Media Badger, Social Media Research & Consultants

Surveys, Focus Groups and Social Media: The New Mix

The standard tools of marketing research for years is being shaken up with Social Media. For years the key research tools to obtain the views of possible customers have been focus groups and various types of surveys, from phone to on the street and then to Web-based. With the advent of so many monitoring tools for Social Media, are focus groups and surveys even useful? Some argue they aren’t. We argue they still serve a purpose, but Social Media monitoring and analysis should be included in the mix.

Why? Because in Social Media you can gather opinion and insight through observation and then draw conclusions – a more “qualitative” approach. Focus groups and surveys imply a greater level of bias, simply because there is an end objective reflected consciously or not in developing the questions or guiding the focus group. In Social Media analysis, you have the ability to simply “monitor” from afar.

Here are what we see as downsides to focus groups:

- A vocal participant can hold sway over the group
- In group settings, individuals are influenced by others in the room
- Participants “know” there is someone behind the darkened window, watching and listening
- A focus group has a structure that brings inherent bias
- One on one interaction is very difficult
- The desire for reward may not produce the right results
- You’re not really inside the consumers head

The downsides of surveys:

- There is an inherent bias to the type and structure of questions
- People do not have to be so honest
- There is the inherent knowledge of being “surveyed”

So how do you leverage Social Media services for research? There are over 60 Social Media monitoring tools for the marketing sector (including our own mediasphere360 base version) that can be used to look at trends and discussions. A company can look at competitors or their own product or spark conversation in various Social Networking applications and monitor the subsequent feedback. Are there downsides? Certainly there are;

- Some inability to assess gender and age
- Behaviours can be unpredictable
- Sometimes you need to control the frame of the research
- It can be difficult to “end the conversation”
- There are challenges in guiding the discussion
- Almost current monitoring tools are poor at understanding “sentiment”

The Conclusion:

All forms of marketing research have their good and bad points; including Social Media analysis. Some pundits have said that Focus Groups are dead, but we think not. Marketers now have an additional tool at their service. Focus groups and surveys have the ability to focus the research and set a framework, where Social Media research can capture more “emotional” aspects of research providing a more robust analysis that provides a meeting spot for “quantitative” and “qualitative” to give marketers, ostensibly, a better picture for decision making than ever before.

Perhaps most interesting with Social Media analysis and monitoring, is the ability to come as close as possible to getting inside the head of your consumer. That’s a little scary, but invaluable as well.