Five Questions To Ask Before You Do Focus Groups

In the last few months, I have received a lot of requests to moderate customer focus groups for a variety of clients.  I am thrilled to provide the service as customer research is one of my favorite aspects of marketing.  Interestingly, I am not the only one who feels this way.  Many marketers enjoy research, especially qualitative research such as focus groups, for a variety of reasons.  These include:

• Marketers get to leave the office and their “desk job” for a few days to view the groups
• Marketers get the opportunity to listen to their customers talk about their brands and products
• Marketers may receive research results quickly (they are viewing the research real-time)
• Focus groups can be perceived as a less expensive method of research compared to other types of studies.

Unfortunately, these factors can sometimes lead marketers to “overuse” focus groups and execute them when they aren’t the appropriate tool for answering marketers’ questions.

To help my clients assess if focus groups are the correct method of research for their needs, and to ensure that the research is designed and executed most effectively, I ask my clients a series of questions at the start of each project.  My hope is that these questions are helpful to any marketing or research manager who is seeking customer insights through qualitative research.

1. Are you trying to count something or are you looking to explore something? If you want a count, then do not do focus groups.  Focus groups are designed to help you understand how your customers think and make decisions.  Focus groups can provide ideas and feedback, but they cannot be used to provide a definite, statistically significant answer.  To take this a step further, often it is assumed that if a focus group contains eight respondents, you have a sample size of eight.  In actuality, due to group dynamics, a group of eight people is only a sample size of one (the group is the unit of measurement).
2. What decisions will be made with the information from the research? It is very important to know how your information will be used.  For instance, if the information will be used to make a go/no go decision on a significant investment, you may want to consider if an unquantifiable technique is really the right tool.  Additionally, knowing what decisions will be made will guide the questions that must be answered in the research (see #3).
3. What are the questions that you must answer? There should be about three to six specific questions that the research should be designed to answer.  These are the research objectives.  The marketers and researchers included in the research must be very clear on what these questions are.  If these questions are not specified in advance, it will be sheer luck if the research uncovers the answers.  An additional note:  if in a focus group there are more than six objectives, you likely have too many things you are trying to accomplish (and therefore you run the risk of not accomplishing everything adequately).  If you have more than six objectives, you should consider doing more than one set of focus groups.
4. What do we think the answers to these questions are? Scientists test hypotheses in their research.  Marketers should do the same.  If you have a hypothesis for the answer to each research question, this will help the moderator turn to probing on why an answer in a focus group might be different from what you hypothesized.  By enabling the moderator to focus probing on why an answer is different, you will get much richer, insightful information from your groups.  With that said, once you form your hypotheses, be mindful to listen objectively to the research.  It can be tempting to selectively listen only for evidence that supports your hypotheses.  Make an effort to listen to and absorb all of the information that your focus groups provide, whether it supports your hypotheses or not.
5. Who is the target respondent? The usefulness of focus groups is significantly dependent on the respondents who are participating.  If the group does not contain the correct target respondents, the results from the groups can be essentially meaningless.  For any focus group you consider doing, think carefully about who you need in the groups to answer the questions.  Too many times, marketers make the mistake of simply asking for their standard customer demographic target to be present in the groups – but perhaps they need something more, such as current non-category users or lapsed users of the brand.  Think very carefully about the questions you are trying to answer and who are the right people that you need to hear from to answer these questions.  Do not assume that your target respondent is just your target customer demographic.  It is likely that your target respondent is more than just that.

Those are the questions I like to focus on before initiating qualitative research for clients.  I would like to think that many marketers also ask themselves these questions before they start a qualitative project.  However, I think it is good to have this checklist handy for your next piece of research – just to make sure that your research will be as successful and as useful as possible.

6 Lessons Learned from a Year of Crisis

Dictionary.com defines the word “crisis” as: a stage in a sequence of events at which the trend of all future events, esp. for better or for worse, is determined; turning point.

Last week marked the one year anniversary of my personal crisis.  I thought I would take the opportunity to reflect on some of the lessons I have learned during this turning point, in case any of you out there are considering making a significant change, or if you are at the beginning stages of going through one.

Background

Prior to the last 52 weeks, my higher education and career had gone largely to plan; every step I took from high school to college to my first job to graduate school to my career in brand management was thoughtfully planned and executed.  Then, in February of 2009, I was laid off — taking my career on a very unplanned course.

My immediate reaction to this crisis was a negative one, but I quickly came to embrace it as an opportunity to take my career and life on a whole new trajectory.  I went into business for myself as a branding and marketing consultant — using my experience and skills in understanding customer insights to help others build stronger brands, products, and customer connections.

The Lessons I’ve Learned

Over the course of this year, I’ve found that people are very interested in and almost envious of the decision I made to do things on my own. I know that for many, being an independent consultant sounds liberating and ideal, and sometimes it is.  Sometimes it is far from it. One of the most important factors for me was timing.  In order for me to chart my new course successfully, I had to rely heavily on my previous experience and credibility in brand management, my network of colleagues in the industry, and my own personal maturity to remain dedicated and focused.  For anyone who is curious about the path I have taken, here are the lessons that I have to offer:

1. Reading has never been so important.  On average, I now spend 2-3 hours a day reading about marketing — the latest marketing news, marketing thought leadership, marketing blogs.  When I worked for other organizations, I didn’t focus on external marketing information like I do now.  It is now my job to be ‘in the know’ about the latest books or the latest technology, and so I spend so much time absorbing the information on a daily basis.
2. Befriending your competition is key. In the world of freelancers and consultants, your competition is an invaluable source of support, helpful resources, and potential projects.  I have been gratified by the amount of help and information that my direct competitors are willing to share with me.  We realize that we are all better off with comraderie and the opportunity for collaboration than if we operated separately.
3. Celebrate your successes. In any time of significant adaptation or change, it will take a while to get some momentum behind you. At times, this can feel very frustrating, and it makes all the difference when you recognize the steps forward that you have taken along the way.  Celebrating even your smallest steps forward, and having a group of people who can remind you of these steps can motivate you to keep going.
4. Develop thick skin. This lesson has taken a while for me to learn. I’ve always been the person who people called back or wanted to talk to when it came to my work.  I never got ‘blown off.’ Suddenly, as I switched gears and had to establish myself in a new identity, at times I was no longer treated with the same regard.  I took this very personally for the first few months, but eventually it got easier as my skin got tougher.  Thick skin gave me the armor to persevere, and this is the key to getting through a crisis.
5. Developing self discipline is a requirement. Luckily for me, self-discipline has always been a strength.  However, it has been challenged more in the last year than ever before.  It takes an enormous amount of self-discipline to keep pursuing your goal day after day when you aren’t seeing immediate results.  It takes self-discipline to stop doubting yourself when those thoughts inevitably cross your mind.  In my consulting situation, it takes more self-discipline than I realized to power through very long days of work at home alone, when you could so easily be distracted by other things around you.  It also takes self-discipline to finally turn it all off when it is time to focus on your other priorities like your family.
6. You are the one who is in control. This lesson is particularly ironic, because while it was the #1 reason I chose to forge my own path, many times in the last year, it felt like I was the only one without control.  I was always waiting for someone to get back to me or waiting for someone to accept a proposal.  But then I remembered that I was the one who was in control of how many people I met, how many proposals I submitted, and how I sold myself.  I controlled those things.  Once I came to that realization, I started to make real progress.

I hope that some of these lessons are helpful to anyone who is considering making a change or who is currently going through one.  I imagine that many of these lessons are applicable to all kinds of turning points such as a starting a new role, working for a new organization, or even reporting to a new boss.  If you have any questions about these lessons, or what to discuss further, submit a comment.  I’d love to hear from you.