1. Focus groups are all about understanding your customers, really digging deep into their needs, wants, and emotional reactions. This information can be very useful to business planning; however, it should always be remembered that focus groups are qualitative research�there is no statistical significance associated with it, and it cannot be applied to the general population.

2. Recruiting is a key aspect of focus group success. It isn’t a numbers gameââ?¬â?rather, more importance should be placed on finding the right people for your groups. A conversation with six very qualified participants will likely yield more fruitful results than a session with ten unqualified participants. Participants should be screened to ensure they are qualified and knowledgeable in the topic at hand. Also, incentives are generally offered to encourage participants to attend.

3. Make sure you thoroughly review and understand the moderator’s guide. This is the tool that your moderator will be using to keep the group on track, encourage feedback useful to your research project, and lead conversation. Make sure you are comfortable with everything included in the guide.

4. A good moderator is vital to focus group success. Your research firm will likely have skilled, qualified moderators available for any focus groups you are conducting. Depend on these moderators to keep conversation flowing, and to evoke the “intimate strangers“ feeling among the group.

5. Always plan to attend your own focus groups. There is usually a room available for viewing focus groups. Viewing the participants in real time allows you to hear and see useful insights that may not get captured in the written report, and you’ll be able to request clarification or additional information if something a participant says is unexpected or unclear. However, do be sure to watch quietly, and wait to ask your moderator questions until s/he comes to the back room at specified times. These times should be outlined in your moderator’s guideââ?¬â?if they are not, request that at least one moderator visit to the backroom be added in.

If you are interested in learning more, please go to the Market Connections website and sign up for our free e-course about focus groups.

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There are benefits to conducting various types of satisfaction studies, including those that survey customers, association members, vendors, and partners.  We’ve often offered advice on implementing employee satisfaction research, as management often wants to know their staff’s attitudes and opinions on corporate policies, benefits, advancement opportunities, training and development options, supervisors, and the like.  Certainly, this is important information to drive effective programs aimed at improving employee engagement, performance, and retention.

But, as organizations strive to continually optimize processes for improved efficiencies and performance, they often overlook an area of the business,?? the internal service providers.  While employees in “back office” departments like legal, human resources, accounting, administrative support, and proposal development don’t typically come into direct contact with external customers, they serve others who do.  In fact, the quality of service provided by these departments is critical to the performance of those on the front lines with customers, not to mention the morale of everyone in the organization. Read the rest of this entry »

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Often times, organizations that have conducted fairly straightforward research projects, such as a stand-alone focus group or a market awareness survey of a single target audience, are caught off guard by the many intricacies and potential pitfalls of larger, more complex studies.   Unquestionably, research projects of a larger scope require more people, more time, and more funding.  And, above all, they require skilled and dedicated project managers on both the client side and at the research firm.

You’ll know you’re embarking on a more complex research program if it entails one or more of these characteristics:

- Multiple market segments, such as defense, civilian, and state-and-local government agencies.
- Multiple functions or titles.  Perhaps a DoD survey requires that senior military management, commanding officers in the field, and purchasing agents be surveyed.
- Multiple research methodologies, such as focus groups and/or in-depth interviews followed by a quantitative phone survey, or a study that entails the simultaneous use of phone surveys and a web site to accommodate visual aids.
- Multiple products and/or services.  Perhaps you need to measure awareness and preference within five different product groups,?? and compare your rankings to those of competitors in those groups. Read the rest of this entry »

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You’ve likely heard researchers use the term “statistical significance” when talking about market study findings.  Unfortunately, the term is not always clearly defined, and some clients are inadvertently mislead. 

While “significant” in normal conversation means “important”, in the world of statistics it means “probably true” rather than due to chance.  It conveys how likely it is that a relationship between two data points under study really exists.  Additionally, the higher the level of significance, the more likely it is that the statistic is reliable.  Equally notable, when researching a large sample size, very small differences will surface as significant.  Read the rest of this entry »

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A multi-award contract comes with no specific promise of business. So winners have to continually refine their strategies in order to maximize their wins and income from the contract.  As such, marketing within a contract becomes just as important as the original sales pitch.

Building the specific sales and marketing savvy needed to maximize contract income requires an explicit understanding of the perceptions and needs of those who have the ability to purchase off the contract.  To that end, many government contractors turn to market research to help answer questions critical to contract success, including: Read the rest of this entry »

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Thank you to everyone who attended the April 8th Government Marketing Forum event; and a special thanks to all of you who offered feedback through our post-event online evaluation.  I am sure you will agree that our distinguished panelists offered great insight into Successful Marketing: Resonating with the Government Buyer.

It was an engaging discussion filled with humorous anecdotes about what works and what doesn’t when marketing to the government.  The room was packed before and after the program, with a great buzz of networking, which I know I found quite beneficial. This is not the end,?? only a start to a string of GMF events.  So, be on the lookout for future announcements.

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