How can you design focus groups to capture insights from parents and millennials?

1 Understand your objectives

Before you start designing your focus groups, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with them. What are the main questions you want to answer? What are the specific topics you want to cover? How will you use the insights to inform your marketing strategy? Having a clear and specific objective will help you define the scope, structure, and content of your focus groups.

2 Choose your participants

The next step is to select the participants for your focus groups. You want to recruit people who represent your target segments, but also have some diversity in terms of demographics, attitudes, and behaviors. For example, if you want to capture insights from parents, you might want to include parents of different ages, genders, income levels, and family sizes. If you want to capture insights from millennials, you might want to include millennials of different ethnicities, education levels, and lifestyles. You also need to decide how many participants you need for each group. A typical focus group size is 6 to 10 people, but you might want to adjust it depending on the complexity and depth of the discussion.

3 Select your location and format

Another important decision is where and how to conduct your focus groups. You have two main options: in-person or online. In-person focus groups offer the advantages of direct interaction, body language, and visual cues, but they also have some drawbacks, such as higher costs, logistical challenges, and geographical limitations. Online focus groups offer the advantages of convenience, accessibility, and flexibility, but they also have some drawbacks, such as lower engagement, technical issues, and privacy concerns. You need to weigh the pros and cons of each option and choose the one that best suits your objectives, budget, and audience. You also need to decide on the format of your focus groups, such as whether you want to use a moderator, a script, a stimulus, or a recording device.

4 Prepare your questions and materials

Once you have decided on the participants, location, and format of your focus groups, you need to prepare the questions and materials that will guide the discussion. You want to design questions that are open-ended, relevant, clear, and unbiased. You want to avoid questions that are leading, confusing, or too personal. You also want to design questions that follow a logical sequence, from general to specific, from broad to narrow, and from easy to difficult. You also need to prepare any materials that will support your questions, such as images, videos, prototypes, or samples.

5 Conduct and analyze your focus groups

The final step is to conduct and analyze your focus groups. You want to create a comfortable and conducive environment for the participants, whether it is a physical or a virtual space. You want to introduce yourself and the purpose of the focus group, explain the rules and expectations, and obtain the consent of the participants. You want to facilitate the discussion in a respectful and engaging manner, encouraging participation, probing for details, and managing conflicts. You also want to record and document the focus group, either with notes, audio, or video. After the focus group, you want to analyze the data and extract the key themes, patterns, and insights that answer your objectives. You also want to validate and triangulate your findings with other sources of data, such as surveys, interviews, or observations.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?