Market Research in 2012: Speed versus Depth

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Speed, and yet more speed is the current norm. In Great Britain there’s even talk of raising the speed limit on motorways to obtain more productivity. As one management guru said, “It’s better to act too quickly than to wait for too long.”

The notion of speed is often associated with Social Media. To be sure, by following a marketing expert on Twitter you can discover 10 new trends every day. However, responding immediately to them is not a viable option. The important thing is to understand the underlying notions which can be useful in guiding our business decisions.

Questions which capture the attention of marketing specialists are often related to current events. A crisis peaks, a competitor launches a new product, new legislation is about to be implemented, all these events require understanding possible consumer reaction. At today’s pace of competitive development, the ability to quickly grasp the critical issues is the greatest asset. However, it’s still important to understand the implications, and these might sometimes be contradictory.

In this context, market research tools have not become obsolete all of a sudden. Studies and surveys have been proving their worth for a long time. The secret is to improve their speed of execution and analysis.

Thanks to new internet surveying tools, many organizations can now undertake studies on their own.  This is perfect for customer satisfaction surveys or to periodically take the pulse of potential consumers. However, to quickly evaluate the impact of new trends, market research firms are better equipped for the job. Not only do they have powerful tool to build the surveys efficiently, but they also offer significant advantages in terms of expertise and resources.

Speed is not everything in this area. It’s important to develop a pertinent questionnaire with the right questions, and this requires in-depth experience. You have, no doubt, noticed that various media have their “current” survey on their website. It’s a good idea, but the phrasing of the question often significantly biases the results, so what are you to conclude? Following that, you need to mobilize the resources necessary to execute the survey quickly. And finally, the results have to be analyzed without delay; for this both expertise and technical tools are critical.

Managers need immediate responses because they would like to take action quickly. On the other hand, they don’t want to go wrong, hence these responses must be founded on studies which have some depth. All of this is anything but simple. For this reason market research firms still have a future. Since they require superior tools, we are very proud to point out that it is our products that many of them have chosen to use.

Social Media: Trends in 2012

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As the new year kicks in, so does the craze for predicting all sorts of trends for 2012. Social media don’t escape this ritual, so what does our little crystal ball have to tell us?

One follower of marketing-related blogs has found that every one, without exception, is forecasting continuing growth of social media. However, this explosion of social media is also a key trend driving forecasts in other domains. Take, for example, predictions made by Gartner relating to information technology. In their estimation, social media will also have an impact on other business technologies such as the development of applications.

In fact, we could say that organizations are evolving socially. We have seen this change in the traditional media world where social tools are now an established means of interacting with readers, listeners and viewers. Equally fascinating is that this interaction often goes beyond practical matters (answering questions, making announcements, promotions etc.), and aims at enriching the communication experience itself in these media.

On the other hand, it is difficult to predict in what way the social media world will evolve, given that the changes are so swift and numerous. As we witness the crowning of Facebook, currently in the news as it goes public, who could have foreseen the brutal fall of MySpace when it was number one?

Several of Google’s initiatives have been unsuccessful, however Google+ seems to be gaining some traction. Since the relationship between research tools and social media is changing profoundly, will we soon see a major shake-up?

Relatively unknown players also merit attention, not just struggles between the giants. Foursquare seems well placed regarding localization functionalities, however there is much talk about the success of Instagram. Some think there is already too much talk about social media, but look at the buzz around Pinterest, just about anything can happen!

In this highly volatile context, what lessons can we draw for the next few months?

Firstly, waiting on the sidelines is no longer an option. There is no time to dither, it is time to move and actively develop the presence of one’s brand, products and enterprise.

Following that, it’s necessary to be properly equipped to deal with the diversity of platforms and volume of data to be managed.

Try investigating a potential market by checking out social media–it works!

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An important feature of social media is that it operates in real time. This aspect sets it apart from most other media. Even television presents you, most of the time, with pre-recorded content. In a “live” broadcast the participants interact face-to-face but they are nonetheless cut off from the outside world.


In contrast, social media functions live with participants who are all connected together. The result is a special type of interaction where spontaneity and transparency go together. This medium, or space, is perfect for understanding the evolution of a need, or a market. Let’s take a quick look at how it’s done.

Of course, following opinions posted by your clients will give you important information about what they like, what they are less enthusiastic about, and what changes they would like to see. You can obtain the same kind of information from customer feedback programs, but with considerably less spontaneity since your clients are expressing their opinions within a circumscribed situation. If your organization does not operate such a program, social media allows you to create one for free, and obtain results immediately.

A marked distinction in comparison with traditional research methods is that social media allows you to simultaneously survey the clients of your principal competitors. You will get to know their strengths and weaknesses, exactly as their clients (or prospects) state in their own words. Analyzing the volume of opinions will allow you to figure out your competitors’ most important weaknesses; this will provide focus and direction to your own development efforts, and make you more competitive.

By looking at similar discussions, you might even find other business areas having similar preoccupations and needs. This is an ideal opportunity to look deeper into new potential markets for your solutions.

If you are under the impression that this type of analysis is a bit off the wall, think about the following example taken from a recent article. When analyzing tweets from the City of Los Angeles, a firm discovered that out of the 1 millions messages transmitted every day, 25 people reported having lost their keys. It is a simple calculation to conclude that careful monitoring of Twitter can generate 750 leads every month for a locksmith in L.A.!

Are you already thinking about that question which will allow you to uncover prospects for your own products?

The Voxco Team

Season’s Greetings !

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As 2012 quickly approaches, we’d like to take this time to send our warmest thoughts and best wishes for a wonderful holiday season.

May the coming year will be filled with Surprises, Opportunities and Success.

Looking forward to seeing you in 2012.

Please note that our offices will be closed from December 24 to January 2. However, our Paris office and our technical support specialists will be available at the usual times.

Voxco Team,

Social Media Monitoring – Google is free but very limited nonetheless!

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Google has changed the way we access information. However, investigating a topic usually involves launching a series of requests on its famous search engine. This is the starting point for this article.

The good part of it is that Google is free. It should come as no surprise to see it used in all sorts of different ways, some of them very creative.

It is also the primary tool for scanning social media. Together with its various alerts and blog searches it has wide scope. However, even if media scanners nearly all start out with Google as their basic tool, they should eventually migrate to more robust solutions. Here are the main reasons why.

To begin with, it’s simply a matter of the amount of information. When your requests return just a handful of results there is no problem in reading and analyzing them one by one. But when the amount of information grows, several problems arise. Sorting out the valuable wheat from the chaff becomes laborious. Eliminating duplicated data is a chore. Discovering the authors of all these messages is impossible.

Next, the tool provides no clue as to the influence of the authors of these search results. Research is required into each of them to be able to distinguish an one-off complainer from an influential blogger. Deciding when to switch from scanning to action mode cannot be other than arbitrary.

Google is based on the notion of key words. This works very well for a set of requests, particularly when the sites being analyzed have been optimized for standard key words. However, social media users use a vocabulary that is far from the usual standards. This makes linguistic analysis techniques extremely useful to increase the accuracy of searches, suggest an alternative terminology, or discover trends.

Finally, presenting the results of your analyses is very labor intensive (Google doesn’t offer much help in this regard) which severely limits the positive results of scanning for your enterprise. Your managers need to see tables, graphs, summaries, trends, and reports in order to be able to understand the situation and take appropriate action. Consider using a sophisticated tool for scanning and analyzing social media, on which capable of quickly generating the reports that both you and your organization need.

Happy monitoring!

The Voxco Team

Why social media monitoring can’t replace surveys

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In the last few months several provocative articles have appeared announcing the imminent demise of surveys. The cited cause is the possibility of obtaining the same information, with even better quality, from the social media.

At Voxco, we offer our client solutions using both technologies, and we plan on doing so for the foreseeable future. In fact, we have already explained on this blog how monitoring social media can provide useful information, and we continue to develop this domain intensely since it holds much promise. However, social media monitoring can never replace surveys for a large number of studies. To figure out which is the appropriate tool to use it is important to understand the inherent limitations of social media monitoring in certain cases.

For starters, participants on social media are only partially representative of the population at large. Not all types of people are active in the social media. There are major differences according to age, level of education, etc. It’s important to fully understand what distinguishes presence in the media (to have a profile, as many people already do) from participation in it (display information or provide comments), particularly when the dialogue goes beyond simple chats between close friends. Moreover, the reliability of profiles data provided by participants is certainly open to question.

Also, it is impossible to control the subjects of the conversations. Participants will discuss what is of interest to them, not necessarily what you are currently looking for. For sure, you can always try to stimulate conversations, but nothing is guaranteed, and you can easily bias the results through your interventions.

Another issue concerns the unique dynamics of exchanges in the social media. It’s a very volatile environment in which a subject can quickly rise to the top only to be quickly replaced by another. Opinions are often very categorical, devoid of nuance, and can be strongly influenced by the activity of popular opinion leaders.

As certain studies have shown, one can expect to obtain equivalent results from the two technologies for a topic where a large number of people express their opinion on a simple question, for example satisfaction with the government.

On the other hand, the two research methods are chiefly complementary rather than anything else. The social media are a reliable source of information, but accompanied by limitations imposed by their very nature. They are excellent for obtaining the advice of opinion leaders but powerless for listening to the silent majority. Studies and surveys can still look forward to a long life!

Please don’t hesitate to use the comments section to give us your opinions.

The Voxco Team

Why monitor and analyze what is being said in the Social Media? (Part 2)

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Social Media

In our last posting we discussed the importance of monitoring what is being said about your brand (or organization). There are, nevertheless, many other reasons why you should make a serious effort to follow social media. Today, we will address the various sources of commentary, and how important it is to be able to analyze influencer networks.

Comments and opinions in the social media are often brutal, ill-considered, sometimes even bordering on the insane. In other cases, internet users ask questions, comment on a product or service, or discuss their customer experience with candor or enthusiasm. For sure, emotions are often communicated. All this is an extraordinary mine of information relating to the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. Granted, an extensive survey enables you to collect data which is more structured or validated, but the accompanying raw emotions will be filtered out and less spontaneous. In summary, the two techniques are perfectly complementary.

The challenge inherent in the analysis of opinions expressed in the social media lies in understanding who, and the real influence of, the person providing the opinion. Is it a real client, an employee pretending to be a client to promote his/her brand or a sub-contractor of an e-firm with dubious ethics? Some opinions come from journalists or very influential bloggers and should be taken very seriously, while the sources of others are from always frustrated authors that nobody listens to any more.

Even for small amounts of data, undertaking this kind of analysis without a specialized tool requires significant time and effort, but it is nonetheless feasible. If your brand is well known, however, even a moderate amount of comments make an automated tool such as Voxco’s Acuity4 Social absolutely indispensible. It rapidly allows you to obtain a summary picture of the most influential internet users. You can then evaluate on which topics these same users are writing positive or negative feedbacks and accurately target your interventions.

Thank you for staying with this blog, and please don’t hesitate to provide us with your feedback.

The Voxco Team