Step by step to a successful online community for market research and customer dialogue.

In this article we will show you what you should consider when setting up a market research and customer insights community. More feedback, higher engagement, insights with impact!

The 10-step guide to leveraging successful market research communities

Over the last decade, communities have become the fastest growing and most widely used research techniques in the field of market research and customer insights. However, to get the maximum benefit from your community, you need to make sure you build and use your community correctly. In this post, we describe 10 key tips that will help you build and use your community for market research and customer insights in the best way possible.

STEP 1: Identify common interests

When we talk about 'online communities' or MROCs ('Market Research Online Communities'), the word 'community' is not just a euphemism for a kind of 'data collection frenzy', i.e. getting the most insights out of the community without really having an interest in the customers themselves. The term community captures the essence of why this approach is so powerful and productive. The key is to work with people to create something together that helps both customers and businesses alike. When you recruit people into a community to work with them on common goals, you need to have a common interest. What could this be? For example, improving your products and services, improving customer relations, a closer bond between customers and the company are already very good approaches.

In the beginning, a community is therefore often a virtual place for the existing customer base. The community members have a common experience, namely the experience with your products and services and thus share with you the interest that your products and services meet the customers' needs. This community is fostered by showing members that you listen to them, keeping them informed of any news, visions and changes, and also rewarding members with incentives for actively contributing to the design and development of your products and services.

STEP 2: Should your community be a short-term or long-term project?

The right approach to building a community depends on whether it is short-term or long-term. A short-term community usually lasts from one to six weeks (but can be shorter or longer) and relates to a single research project. Long-term communities usually have no end date. A community that is intended to exist in the long term aims to retain its customers permanently and to develop better products and services.

If you are launching a short-term community, then community engagement is likely to be less. However, the level of effort required from members can be increased through incentives (e.g. money, vouchers etc). A short-term community makes sense when you need the best solution to a specific, narrowly defined problem, where "best" means the balance of speed, cost, effort and quality. A short-term community is usually led by a market researcher, possibly supported by a community manager who keeps the virtual community entertained.

A long-term community is a commitment to continuous administration and communication. This means that as a community operator you need to constantly think about how you want to proceed in order to be sure that there is always something happening within the community, that the content never becomes boring and that the community remains engaging and interesting for the members. Long-term communities are typically managed by community managers, people who focus on ensuring that community members are appropriately engaged and remain so over the long term. Remember that you can't just run a long-term community on the side! Community management is a full-time job.

STEP 3: Qualitative, quantitative or a mixture of both?

In any case, when you design your community, you should also think about the type of research you want to do. If it is mainly surveys, you need a good survey tool as part of the platform. If you want to focus on the qualitative method, then you need a good range of qualitative tools (such as discussion forums, focus groups, chats, mobile diary, social listening, idea board, etc.).

If your community is primarily qualitative, it will likely be smaller (e.g. 30, 100, or 300 members), and the tasks will often be more demanding (in terms of effort and time), so the incentives for community members may be higher must. If your community will be primarily quantitative, then your community will be larger (e.g. 1000, 5.000 or 50.000 members). You will need a community platform that can automate your communication with members, and you will offer small incentives or raffles, and you will not be able to have many one-on-one conversations with members.

If your community is designed for the long term, you should focus on high-quality technologies with helpful tools, such as automated communication and sampling tools, as well as entertaining methods for lively online discussions, such as video chats and idea boards.

→ Conduct focus group discussions

STEP 4: Recruit your community

As we noted at the top, the best market research communities are those in which all members and community managers have a common interest. A good way to achieve this is to have the community members consist exclusively of customers of the company. If your company has good customer databases, then an invitation request by email to the potential members is a good option.

If there are no customer lists that can be used, then the community often has to be recruited from other sources, such as list brokers, online polls, social media sources, etc. This method usually leads to lower participation rates and can distort the community in that there can be many members who focus solely on extrinsic (e.g. money) incentives and are not really interested in the very last resort in actually contributing something constructive.

If the community is long term, then you will always need to recruit new members, as there will be people who leave the community. The best and easiest way to recruit is through referrals from within the community itself. Offer incentives to existing community members to recruit new members.

STEP 5: How big should your community be?

There are three factors that help determine community size:

a) What type of research do you want to conduct? If you choose only qualitative research, the community will be smaller, for example 30, 100 or 300 members. If you want to do quantitative research, the community will need to be larger. One of the most important parameters for the size of a community is the expected feedback. If you want feedback from 100 people and expect an average response rate of 33%, then you need at least 300 people in your community.

b) What volume of research do you plan to do? In most cases, you should do no more than one project per week and no less than one project per month per community member. If you want to do two projects per week, then your community needs to be twice as big. Remember that over-demanding your community members can lead to higher community mortality.

c) How many customers do you have? This factor is usually not an issue in B2C (business-to-consumer) communities, but is often an issue in B2B (business-to-business). If you have 10.000 customers, then it's likely that you'll only be able to attract 1% to 5% of them to a community - meaning your community will probably have a maximum of 100 to 500 members.

STEP 6: Conduct discussions properly

When communities were first discussed, around 2000, it was assumed that they would be self-sustaining. The vision was this: Brands create communities, the community members produce the content themselves and the community operators simply read the insights. This didn't happen. He quickly discovered that when people want to create their own content, they do it on Facebook or Instagram or other mainstream social media, not in a “walled garden” (i.e. your community).

To gain insights from a community, you need to generate discussions, polls, forum posts and topics, have visions about the community's content and maintain that content accordingly. Post interesting topics, and when you receive feedback, respond to it promptly. Never just leave something like that! Highlight good contributions, reward high engagement, praise "first-time contributors" and create rankings of particularly active community members!

STEP 7: Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards

When people help you shape the future of your brands, products and services, those people need to be rewarded for doing so, first for equity reasons, but also to ensure that they become and remain engaged members of your community. There are essentially two types of rewards: extrinsic (e.g. money) and intrinsic (e.g. praise and thanks). In an ideal situation, you will be able to combine both types of rewards.

Extrinsic rewards are material values. The most common examples are: a) cash per activity (often referred to as pay to play), b) cash prizes, c) non-cash prizes, d) points (points can be collected and redeemed for either cash or prizes). Extrinsic rewards have many advantages, and for short-term communities they are often the best option. The first disadvantage with these rewards is the cost. Extrinsic rewards are more valuable and therefore more expensive. Cash per activity is the most expensive and tends to be used for smaller communities, for short-term communities or for specific activities. The second negative aspect of extrinsic rewards is that they can be associated with a lack of intrinsic rewards. When community members participate only because of cash rewards, they quickly become paid helpers rather than true collaborators, shifting the focus from common interest to divergence: members want to maximise their rewards and the company wants to minimise costs.

Intrinsic rewards are typically things that make people feel better or happier, but cannot be transferred to others. Examples of intrinsic rewards are: Thanks and praise, interesting inside information, the opportunity to try new products (e.g. a new game, a new food or a new phone), feedback on the results of research projects or the opportunity to visit the brand's sites/factory/offices.

One of the best ways to motivate a community and generate quality insights is to combine intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. There is a well-known saying "to each his own" that recognises that different people are motivated in different ways. This also applies to the members of your community.

STEP 8: Balance work and fun

A community is created first and foremost to meet business needs. But to maximise its value, you need to ensure that the experience - the fun and fulfilment of community members' expectations - is also rewarding. In most cases, this means that the experience includes elements that are enjoyable - and we are reminded of the old adage "work alone does not make you happy either".

There are many ways to make a community fun: Games, inviting people to make funny videos using the products, posting funny and self-recorded commercials, competitions, content contests and much more! There are no limits to your imagination here!

STEP 9: The role of the community manager

The most important role in using a community is that of the community manager. This person may be a market researcher (but not necessarily), their key role and key skill is to create value from the community by keeping the community engaged and productive. In many companies, the 'community manager' is actually a team of several people, such as someone who develops and is responsible for the strategy and other people who technically implement the content. Community managers should monitor the community several times a day, respond to requests, encourage participation and build a good and trusted relationship with members.

STEP 10: Some ideas for projects and research tools

Some ideas for projects that can be done with your community include:

1. MaxDiff. If you would like to rate offers, services, options etc. Use MaxDiff questions. Here you will find an example of the so-called Maximum Difference Scaling
2. Whatsapp discussion. Recruit a subgroup from your community and use WhatsApp to have a free-flowing, fast-paced discussion. Also remember that you and participants can share images along with questions.
3. Ask members of your community to collect information about an entire day, such as every drink they drink that day or every trip they take. You can do this by giving the member a survey link that he/she can use every time the event occurs and answer a short survey (e.g. what kind of drink is this, did you buy or make it, where are you and how does it make you feel?). If you want to analyse the date and time, you can find such information in the metadata.
4. Use fun quizzes to get quick feedback and provide members of your community with the fun that keeps engagement high.
5. Omnibus surveys. An omnibus survey has four to six individual questions with a wide range of answers. You can conduct such a survey once a month, for example.
6. Creativity contests create situations where members can show off their creativity, and you can gamify that too.
7. Give your members tasks. For example: today we would like you to upload a photo/video of the most comfortable chair you can find, best window display you know, oldest thing in your kitchen, your partner loading the dishwasher, etc.

The author: Ray Poynter

Ray Poynter has spent the last 40 years at the intersection of innovation, technology and market research, during which time he has held senior positions at Vision Critical, Virtual Surveys, The Research Business, Millward Brown, Sandpiper and IntelliQuest. Ray is the founder of NewMR.org and has been running The Future Place for several years with a focus on consulting and training. Ray is a part-time lecturer at Nottingham Trent University (and has also taught at Saitama University in Tokyo) and is a content author for the University of Georgia's Principles of Market Research course.

Ray is the author of Handbook of Mobile Market Research, Handbook of Online and Social Media Research, #IPASOCIALWORKS Guide to Measuring Not Counting, co-editor of ESOMAR's Answers to Contemporary Market Research Questions, and has contributed chapters to several other books and publications. Ray is a frequent blogger, webinar producer and keynote speaker.

Ray runs a variety of courses for both private companies and industrial companies. Ray is an independent consultant conducting ESOMAR's biennial Global Prices Study and a member of the editorial board of the GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) study. In 2018, Ray was elected to the ESOMAR Board of Directors, the Council.

Ray holds a degree in Computing Science and Economics from the University of Salford, a Post-Graduate Certificate of Education (a teaching qualification) from the University of Nottingham and a Master's degree in Research Methodology from the UK Open University.

Co-author: Dan Fleetwood

Dan Fleetwood is the President of QuestionPro Communities. He has over 15 years of experience in market research and is passionate about the role software plays in supporting businesses. Dan believes that software can help companies get better feedback, generate actionable insights, and ultimately develop better products and services.

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