Focus in on Focus Groups

Why focus groups are a vital component to insights and how to leverage them

If you want to know more about how your target thinks, feels, buys, and engages, a focus group is an invaluable tool. While they’re often misunderstood, an intentionally crafted focus group is one of the best ways to tap into what makes your clients tick and what your brand might be missing.

The Basics

Let’s start at the beginning: what is a focus group? Simply put, it’s a targeted group of individuals that best represent the clients of a business. These people are brought together for an in-depth discussion about the business, its products, or its services. Unlike polls and surveys, focus groups offer accurate feedback in real time. Quite often, participants are offered an incentive for their time - gift cards or even cash are popular.

From the data collected in focus group discussions, a business can easily formulate effective marketing strategies to engage with their clients to buy their products or services, or generate ideas to solve an issue.?

The Application

As great as focus groups are, they’re not the cure-all for all your woes. So how do you know when to use them?

Focus groups are fantastic when you:

• Are in your early stages of branding or product development, and want to understand how your target market thinks and feels, either about your industry or your solution.
• Want to understand the buying habits of your target market or your current clients so you can tailor marketing to them
• Have an obstacle that you want client input on for the solution
• Ask your target market for feedback and reactions on your brand, marketing, and positioning.

On the flip side, focus groups are probably not (yet) the right tactic if:

• You aren’t clear on who your target audience is. Start with empirical research first.?
• Your obstacle is more technical in nature. Clients won’t know the nuances or expertise required to recommend a solution.
• You need to make major budget or design decisions. Although valuable feedback, the opinions of a smaller group can not be extrapolated to the larger population. Qualitative data is not statistical data.
• You’re not prepared to put in the pre-work to make your focus group effective.

The Process

At BottomLine, everything we do is rooted in good practice and solid research. Our philosophy, backed by proven results, is that we start with empirical evidence based on our years of expertise in the field. Next, we form a hypothesis of what our evidence suggests are the opportunities worth acting on. Finally, we use a focus group to validate (or challenge!) that hypothesis, make changes based on their feedback, and apply actionable insights.

To run an effective focus group, you have to choose its members and the structure of the meeting intentionally. This can be broken down into:

• Prepare.

Determine what kind of insights you’re after and create questions in advance that capture that scope. You’ll also want to source a moderator that will be present at the focus groups to ask deeper questions and stimulate the discussion.

• Select.

The members of your focus group should represent your target market. If you’re not crystal clear yet who your target market is, start with a competitive analysis before considering a focus group.

• Analyze.

Compile all the data from the answers so you can take actionable steps as a result.

The Aftermath

Now that you have your data, what do you do with it? As touched on, while the feedback is valuable, it is still coming from a relatively small sample size. That’s why we operate a bit differently than most other marketing firms—while others tend to start with focus groups to get data to further validate, we start with data that we validate through focus groups. Doing it this way yields better, more accurate results, not to mention that it saves you money!?

Prioritization is also important. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to (or even want to) implement all the changes that come from the group. Take a discerning look at everything you learn, and prioritize those items that will have the most impact. It’s important to look for common themes and groupings to better distill down your data. From there, compile it into a properly categorized report, in order of priority, for presentation to the person who needs the insight.

If you need help at any stage of this process, BottomLine is here to help. This is, quite literally, what we do! We’re always happy to lend our expertise and collaborate with you to get you the insights and actionable steps you need to increase your reach and your profit.