Market research recruiting seems simple enough: find people who can answer questions and share insights about a product or brand. How hard could it be? Similar to watching professional athletes make their sports look effortless, market research recruiting is no different. While recruitment may seem easy, there is a lot of work and coordination that goes on behind the scenes.

It’s been a while since we last covered the topic of the pitfalls of DIY recruiting, so we figured it’s time to revisit the topic, especially as businesses and organizations are ramping up to complete market research studies.

DIY Hazard #1: Shifting timelines

It’s rare for market research recruitment studies to stay true to the original schedule set forth. Experienced research consultants know that creating the initial schedule is more of a guide, and is likely to be modified many times before completion. Delays can be caused by any number of reasons. Sometimes a product or device to be tested doesn’t ship in time or perhaps the organization commissioning the study wants to expand or narrow its scope. Over the many years we’ve recruited for market research, it’s rare that we’ve seen a study adhere to its original scope or schedule. Flexibility is key and being nimble and quickly filling a study with the right people requires a devoted team whose sole focus is on recruitment.

DIY Hazard #2: Managing No-Shows

Managing market research no-shows creates a last minute scramble for the moderator and recruiter. Similar to shifting timelines being a given, most market research studies involve last-minute substitutions. Sometimes respondents need to be replaced because they’re a no-show, and other times the moderator realizes that a participant isn’t qualified and slipped through in spite of the screening guide questions. Trying to manage and mitigate the scramble of last-minute changes is stressful enough. This is often a breaking point for DIY recruiting teams, as they don’t have the infrastructure in place to quickly find replacements, nor do they know to recruit extra participants who can quickly substitute no-shows or misfits.

DIY Hazard #3: Recruiting for Online Studies

With so many insite research and consulting now being conducted online, in part because of Covid-19, there are additional steps required when recruiting for online focus groups. DIY teams may not be aware that in addition to vetting qualified participants, they need to also test and screen for technical and digital aptitude and connectivity. This is especially true when recruiting older demographics. While these participants may be fully qualified to fill a study being conducted in person, they may not have the skills or equipment to participate digitally.

There are many other hazards to DIY recruiting, beyond what we’ve listed here, but hopefully this gives you an idea of some of the challenges. When recruiting for any market study, whether big or small, it’s best to partner with a nationwide recruitment agency.

Contact us today to learn more about finding the best participants for your next study.

Original Reference: https://bit.ly/3mAZZ5p

Anyone who works in market research, and its related fields (market research recruitment), understands the value of conducting market research studies. What may seem so obvious to us, isn’t necessarily understood by those who haven’t benefited by market research. In today’s blog we’ll highlight five benefits of conducting a market research study. Keep in mind that sometimes there are very specific reasons to conduct market research, such as: testing UX design; product testing; brand identity; and testing start-up ideas. Even if your market research study has a very specific scope, you’ll end up learning a lot more about your product or idea and customers. Of course there are more than five benefits to market research recruitment agencies, but for brevity, we’ll focus on some of the main ones.

1.) Identify Business Opportunities

Market research studies reveal who your target customers are and how you can reach them. Armed with this information, your teams can explore ways to expand market share through strategic partnerships or relevant product offerings or upgrades.

2.) Minimize Business Risks (especially startups!)

The odds of a start-up business lasting five years or more is about 50/50, according to the SBA. There are many challenges facing new businesses with cash-flow being one of them. It’s sometimes hard to justify spending money on market research when a fledgling startup, but it can be money well spent helping ensure that your business or idea isn’t one of the 50 percent that don’t make it beyond five years. Conducting ongoing market research during the early years can help in a number of ways. For example:

1.) You can test products and design ideas before launching. By testing your concepts on a small subset of your target audience you can get invaluable feedback and implement the changes before committing to a full launch.

2.) You can learn why customers aren’t returning. A quantitative or qualitative study can help reveal why customers aren’t returning, and what the barriers are.

3.) You can gain insights into decreasing sales. Maybe your product has a flaw that isn’t readily apparent or perhaps your UX platform is cumbersome and doesn’t make it easy for customers to get the information they’re looking for or complete a purchase. The problem is, you won’t know until you drill down and learn what the issues are for customers.

3.) Know Where to Direct Precious Advertising Dollars

From startup businesses to legacy brands, knowing where to direct your advertising budget always makes fiscal sense. Insite research and consulting studies can identify which channels to reach your intended audience and which messages or images they’re most likely to notice. Whether your brand engages in traditional marketing campaigns (television, radio, etc.) or online, knowing where your customers are and how to reach them ensures you’re not wasting time and money in your advertising efforts.

4.) Improve Goal Setting for Your Business

Goal setting often includes increasing sales or customer reach. These are worthy goals for any business, but are unrealistic without deeper insights into your target audience. Is there room for growth, or is your market saturated? How is your competition perceived within your market? Are you missing out on certain demographics because your product isn’t culturally sensitive? All these questions, and more, can be answered by conducting market research. Reaching certain goals is hard enough, but without a roadmap, it’s near impossible!

5.) Fact-Driven Strategic Planning

Anyone who has read the book, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman knows that humans are notorious for our cognitive biases. There are hundreds of examples where a business leader followed a hunch, when really s/he should have followed the facts. Market research is a sure way to separate hunches from facts. When making strategic plans for your business, you want your information to be factually based. It isn’t uncommon for a business team to have a supposition that is refuted by conducting market research. Market research provides your organization with facts helping your teams make informed decisions.

There is an oft-quoted saying, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.” Substitute ‘conduct market research’ for ‘plant a tree’ and this quote applies to any business, large or small.

To Find the Best Participants for Your Market Research Study, Contact us Today!

Original Reference: https://bit.ly/2OShZvF

Over the past few years there has been a significant increase in the number of medical research studies being commissioned. The focus of these studies varies widely from voice-of-the-patient to pharmaceutical positioning and branding. Successfully recruiting for such studies can be a challenge. Keeping up with medical abbreviations, consumer privacy issues, HIPPAA regulations, and other restrictions are just some of the reasons why it’s important to choose a recruiting firm that has a dedicated team of healthcare study recruiters.

What Makes A Good Healthcare Recruiter?

Healthcare recruiting teams spend more time building relationships with medical offices; doctors and nurses; and patient groups. Such relationships are key to successfully recruiting for healthcare studies. We’ve had market research firms contact us in a panic when they realize that recruiting for medical and healthcare studies are way more challenging than recruiting for general studies. Our healthcare recruiting teams have worked within the medical establishment and have long-established relationships with various groupsand individuals within the industry.

A good healthcare recruiter engages with patients and consumers and is familiar with emerging trends, causes, and foundations that are active within their communities. Beyond engagement and relationship building, successful medical recruiting teams spend a lot of time reading medical journals and looking for possible links between medical conditions that can make recruitment easier.

Does it Take Longer to Recruit for Medical Studies?

Depending on the focus of the medical or healthcare study, recruiting may take longer. If recruiting requires going through a medical office or connecting with healthcare providers, the hours to make contact are limited. This is where relationship building pays off. Our recruiters know when it’s okay to outreach and are sensitive to the busy schedules of professionals. Given our experience recruiting for medical and healthcare studies, we can easily give a realistic timeline to the researcher. When partnering with market research recruitment agencies, our healthcare recruitment teamfamiliarizes itself with the scope of the study so we can collectively work on a timeline for recruitment.

Respondent Databases

Recruiting for any type of insite research and consulting study usually starts with up-to-date respondent databases. Such databases can be segmented and organized so that recruiters can easily filter for the particular requirements of each study. Recruiting for medical studies requires specific tagging of data when inputting information into databases. Medical study recruitment will usually be a multi-pronged approach. Recruiters will first look for available, qualified participants in the database while also reaching out to professional networks.

Recruiting for medical and healthcare studies requires a skill set that goes beyond general market research recruiting firms. When it comes time to recruit for your next healthcare study, it’s best to partner with a nationwide recruiting agency that has demonstrated experience with medical recruiting.

To Fill a Medical Study, Request a Proposal Today!

Original Reference : https://bit.ly/2Ndlewv



 

One of the core components of market research firms is creating and analyzing surveys. No two surveys are alike. They can range from simple data-collection forms to comprehensive multi-page forms.

While there is software that can help with survey creation and distribution, you’ll get more reliable data by partnering with a market research company. As with any market research project, designing the study is but one step in a many-layered process. Market research recruitment and transcription services are equally as important.

We’ll share with you three tips from market research consultants about designing surveys that will boost completion rates.

Tip #1: Consider your Audience

Remember that people are busy and have multiple demands on their time. Don’t expect surveys to be immediately filled out and returned.

Market researchers always consider the audience and design surveys that reflect who is filling out the survey and what types of information is being solicited. The type of survey being created will determine how much time you give responders to engage. For short surveys with simple yes/no or multiple-choice answers, you can expect a quick-turnaround. Longer surveys or ones that require written out answers need a longer timeline. Every survey has a sweet spot for engagement. Think of a bell curve. The flat tail on one side of the curve represents too little time allotted to complete a survey, while the flat tail on the other side of the curve represents too much time allotted. You’re aiming for the peak of the curve with regards to engagement.

For survey results to be meaningful in any way, you need a large enough sample size.

Tip #2: Easy to Understand

There is an art to writing survey questions that are concise and clear. Responders need to be able to fully comprehend the questions so they can provide reliable answers. Questions that are too wordy, or ask multiple questions will confuse respondents and muddle the responses.

For more in-depth or complex surveys, it is sometimes helpful to provide examples or suggestions. A word of caution: you never want to influence the answers given, but instead provide a road map for answering questions. Examples or suggestions should only be included as a prompt rather than answers themselves.

Tip #3: Longer surveys should be broken into sections

When users are recruited to participate in long-form surveys you might be thinking, ‘they knew what they were signing up for.’ While it’s true that market research recruitment agencies are forthcoming with participants about what to expect by taking part in a quantitative market research study, there are design tips that can improve engagement.

Long surveys can sometimes appear intimidating or overwhelming. An easy way to make a long survey more user friendly is to break it up into sections. The eye can quickly scan the sections and make it easier for the brain to categorize than if it was a singular looking survey with lots and lots of questions.

Having a long survey broken up into sections doesn’t mean that it is more manageable. Designers still work hard to distill surveys down to their essential questions so they take no longer than 20 minutes to complete. When surveys take more than 20 minutes, the quality and accuracy of answers diminishes.

As with any insite research, you’re looking for patterns between respondents. When trends can be identified, better-informed decisions can be made.

To Recruit Participants for your Next Market Research Survey, Contact us Today!

Original Reference: https://bit.ly/36mYUaM

For those who don’t work in market research, it isn’t uncommon to think that recruiting suitable participants is simply an administrative task. How hard could it be to develop a study discussion guide, find people who would be interested in getting paid for a legitimate study, then synthesize the results into a final report? We’re here to tell you it’s hard. It’s hard because finding the right people to participate in market research studies can be challenging and directly affects the quality of the research findings. Managing study participants takes a lot of work. Not only do you have to connect with qualified participants, you need to ensure that they hold up their end of the deal and show up, whether it’s for a focus group or in-depth interview.

Focus Insite has been called numerous times from companies that thought they could manage recruitment, only to learn that it is much harder than it seems. Recruiting isn’t an administrative task that can be easily managed as a ‘side project’, it’s the hub that connects the business commissioning the study; the study participants; and the qualitative research consultant.

Market Research Recruiting Firms

Each market study is unique and requires different types of participants. Some studies require insiders such as CEOs, other top-tiered managers or health professionals, while other studies require actual users of a particular product or service. Depending on the focus of the study, recruiters are constantly trying to connect with potential qualified candidates, all the while knowing that there are many reasons that the effort it takes to connect with these individuals may be for naught. Sometimes the researcher learns that the suggested participant doesn’t qualify for a number of possible reasons, other times there are schedule conflicts that arise and a participant who was all set to go, suddenly can’t make a scheduled focus group or in-depth interview.

Study Participants

A participant recruitment agency spends a great deal of time and energy building rapport with study participants. If participants don’t have a connection, even a casual one, the study can get derailed with high attrition rates. Connecting with participants starts at the moment of contact and continues throughout the study. Nationwide qualitative research firms outsource recruiting to market research recruitment agencies because they know that it takes a lot of hand-holding, people management, and follow-up to manage study participants.

The Business

There are a number of market research recruitment agencies and firms that exist because businesses know how important market research can be to the ‘bottom line.’ They hire such firms togain deeper insights into their target demographic, or before launching a new product or service.

The Qualitative Research Consultant

Once the researcher has the right number of qualified participants, the study can then proceed. There are a number of methodologies market researchers rely on when conducting a study. Some studies are better suited toward mobile ethnographies, while focus groups are better for others. Hiring a qualified and experienced market research firm ensures that the study design is appropriate for the study objective.

Contact us here to learn more about recruiting for your next market research study.

Original Reference: http://bit.ly/2YavCqx