Getting The Most Out Of Focus Groups

Large organizations, including corporations, academic institutions, and government agencies, have recruited focus groups for decades to help them gain insight into the wants, needs, and behaviour of the public. For businesses, it’s useful to ascertain what current and potential customers and clients are looking for, and the focus group can be a cost-effective and highly revelatory source of information.

Consider the following points when you’re planning to recruit focus groups, so that you can separate the signal from the noise and ultimately derive useful data from the sessions.

The overall composition of the groups should accurately reflect your target demographic.

While this principle seems like common sense, its importance is difficult to overstate. A series of focus groups whose composition substantially differs from that of the target demographic won’t necessarily yield helpful data.

What age are your prospective clients or customers? Gender? Marital circumstances? Ethnicity, or mix of ethnicities? What language(s) do they speak? Where and in what circumstances do they live?

The better you can form a mental picture of your customer/client base before you begin recruitment, the more informative your focus group sessions are likely to be.

Stay on track.

One the of purposes of a focus group is to enable participants to share their own thoughts and feelings in an open, accepting environment, and in relative spontaneity. But whenever you gather strangers or acquaintances together and encourage them to converse spontaneously, the discussion is likely to wander off topic. This is where the skill set of a competent moderator becomes essential.

Attributes you should look for in a moderator include patience, firmness, articulacy, strong organization skills, the ability to appear neutral and impartial over the course of the discussion, and ideally some credible previous experience in the field. A moderator will also occasionally need to call on participants who haven’t said anything in a while, to encourage their input.

Would Goldilocks approve of the size of your group?

A focus group that is too small will tend to be stilted and fail to generate rich discussion. On the other hand, when the group is overly large, it will tend to segment into several smaller cliques, or a core group will form that excludes participants on the periphery.

Ideally, the scale of your group should be six to 10—not too big, not too small, but just the right size to facilitate an inclusive, respectful, productive exchange of ideas.

Ask the right questions.

To design effective questions for a focus group, you must begin by posing one to yourself: What exactly do you want to know? Until you can narrow down what you’re looking for, you’ll find it difficult to design questions that are specific enough to meet your needs.

You’ll also want to limit the number of questions to a manageable level. A good rule of thumb is that the number of questions (except for clarifying queries that the moderator may inject once in a while) should be roughly equal to the number of participants.

One of the main advantages of a focus group over a survey is the opportunity for participants to modify their views during the discussion. It’s common for a focus group participant to end the session with an opinion significantly different from the one s/he started with.

Conduct at least three or four unique group sessions.

This is likely the minimum you’ll require in order to generate valid, applicable results.

Each session should last anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes. Beyond that point, group productivity tends to stall, and you’ll probably have covered all of your questions anyway.

You’ll know when you’ve reached the “saturation point”.

When new focus group sessions aren’t generating many new ideas, you’ve probably retrieved about as much data as you can reasonably expect from the focus group endeavour. It’s time to wrap up and analyze what you’ve collected.

How Online PR Can Affect Your Ecommerce Sales

As the saying goes, the only bad publicity is no publicity. That’s a common refrain shared among PR folks and there is a grain of truth in that saying. Unless your target audience is aware of your business it will be extremely difficult to generate sales. That applies to a corner dry cleaner or an ecommerce site. Every business is dependent upon buzz and a good reputation. And the best way to generate that buzz is through positive press mentions. But you shouldn’t stop there. Good PR can come in many forms, especially through social media.

In this age, no one can ignore the fact that being online is a must for any business.   Gone are the days when your customers turn to actual yellow pages or pay attention to a TV ad to find what they need. Now most folks head to Google or ask their friends online to find just what they are looking for. What they will find could be your business ranked at the top of the search engine listings thanks to positive PR. Here are some ideas for generating that kind of proactive response:

Get involved in your target market’s community

Not every company can become an official sponsor of the Olympic Games but they can become a sponsor of the local youth hockey team or get involved with charity drives. All of those ideas can create positive a positive reputation that your business cares about the community you are targeting. Even if your market is nationwide, you can sponsor events or even athletes to build brand reputation. Start researching the interests and passions of your target market and see if you can find a way to get your brand involved in a positive way. Your involvement can often be mentioned by news organizations reporting on these causes. That’s terrific publicity.

Get to know your local TV news station

A good way to generate brand visibility is taking advantage of your local TV station. Many stations are affiliates of a larger channel so by promoting your PR angle; you have a higher chance of getting features, especially if it’s unusual. You can also re-post the news feature through YouTube and generate a lot of views. News producers need to fill up that programming with interesting features and not just the headline stories. Could you pitch an unusual segment to a local news producer? Suppose you have an ecommerce business that offers housecleaning products. You could pitch a segment about how your product can remove any stain in any home. If you can’t, then the winner will receive free cleaning services for life. Bottom line: think of how you can promote your business by providing something unusual that makes your company stand out.  

Get involved in online discussions

If your business is already attracting customers then it’s a safe bet those customers are talking about you to their friends or online. One of the most popular and largest online review sites is Yelp. Not only are they offering reviews for restaurants, but there are reviews for just about any other kind of business.

You need to plug into the various online communities to find out what is being said about your business. Set up a Google Alert for your company – this enables you to receive notifications if your company is being mentioned online. If you stumble upon a forum that your target market uses heavily, get involved. If someone has a problem with your company, go into customer service mode and try to fix their issue.

How To Find Your Next Great Business Idea

One of the biggest struggles that potential entrepreneurs face is trying to understand what kind of business that they should start. For many, the process in finding an idea can be long and challenging, even harder than writing a business plan! Deciding on what opportunity to pursue is dependent on variables such as:

·     If there is a “pain” that you can solve and if people are willing to pay for the solution;

·         How much money you have;

·         Whether you want to sell products or be a service-oriented business;

·         Whether you want to build a lifestyle small business or a million-dollar conglomerate.

 Here are some tips for a fast and successful search in identifying different business opportunities.

Find a solution

By keeping your eyes (and ears!) open, you will stumble upon opportunities to solve problems that may lead you to the perfect idea. Ask yourself - what pains or frustrations do people experience in their daily lives? Are there any challenges that people are complaining about? If there are, work on finding the solution as every problem is an opportunity for you to solve.

Carry a small notebook with you and note down anything you hear or see in regards to people’s frustrations. When you have filled out a page or two, try to find a solution to them. Are there companies that are solving those needs well? If not, how can you do it? What would be the ideal situation in solving that problem? And finally, can it be profitable?

Remember, if the “pain” is perceived as big and causes a lot of time and money to be wasted, people are willing to pay more to get it solved quickly.

Use your passion and knowledge

Another area you can draw ideas from is within yourself. What are your strengths, skills, knowledge and experience that you have which can be of benefit to others? What are the things that you naturally share with your friends that they turn to you for? Is there a challenge that you’ve successfully overcome?

Take for example, if you’ve successfully lost weight using natural methods after trying different kinds of therapies and diets, do you think millions of people would benefit from your experience? Of course! We often take what we know for granted and don’t realize how valuable our knowledge can be if shared with others. Don’t forget there are so many people you can help with your knowledge.

Set yourself apart! How can you do things differently?

There has always been a misconception that to be an entrepreneur, you must start a business that is very innovative and not found elsewhere. Business ideas need not to be very different or entirely unique to be successful. Innovation in a new business can be creating a new technique, process or even a brand.  You can target a new market or try a new marketing channel that may give you an edge over your competitors.

Analyze various companies that are in your chosen industry. Do their brands look and feel the same? Take a look at how good they are at delivering value to their customers and see if you can provide it more efficiently or better. 

Take advantage of changing trends

Pay attention to any changes that you notice in your industry or target markets and try to spot trends you can turn into new businesses. The first companies to identify an emerging trend and execute quickly often become the market leader in their industry.    

A great example is Facebook. Although they weren’t the first on the market, they were innovative and took advantage of trends to make it easy for people to communicate with each other. Facebook grew from a small site in Harvard to being the most visited website after Google. Because of Facebook, social media has become a game changer for a lot of companies and startups have sprouted that specifically target the new industry. By keeping your finger on the pulse of your target market, you will be able to foresee trends and take advantage of them long before they appear.

Regardless of what your goals are for your business, keep in mind that even if you have a million-dollar idea, it means nothing without proper execution. Create a business plan and test your idea to see how it stands in the market.  So, go discover lucrative business idea and start working on it – it’s a package and shouldn’t be sold separately.