Participant Engagement – how to favorably impact your business

GRBN_News — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 07:00:24 +0000

What do you do? Describe your business in a few words. A scan of member websites suggests the answers would include:

Data analytics
Qualitative research
Online communities
Access panels
Survey research
Market insights

While descriptive, the list isn’t very exciting. What do you really do? To say we are in the business of analyzing data hides the importance of the source of that data. We are in the people business. Without people, there are no data. Without people, there are no consumers to analyze, understand, predict and impact. Without people, there are no data to gather, no insights to analyze. Okay Captain Obvious, I realize I am in the people business, but what do I really do? Some History Prior to the millennium we defined our role as researchers. We did social research, market research, opinion polling, etc. We collected data and gave it to the client to find the story. Like many people driven by ego, we craved more—more relevance, more recognition, more credibility. We wanted to make a difference. We were no longer content to collect data on the outside for someone inside to use. We wanted access to the inside. We wanted to be invited inside. Increasingly, clients have given us that opportunity. We hope to stay inside. So now we’ve become insights professionals—the term du jour for what we do with data. The more colloquial term is storytellers. We now tell stories to impact people. Participant Engagement I suggest that’s exactly what you do–you impact people. By choosing to impact them favorably, you’ll enrich their experiences as well as yours. You impact clients by providing valuable insights that lead to favorable impact—profitable growth, for example. You can also strategically choose to favorably impact research participants—the very source of your insights, and dare I say, your livelihood, as well. Do you approach each touchpoint with your research participants by optimizing the hard factors such as survey length, user experience and incentives? Do you also assess and apply the soft factors including a sincere thank you and perhaps access to results—so participants know how their input favorably impacted the client? Our firm works to favorably impact clients and participants using a variety of methods including online communities. In a recent community forum, we asked members to share their improvement suggestions for the site. This one was particularly impactful: On the content side, more surveys would be good, and some additional information on how the information collected from the site is being used to better the company. This person wants more engagement and, as importantly, wants to know how their participation favorably impacts the company. We’ve increased the frequency of sharing back examples of that impact. Much of how you can favorably impact participants can be found in the comprehensive GRBN Participant Engagement handbook available as a free download. The 10 Golden Tips, if implemented, will immediately result in favorable impact on your research participants. In our case, tips 2 and 8 were especially valuable. Kevin Menk Strategic Research Partners

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GRBN International Workshop Day Review

GRBN_News — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 07:36:21 +0000

I was fortunate to have the opportunity attend the GRBN International Workshop Day, which kicked off MRS Impact Week, and was asked to share my thoughts on the day. Overall, I thought that a lot of ground was covered during the sessions, and I found the day to be both engaging and productive.

ROI of Insights

The day kicked off by diving into the BCG / GRBN report on the ROI of Insights. It proved to be a complex topic with much data to support both the benefits as well as the process to calculate the internal ROI. It was interesting to see the data on the expectations clients have on their agencies when it comes to measuring ROI, and the data illustrated that agencies have an opportunity to develop their relationships with their clients if they can do a good job supporting them on demonstrating business impact. The end-client panel discussion on ROI was fascinating, as the clients discussed how they were going about demonstrating the impact of their work, and the challenges they have with this. A couple of things which struck me from the discussion were 1) the importance of both the internal and external briefing documents and 2) the importance of getting feedback from stakeholders on the impact of the research on their decision-making.

participant engagement

This was the second topic covered during the day and I found the content to be excellent and actionable for consultants, agencies and corporate insights professionals alike, with an appropriate balance of presented content, panelist insights and attendee workshop activities, and I came away with several useful ideas that I could implement in my firm. Much of the content reflected common sense and respect for our research participants. That validation, however, is valuable and can be used to support our advice to clients regarding issues such as excessively long surveys and overly complex designs. The panel discussion involving data collector, agency and end client representatives brought home just how multi-faceted the issue of participant engagement is, and how everyone involved in the research process has a role to play in creating better experiences for participants. The workshop session allowed for excellent interaction among the attendees and there was a lively discussion on what changes to the participant experience would be most impactful, as well as on the challenges involved in implementing those changes.

Feedback from others

Taking the opportunity to talk with some of 35 or so people attending the Workshop Day, I found I was not the only one to get something out of the day. Here are some of the comments I heard: Thank you so much for preparing the ROI information and sharing it with us today. It gives me a new way to potentially pitch the value of our work to our execs. – Corporate insights director Before today, I believed that participant engagement was the responsibility of my research partners. Now I realize that I, and everyone on my staff, needs to be aware of opportunities to enhance our participant experiences. Not only is it a reflection of our brand, but can also be one of the inputs we use to calculate and demonstrate our internal ROI. – Corporate insights director I’m extremely passionate about participant engagement. I would recommend this workshop to anyone who influences research design. And while the ROI Workshop is primarily targeted to corporate decision-makers, I enjoyed the exposure to how they may potentially measure and validate their internal worth. It will make me a more aware and valued business partner. – Online panel representative It was great to see stats about the impact of engagement, as this gives me the business case to invest more time and money in participant engagement – Agency director It is incredible to now have a framework we can work with to showcase our work and prove our value – Corporate insights director

How to improve?

There was much to absorb throughout the day. Given the wealth of actionable information, perhaps future GRBN workshops could concentrate on a single theme (ROI or Participant Engagement) rather than cover both in one day? It would also have been nice to have had more time for the interactive workshop session. We learned that shared experiences was a major benefit of this event, and a bit more time to learn from others would have been beneficial. Kevin Menk Strategic Resource Partners

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Participant Engagement – how to favorably impact your business

GRBN International Workshop Day Review