August 12, 2011
Fear is Never a Good Motivation
By Leslie Warshaw, SVP, Custom Panels & Communities
I recently read an article on research-live.com by Sally O’Rourke, European MD for Communispace, called Community Safety. I found this article interesting because it brings to light some of the misconceptions about online communities I encounter when talking to marketers.
Of course listening to the right people at the right time is crucial to making effective marketing and business decisions. That’s why it’s so important to get communities right. When setting up a community:
- Never make any decision, much less to set up a community, out of fear. That’s a sure path to failure. Rather, to get the kind of ROI to justify the effort you must set clear, measurable objectives.
- Don’t use a cookie cutter approach. They rarely work, and especially with today’s robust technology, they are totally unnecessary. The industry is moving toward the approach of having a community as a subset of an online market research panel. This gives you the flexibility to execute both quantitative and qualitative research using the same technology platform. You can invite panelists into a discussion whenever it’s appropriate and you can field surveys quickly when that’s called for.The danger to the cookie cutter 300-500 person community model is that you’ll try to shoehorn all your business objectives into this solution. Reminds me of the adage that when all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.
- Communities are first and foremost a research tool and this is a research business. Setting up a community without an understanding of proper research methodology and practices is like doing a surgical procedure without any medical training. Nobody involved is going to be happy with the result.I’m delighted to say I have rarely (maybe never) in my 20-year career in market research, meeting with scores of the top global brands, run across researchers or marketers who feel they know enough about their customers. My experience has been the opposite; they are constantly seeking ways to get a more in-depth and comprehensive view of their audiences.
Category:Custom Panels, Integrated Data, Research Communities
Posted on August 12, 2011
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