions faster, however, attempting to conduct a study at an inopportune time could have a negative impact on your schedule and budget. 

Because it’s the last month of the federal fiscal year, September is not a good month to conduct surveys or recruit focus groups with the federal government.  Your decline rate will likely be high.  The last month of the fiscal is also a no-no for  state governments, though watch out for the sneaky few who begin their fiscal years in July or January. 

Mid-December through the second week of January is never a good time to conduct focus groups or studies.  Many people are on vacation and busy with the holidays, year-end work demands and annual planning.  It’s likely many people who commit will end up as no shows. 

Also think about your own internal timing issues when planning your research schedule.  You’ll want ample time to reflect on the results and plan a course of action.  Ultimately, for the best ROI, make sure you plan ahead – both for enough time and the right time.

Many companies smartly rely on customer satisfaction studies as an important measure of business performance. However, surprisingly, many of those same companies often fail to gather and act upon the rich insights that their most important audience – employees – are eager to share.

Unquestionably, tapping into employee intelligence can help both protect and bolster the long-range success of an organization. Employees often reveal both obstacles to and enhancers of organizational performance, including factors contributing to low morale, ways to successfully hire and retain talent, perceived quality of managers and departments, process problems, and effectiveness of training programs.

Organizations can use one or a combination of several methodologies to conduct employee satisfaction programs, including phone and e-mail surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups. Regardless of which methodology your company uses, it’s critical to take the following measures in order to maximize the research value and protect employee morale.

Seriously commit to acting on employee feedback
If your company wants to know what employees really think, management must be fully committed to developing and executing a plan that acts on the research results. Many companies don’t realize that conducting an employee satisfaction program creates the perception that employee feedback is valued along with the expectation that at least some improvements will be made as a result. Failing to act on the results of the research will likely diminish employees’ respect of management, damage employee morale, and lower the response rate in subsequent employee satisfaction surveys.

Include topics important to employees
Of course, the survey needs to address the topics deemed most important by management. But, if it doesn’t also probe topics that are important to employees, the organization is at risk of conveying that, at best, it’s unaware of or, at worst, purposely avoiding these areas. If your company is unsure about which issues are important to its employees, conduct preliminary research to identify them prior to developing the final survey instrument.

Protect the anonymity of employees
To gain their full cooperation and candor without fear of retribution, it’s very important to be explicitly clear with employees from the outset that the research will be conducted anonymously or, at the very least, kept confidential. Working with a neutral third-party research firm is the most effective way to protect anonymity and achieve complete candor, as it prevents management personnel from being able to single out specific employees’ responses.

A well managed employee satisfaction program can be an extremely valuable tool in helping companies improve from the inside out. Consult your research provider for guidance on how to put a meaningful program in place.