Hint: Size isn't everything. Panel performance is.

When it comes to market research, we look at panel size for feasibility.

Right?

Wrong. What we want are the right people to take our surveys. See, what matters most when we're trying to conduct research is reaching our target audience. We want to know the number of completes we're going to get. 

I'll show you what I mean. 

Say you engage with a vendor who has a panel of 10 million people. They’re going to have a great response rate. Right? Not so fast. This panel only gets a 1% response rate.

10,000,000 x 1% = 100,000.

Uh oh.

That’s pretty small.

And it means that size isn't everything. Activity is.

So what is an active panelist? The AAPOR defines an active panelist as having participated in at least one survey or updated his/her profile in the last year. As such, panel size depends greatly on the status of a member.

This means that when it comes to panel size, consumer engagement is what counts. That's why the days of online panel groups are numbered (read the eBook) and why mobile research is where the value is. The secret is to work with a panel who wants to give you feedback, not a consumer who thinks they're ignoring email spam.

See, consumers who want to take your survey, and are incentivized to do so – they engage and become active.

That engagement can mean 100,000 completes or more.

Surveys On The Go®,  the nation's largest, first-party consumer panel, pays people to take surveys. These are consumers you need. They're representative and engaged, because they are paid to be.  Surveys On The Go® is a market research app, so we see where consumers shop, what phones they own, and what they do on their phones.

Look at who's in the app:

And they're ready to give you data. To the tune of 50% completes in under 24 hours of sending a survey.

You’re a lot more likely to reach the completes you need with an engaged panel. So, the next time you’re getting ready to field a survey, think about who you want to reach. Do you want a representative sample?

Surveys On The Go® is the largest, first-party panel in the US. The surveys are sent directly to the app on their phones. And because consumers are paid cash to share their data, they are happy to do so. Clients get a representative sample. Consumers get cash.

Everyone wins.

To learn more about our consumer panel, or see where they're shopping right now, visit our path to purchase page: www.mfour.com/consumer-panel. 

(L-R Brandon, Brittany, Theresa, Troy)
Brandon Bishop joins the MFour Sales team as a Solutions Development Representative who will act as the first point of contact when speaking to clients, as well as, conduct outreach to secure meetings for our sales team. He looks forward to supporting the solutions executives by maintaining client communication, feasibility, and pricing requests, and any additional work needed from him. In his previous sales roles, Brandon has shown his work ethic and determination by continuously hitting his sales quota and always supporting his team's daily needs. Brandon holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of California, Riverside and an MBA in International Business from the EU Business School in Geneva, Switzerland. When he’s not in the office, he enjoys spending his weekends watching football with his friends and spending time at the beach when the weather is nice.

MFour is also excited to announce Brittany Hanna as a valued member of the operations team as a Senior Project Manager. In her new role, she will be leading projects through the various phases, ensuring timing and client objectives are always being met. She brings 5 years of Market Research experience where she understands the research process and will be able to communicate the different processes to various teams and clients, which will lead to a seamless workflow and satisfying client relationships. Brittany holds a degree in Communications Studies and a Masters degree in Health & Strategic Communications from Chapman University. When she’s not in the office, Brittany teaches yoga, DJs for events and enjoys all things Halloween related. 

Theresa Bui joins MFour’s operations team with a degree in Psychology from the University of San Francisco and a Masters's degree in Applied Psychology from the University of Southern California. In her role, she will program surveys on MFour research platform, manage and analyze survey datasets, perform quality checks, and provide feedback for potential improvements. Theresa brings valuable experience working with SPSS, Qualtrics and all Microsoft applications. We are lucky to have someone like her who values organization and attention to detail. Theresa is a big foodie and loves eating, cooking, and baking whenever she has the time. She is also passionate about music where some of her favorite genres are EDM, alternative, and indie music. 

Troy Harrington joins the MFour team as our new Senior Digital Marketing Manager where he will be leading strategy and execution of all digital marketing. He has spent the last 8 years building highly-successful digital marketing strategies leading teams at small businesses, start-ups, agencies, and large global technology companies. He is excited to use his years of experience to optimize media performance based on trends and insights. Troy has 17 certifications in marketing, copywriting, web development and media buying, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from California State University, Long Beach. When he’s not in the office, Troy likes to spend time with his wife and 1-year-old baby and cheer for his favorite football team, the Lions. 

Marketing departments are strapped for time. They also struggle to measure the impact of the great work they do. 

We feel you. Especially when it comes to measuring ad effectiveness before launching a campaign. It’s a crucial step. Here are 5 mistakes to avoid when it's time to launch the campaign: 

1. “We just don’t have time for testing. Run it!”
2. “Trust me, I know exactly what I’m doing. You’ll see.”
3. “We already tested these ads by asking around the office, people love it.”
4. “There’s no going back now, we’ve already invested too much in this campaign.”
5. “These ads aren’t something you can easily measure since they’re in video format.”

Fact is, the companies that measure ad effectiveness pre-launch and on-launch gain valuable insights. The feedback allows them to tweak (or fully pivot) to maximize their results.

With MFour, you can measure out-of-home ads and measure social media ads in one place.

Think of ad test as an insurance policy. 

If the test goes well, awesome. If it doesn’t - well, thank goodness you tested first. Right? Because if the test goes badly, then you just saved your ad budget from getting dinged by several millions of dollars. Cue the music, you’re now a hero!

So, will you measure your ads before your next campaign?

Diary studies can help you dig deep into hidden details. 

Since diary studies are extremely immersive, they tend to yield insights that can’t be found by using other “one-and-done” popular market research methods.

Here are 3 major benefits of conducting a diary study:

1. They allow you to test the repeated use of a product or service.
   
   For a product or service that is consumed over a period of time, it makes sense to measure the consumer experience over time as well. This is especially true as that experience may very well be quite different from the first time a product is used versus the tenth time.
   
   
2. Participants are in a natural environment for product consumption.
   
   As market researchers, we’re always trying to reduce the amount of influence on participants for our research. Diary studies have the unique advantage to provide unfiltered consumer insights for two reasons:
    
   1. They’re in a situation where they’d normally consume your product.
   2. Participants aren’t being influenced by a moderator and don’t feel like they’re being watched or swayed in one way or another. This is true even if you’re asking for photos and videos of their consumption. It’s done on their own time, and not monitored.
      
      
3. Participant are not subject to recall bias.
   
   Recall bias can wreak substantial havoc on the outcome of research. Fortunately, participants in a diary study are recording their actual actions in-the-moment and not just trying to remember what they thought about previously.

At the end of the day, the best part about a diary study is that it lets you feel like you are actually “walking a mile” in your consumer’s shoes. Learn all about it in our Definitive Guide to Diary Studies.

Market research fuels business. 

By doing market research, you can explore what your market needs, test ideas before investing heavily, track success over time, and adjust your strategy to lift your sales.

Here are 5 great reasons to consider doing a research project with us.

1. You want to create a new product or service
    
   Ever seen a new product flop, hard? It’s not a pretty picture.
    
   Strangely enough, it happens all the time, even at the enterprise level. At MFour, we see this as a missed opportunity. When you understand the true needs of potential customers and existing clients, you don’t fail. The answer is to conduct thorough research ahead of time to capitalize on sales and revenue.
    
2. You want to enter a new market
    
   When a new location, it’s helpful to know what the future looks like. Surveying the market ahead of time is a great indicator for what the health of that opportunity is. For example, if your business is looking into selling in other states, surveying consumers in those states can help you know how well you’ll do. You can also get a sneak peek at the competition, by talking to consumers who frequent your competitors’ locations. It’s great intel.
    
3. You want to target a new type of buyer
    
   It’s hard to know your existing buyers like the back of your hand (what’s that spot?!).
    
   This is even more true with new buyers. Going after a new consumer means accurately understanding their wants and needs, and learning how to speak their language. A survey offers welcome relief. It’s actual feedback from the people you want to reach. And it’s easy to do, you can get the data you need by surveying a consumer panel with hundreds of demographic data points. Let them tell you want they want.
    
4. You want to run a large Out-of-Home advertisement
    
   Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising has the strongest ROI of any media source, if you can measure it. However, understanding ad effectiveness in OOH is more challenging than other channels, because it’s not digital.
    
   Good market researchers can understand the impact of their OOH campaigns by researching what consumers are thinking in the moment the see their signs. Using a consumer group, and sending a survey when they pass you billboard offers real, unfiltered, and accurate feedback.
    
5. You want to beef up your customer service department
    
   Customer service is a higher priority than ever. For retail locations, they’re your biggest key to sales. If your organization wants to win on customer service, it’s important to uncover the issues to solve within the department. Again, we can help you design the right market research survey to figure this out.

Of course, there are many other reasons to do market research. If you’re interested in learning more about our market research solutions, click here. If you’d like to learn about the 7 step process to conducting market research, click here.

Are you working with a mobile survey company?

If you are, you know that fielding geo-intercept surveys to consumers in real-time is powerful. But there are some considerations to make your surveys as effective as possible.

1. Ask a lot of questions.
   
   As a whole, the survey industry shies away from long surveys. We embrace it. We’ve found that consumers don’t mind long surveys, they just want to be paid for them. That’s what we do. We get a high number of survey completions on long questionnaires thanks to a well-incentivized panel and easy-to-use mobile app.
    
2. Keep things as natural as possible.
   
   A clunky experience while filling out a survey in-store can bias the outcome. You don’t want a shaky internet connection, or a poorly formatted survey, to bias and taint the natural experience of the participants.
   
   That’s why at MFour, we don’t just have a “mobile-optimized” survey process, we have a “full-mobile app” that is built to make the experience as streamlined as possible for your consumers.
    
3. Capture additional behaviors.
   
   Location-based surveys are great alone, but there’s more valuable data we can grab for you. For instance, if someone is in a store shopping for a product, wouldn’t it be nice to know what they’re searching on their mobile phone? Think about seeing what a consumer is looking at in-store and comparing to their Amazon usage before, during, and after that trip to the store. 

Not all mobile survey companies can do this, we can.

Market researchers have always employed ethnographic research methods. But it wasn’t until recently that the right tools were in place for ethnography to scale properly to represent large and accurate consumer populations.

The explosion of smartphones (and the ever-growing big data on those smartphones) is allowing MFour to shift the landscape by providing a number of truths on your consumers.

These facts are free, they don’t require the consumer to provide any information. Why? The data is baked right into their device, and can be gathered in a simple, first-party format - through an app. Innate collection of data is the very essence of ethnography. In fact, ethnography is described as research that doesn’t interact with the participants of a study, but rather lets things happen naturally.

Here at MFour, we use ethnographic research as a starting point to passively gather data about consumers’ digital activities and real-time/historical locations. Then, we add GPS-intercept surveys on top of the data to allow us to pull deeper insights from consumers at various points throughout their path-to-purchase.

This supersedes traditional forms of market research, because it gives you massive insights into consumer behavior. Data that used to be unattainable, without a lot of disruption, is now at your fingertips. And it’s fueling an exponential rise of ethnography across the industry. 

Will you be doing more ethnographic research this next year?

(L-R Yi-Wen, Fernando)

MFour is excited to announce two new team members! 

Fernando Martinez is joining the operations team, where he will field our client surveys and maintain the quality of our data through data scrubbing. He has valuable experience with data analysis and was part of the team that made Tel Aviv, Israel the number one market globally for Bird Rides Inc. Fernando is a graduate of the University of California, Riverside where he holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Economics. In his free time, Fernando enjoys watching sports, especially his favorite baseball team, The Dodgers, and listening to any of his favorite music genres.

Graduating from the University of Texas at Dallas, Yi-Wen Cheng joins the MFour team as a Senior Data Analyst. She brings 8 years of data analytics experience in different industries including consultant, healthcare, and logistics. As our Senior Data Analyst, she will perform data visualization where she will extract data from data lake using her different technical skills and present data and transform it into information used in a meaningful way. She looks forward to standardizing work procedures and create a data directory for entity-relationship modeling. Yi-Wen is someone who thinks outside the box and MFour is certainly excited to announce her as one of the newest members of the team!

(L-R Holly, Roman, Lindsay)

MFour is happy to announce three new additions to the team!

Holly Freeman joins the MFour Finance team as an Accounting Specialist who’s primary focus will be on accounts receivable, accounts payable, and any other accounting functions that Jimmy and Brian throw her way. Holly has been working in the accounting profession in various capacities since 2013. She got her start in public sector taxation working for the Canada Revenue Agency where she quickly moved up the ranks as the junior-most staff member to be promoted to a senior resourcing position. She has since moved on to private sector accounting after moving to Southern California from the East Coast of Canada. In her free time, Holly is an avid runner who has completed 6 marathons and 30 half marathons to date. She is also a creative writer with several short stories published in different anthology collections.

Graduating from the University of California, Irvine with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Social Behavior, Lindsay Fawcett joins the MFour team as a Fielding Specialist, where she will work on fielding our surveys to consumers and ensuring quality data for MFour clients through thorough data scrubbing. She brings her experience as a Research Assistant where she focused on emotion and social behaviors by using primary qualitative data such as open-ended survey questions and in-person interviews. Last summer Lindsey volunteered in Nepal at a women-owned and operated farm in rural mountain villages and received an award for excellence from the Global Service Scholar Program. On her downtime, she loves reading fantasy and science fiction and having game nights with her friends.   

MFour is excited to announce Roman Balakin as our new Quality Assurance Manager. Roman holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from MAMI State University, Moscow, Russia, and Scrum Master Certificate form cPrime. Roman brings 4 years of QA manager experience and looks forward to building a rockstar QA team along with developing a robust automation test coverage. In his free time, Roman enjoys traveling the world with friends and embracing new cultures. He is also a Co-owner of a motorcycle repair and tuning studio that has been in effect for over 3 years.

The average US adult spends 2 hours 55 minutes a day on their phone.

About 90% of that time is spent in apps. So, why is market research still done online? An online customer survey in today's smartphone world is a beach in the dead of winter: cold, quiet, and deserted.

Consumers have migrated.

They're not waiting for a survey to hit their inbox. Right now, they're on a smartphone in an app, and sharing feedback with companies who are willing to listen to what they have to say. Want to reach them? Follow these tips:

Tip #1: Be timely

People are busy. 

Customer surveys are often irrelevant - taking place long after an event occurs. Today's consumer expects instant results. Our surveys should be the same and sent out within 24 hours of a purchase. Let's take an example:

Shelly goes to Walmart.

She has a grocery list. It doesn't include diet coke. She walks out with a case anyway. If you're Coca-Cola, you'd probably like to know what prompted her to buy a diet coke. Should this survey be sent next week?

No.

By the time next week rolls around, Shelly can't remember when, and maybe even why, she bought the coke. By sending Shelly a customer survey within 24 hours of her purchase, she remembers her shopping trip, any ads she may have seen, and can now retrace her path to purchase.

Tip #2: Get personal

It's happened to all of us.

You're called by a wrong name, or see your name misspelled. It's impersonal, and it sucks. The same can be said for sending blanket customer surveys. The average survey response rate is 33%. That's a pretty low number, and it's likely because we're taking a shotgun approach: trying to talk to everyone the same way, at the same time. 

Market research must evolve. We have the technology now to marry surveys and data. You can see who passed your location, what they bought, and why they didn't choose a competitor. Use that technology to get personal with your consumers. Segment them and reach out accordingly, and you're likely to see a big difference.

Tip #3: Make it easy

Meet consumers where they are.

If adults spend 90% of their phone time on an app, consider connecting there. You may want to look into using a mobile consumer panel to field your customer surveys. These are consumers who have opted in to share their opinion and are being paid to do so. They want to give input, and will allow you to see their online shopping and buying journeys.

As behaviors change, market research needs to adapt.

To be accurate and trustworthy, customer surveys must be fast, flexible and multi-faceted. The goal is to make it simple for consumers to provide reliable input you can use today to adjust advertising spend and ROI. See how companies like Walmart, Warner Bros. Pictures, and PepsiCo are adjusting their approach to customer surveys.