How To Use Social Media To Replace Expensive Focus Groups for Marketers
Polls and inquiry posts > old-school focus group sessions
For many marketers and small businesses, the costs to administer a focus group can range between $4,000 to $12,000 which might be a deal-breaker when cash for your marketing budget is low. This lack of access to focus groups can be problematic for small businesses since they will miss out on info that helps them make decisions about new product launches and advertisements.
However, the good news is that you can get the same info normally obtained in focus groups from social media as long as you follow these five steps.
Step 1: Know When Your Social Media Channel Can Be Used To Collect Info
The first thing that needs to be known is when your business social media channel is ready to be able to collect useful info from your customers. A perfect social media channel that can be used to replace focus groups is defined by a sizable audience and a high level of engagement.
A sizable audience for a social media channel depends upon the industry a business competes in and if that audience is big enough to get useful info from social media interactions. However, for simplicity's sake, a social media audience of roughly 500 people is a good audience size to use to replace focus groups. This is because an audience of 500 will most likely leave enough people who will respond to inquiry posts since not everyone reacts to social media content.
To illustrate, if a social media inquiry post asking for comments about a future product receives a poor engagement of only 5%, a total of 25 responses will be given which is a sample that can hopefully yield some good qualitative information. However, a 5% engagement rate is not ideal which is why a successful social media channel needs a high level of engagement since the more engagement there is the more qualitative information can be collected. So, once a sizable audience and a high level of engagement are achieved, your small business is ready to use its social media channel to replace focus groups.
Step 2: Inquiry Posts on Your Social Media
The whole point of focus groups is to ask questions to people to get important qualitative info such as their opinions on new product concepts, product improvement, and advertisement effectiveness. As a result, you can ask those same questions you might ask a focus group to your social media followers. Chobani is a great example of a company that uses social media to generate new product ideas. On their Facebook, they incentivize engagement with prizes.
Now 175 comments is a great place to start generating ideas for new products! Obviously giving a total of $100,000 in prize money is not possible for small businesses but the point is that even a $500 prize can get your customers sharing new product ideas. This will be much cheaper than paying $4,000 to get the same information from a focus group.
Additionally, besides new product development, a marketer can also use social media to ask questions about product improvement and advertisement effectiveness. For instance, in the Chobani example, a marketer can ask social media followers what improvements to product packaging they want for Chobani yogurt such as more appealing colors. Lastly, for advertisement effectiveness, a marketer can ask social media followers their opinions about an ad and if they liked it or not.
Step 3: Make Sure Your Inquiry Posts Identify Customer Motivations
Marketers use an interview technique called laddering to figure out the real motivations that influence a person’s decision to purchase a product. This is because knowing a person’s motivations that influence their purchasing decisions gives marketers more useful info that can guide decision-making. To this end, the laddering technique creates a hierarchy of value that establishes the crucial motivators to purchasing a product for each level. Also, the laddering technique is used frequently in focus group interviews.
The laddering technique’s three levels are:
- Attributes
- Consequences
- Desired end states
The attributes level describes the specific characteristics a product gives someone that causes them to choose it over competitors. For example, a person might choose a Chobani yogurt because it is low in calories. Then in the next sequence, the consequence level can be explored by a marketer. The consequences level describes the impact a certain product attribute gives someone that they want to achieve. For a Chobani yogurt, a person might want weight loss as the desired impact or consequence they will get from their purchase. Lastly, if possible, a marketer can try to identify the desired end states that motivate a person’s decision to buy a product such as weight loss leading to more self-confidence.
However, it can be hard for marketers to find customer desired end states and so in most cases, you will work with the consequence value level to use as a guide for decision making. To illustrate, the consequence of achieving weight loss tells a marketer a lot about how to market current products and what areas to focus on for new products. Moreover, if the desired end state is found, a marketer will gain the deeper knowledge that finding ways to associate Chobani with social acceptance will lead to higher purchasing intention for customers.
For a simple example of how laddering works, you can refer to the below theoretical question and answer process that can be adapted for any situation:
Q: Why did you buy Chobani yogurt?
A: I bought it because it is a low-calorie breakfast.
Q: What do you like about “low calories”?
A: It can help me manage my weight.
Q: Why does weight loss matter to you?
A: Because I will feel more confident with myself.
Finally, when using social media to yield helpful laddering info, you will be doing follow-up questions to comments on a social media post in order to find either consequences or desired end states. This is because the interview process needs to be adapted to fit a social media environment.
Step 4: Use Polls on Social Media Channels
Twitter, Facebook, and many other social media platforms allow polls to be used. This tool is usually overlooked by marketers which is a shame because if used properly polls can be an effective means to gauge customer opinions. Also, a poll makes things easier for a marketer since the data from a poll can easily and quickly be interpreted unlike an inquiry post with hundreds of comments that requires a lot of time to read.
However, polls should be used sparingly on a social media channel. The reason why is that polls are not interesting content to people and so if they are used too excessively you risk your social media channel becoming a boring survey. This is bad because a social media channel needs to interest people and act more like a friendly conversation than be a survey that turns people off.
As a result, social media poll use should be spread out so that followers will not feel like they are taking a survey. A good frequency of social media poll use is once a week because people will not mind that frequency and they will give good answers.
Step 5: Use Private Social Media Groups To Gather Info That You Don’t Want Rivals To See
A big critique of using social media channels to replace focus groups is that any useful information is not kept private and can be used by competitors. However, if done correctly, this critique can be minimized with the use of private social media groups.
For example, Facebook allows for private groups which can be used to ask more sensitive questions that you might not want a competitor to see. Also, for Instagram, a business can essentially create a private group by sending an Instagram DM to a select group of followers. Furthermore, as another alternative for Instagram, a business can essentially create a private group by making another Instagram account that has its privacy setting set to private. Besides that, LinkedIn allows for private groups and so you get the idea that there are ways to use social media to ask questions to followers without having competitors see them.
However, please know that using private social media groups only minimizes the chances that a competitor sees more sensitive questions because rival employees can still slip through by joining the group without your knowledge. Also, some members of your private social media can still share info about it to outside members without your knowledge which another way it only minimizes competitors from seeing your questions. But, even with these two caveats in mind, the use of social media to replace focus groups can still be argued as more beneficial regardless of competitors also seeing your questions.
This is because the secrecy of focus groups comes with the cost of taking a long time for the info to be gathered. So, since our business environment moves at a fast pace because of technological changes, the slowness of focus groups becomes more of a liability for gaining a competitive advantage.
