Agile Market Research and High-Frequency Data (Webinar Recap)

Agile Market Research: Increase Growth, Retention, and Customer Understanding with High-Frequency, Real-Time Data

Every business leader wants to make sound business decisions driven more by data than gut feel. In a world that is changing seemingly at the speed of light, it’s hard to know if the decisions you’re making are as relevant today as they might have been 6 months ago or even 1 month ago. 

Consumer sentiment and preferences are changing and shifting so frequently, how can you make sure you have the freshest, most relevant consumer insights? This is where high-frequency survey data comes in, and that’s what our panel of professionals at our most recent webinar with Reuters addressed. 

To discuss the challenges that marketing and insights teams are facing in this ever-changing world were:

Consumer attitudes are changing on an almost daily basis
Historically, conducting research has been very expensive and time-consuming. Because of these constraints, companies typically look to get the most out of each research project, knowing it might be the only one they do for the year. Therefore, there’s usually a lot of preparation and setup that goes into planning for a market research project to make sure everyone gets as much as they possibly can from it - it’s truly a big ordeal.

While we have moved from sitting down with and interviewing consumers to conducting less intrusive surveys online, until recently, survey taking has left much to be desired. As Aaron Platshon, CEO of TapResearch pointed out: “Respondents don’t want to take 20, 30, 40, or 50-minute surveys anymore.”

The general population isn’t interested in spending a lot of time taking surveys. And data from professional panelists can be skewed at best and misleading at worse. Companies can’t just decide one day they’re going to flip a switch on their brand tracker and start collecting data on a monthly or weekly basis. It’s not cost-effective and it’s simply not possible. Much like native advertising, we need to find a way to blend in and engage consumers in a less intrusive way. We need to connect with consumers where they spend a lot of their time - mobile apps.

“We need to rethink the entire research instrument and approach to engaging a representative audience.” - Aaron Platshon, CEO of TapResearch

Always keep your thumb on the pulse of consumer sentiments
High-frequency survey research is the key to gaining the consumer insights a company needs to make smarter, more informed decisions without breaking the bank. But what exactly is high-frequency survey data? Quite simply, it’s running surveys on a weekly or even daily basis. It’s a powerful tool that helps marketing and insights teams make decisions based more on data and less on gut feel. 

“...it’s taking a core consumer market research tool and putting it on steroids.”
-Mary Beth Jowers, VP of Portfolio Strategy at Pernod Ricard

This kind of high-frequency data gives a business the ability to look back on its marketing efforts and ask, how did that marketing campaign work?

Make game-changing decisions with high-frequency data
Ultimately, brand and marketing teams want to know if what they are doing, and the budget they are spending, is having the kind of positive impact they’re hoping for or if they are simply throwing their marketing budget out the window. 

Running annual or quarterly surveys is simply too infrequent to gauge the impact of a marketing campaign. But weekly data gives you the immediate, granular insight your business needs to make quick, game-changing decisions.

As Troy Figgins, Head of Consumer Insights at King's Hawaiian pointed out: “Once a month isn’t frequent enough…our media plan is by week. A lot of stuff might happen within a 4 week period.”

And more frequent qualitative data can deliver unexpected results, as Mary Beth Jowers shares,“Shifting from doing frequent deep dive surveys to a lighter touch, micro ethnography, micro open-ended surveys…that provides data that looks more qualitative, but collected at scale to derive a quantitative data set…you get more interesting answers from it.”

The historically cumbersome, heavy-lift approach to measuring brand awareness, purchase intent, and consumer attitude has been done in such an infrequent, small volume way that it really only works for a moment in time. High-frequency survey data looks to eliminate the angst of running these infrequent, costly, deep dive surveys.

As you can see, many organizations from different industries are using or now considering using high-frequency survey data to inform their decisions or are including it as the final piece of the puzzle in their research data stack. With consumer interests, wants, and desires changing seemingly on a daily basis, it’s becoming increasingly clear that keeping your thumb on the pulse of your target audience on a consistent basis is more critical than ever before.

“TapResearch wants to make it so that when you have a new question, it’s not a big ordeal. So, if you have an intuition about something and you want to get some quick data to back up or debunk your intuition in 15 minutes, you can do that. Making market research fast, easy, and inexpensive so that research is more of a reflexive process - it’s just another way to guide your decision-making." - Aaron Platshon

Watch the full webinar recording on-demand below.

TapResearch provides marketers and researchers real-time actionable insights with easy-to-understand, shareable data. All at a fraction of the cost, resources, and time of traditional research methods. To learn more about high-frequency data and build your own specialized consumer survey at a fraction of the cost, labor, and time involved with traditional research methods, create your FREE account here or contact sales@tapresearch.com today.