Marketing research panels are a hot trend in the industry right now. What is a panel in market research? Find out more here. Panels offer mutual benefits for the client and for the consumer. Clients benefit from panels by getting closer to their customers, obtaining faster insights (within 24 hours), seeing higher response rates (upwards of 30% on surveys), and gathering richer and deeper profiles of users. All while enjoying the cost savings versus more traditional research such as telephone surveys. Customers benefit too by being a panel member through improved communication and feedback loops, having a voice to drive improvement with businesses they use, and earning incentives for participation.
If you are in the process of managing a customer panel or it is something you are thinking about starting, here are 6 straightforward tips to make your job easier. Use the following acronym to ensure you have all angles of panel management covered.
P-R-O-L-E-S
Plan
Before you start your panel, you need a strategy. What will you name your panel? What will the brand and logo look like? What's the process for signing-up? How many steps should your registration process be? Do you need to work with a vendor to assist your team? All questions you need to ask before jumping in.
Recruit
Early, often, and continually. Always look to grow your panel. Having a larger pool to choose from will help your team better sample and gain more reliability in your results.
Oversee
Look for ways to improve your panel members' experience. They will undoubtedly have questions that you'll need to respond to so think about using a FAQ page. Spend some time reviewing your sample and figure out if you have any segments that are under-served (e.g., males, geographies, etc.)
Listen
Determine your blend of studies like surveys, polls, interviews, forums and even the use of an online market research community (MROC.) Using a variety of methodologies helps keeps panel member engaged and some modes work better for specific objectives or projects. Open up several avenues to listen to your customers.
Examine
Analyze the data, understand the trends, and tell a story with the data. The best panel managers don't automate a report and send out results in Excel or chart format each month. They spend the time to craft a story and translate the key findings to the team. This often leads to more questions and future topics to cover in the next round of surveys.
Share
A forgotten piece but arguably the most important. It's obvious that you need to share the results with your internal bosses or external client. However, you also need to spend time sharing at least some of the results with the panel members themselves. Show they how their feedback caused change. This will help with future participation and engagement.
Drive Research builds customer panels for companies in Syracuse NY. For more information about customer panel building, visit our webpage here. Questions? Contact us at [email protected] or call us at 315-303-2040.