poking insights

| Brighton Digital Marketing Festival: Poking insights | September 2011

Poking Insights

Brighton Digital Marketing FestivalPaul Hutchings


How solid is your market research?

• The fluff

• The good stuff

• Doing it yoursuff


The fluff

http://www.flickr.com/photos/valeriebb/190483829/


A lack of balance and objectivity

http://www.express.co.uk/phonepolls/


Inflammatory infographics

http://mashable.com/2011/05/09/sitting-down-infographic/

Correlation

IS NOT

Causation


PR surveys

Travelodge survey: “Over a quarter of British workers lie about their weekend activities in order to impress work colleagues.”

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinmarshall/140754133/


Guessing at the reasons why

“A highly experienced and trained writer, psychologist, broadcaster, lecturer and consultant to the PR/advertising field.”

‘Weekendvy’

‘To look cool and sexy’

‘Not acknowledging our essential loneliness and isolation’


Asking ‘why’ is a ‘qualitative’ task

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikecogh/5964322318/

• Based on smaller, unstructured conversations or observations

• Analysing the underlying (unarticulated) motivations and attitudes

• Depends on the interpretation of the researcher

Harder to judge the accuracy of ‘why’ answers


Where it all goes wrong

Do they have research expertise?

TV or soap operas?

Can they spell?

On average, people have less than 2 legs

Everyone or those on facebook?

Using or open?

3000 who?

This accurate?The less than 3 and the more than 4?

http://www.expansys.com/blog/?p=1129


The good stuff

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spacemanbob/2667831677/


Free data from the Govt

http://www.ons.gov.uk/

• Big website with MASSES of data

• Robust methodologies

• A lot of ‘tracking’ data over time

• Site is not very user-friendly


Digital research specialists


Established market research agencies

• Robust methodologies

• Publish a lot for free

• Used as hooks for their paid services

http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications.aspx


Behavioural data

In the midst of the riots…

• How many?

• Only the last 24 hours

• Who is buying them?

• And why?

BUT:


(The right) listening tool• All perform differently:

• Coverage of media and country

• Identifying location

• Volume and de-duplication

• Speed of collection

• Sentiment analysis is still poor

• Best for identifying:

• Sources of conversation

• Spikes/ topics for further research

• How to engage http://www.flickr.com/photos/zemlinki/226157028


Faithful infographics

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/the-bbc-o-gram/

• Tell a great story easily

• Go viral

VS

• Can be simplistic

• Take a long time to create


Do it yoursuff

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bikeman04/332048383


Think about the tool

• Impact on your brand?

• Question type and analysis requirements

• Many other tools out there: Limesurvey, Zoomerang, Survey Gizmo, Confirmit


The science of sampling

Sampling is used to find out what percentage of a cat is teeth. You poke a cat at random with a pin, and record the number of times you hit teeth, and the number of times you

hit something else.

Most people find it’s about 100% teeth, after a few samples.


Accuracy is about ‘who’ not how many

Literary Digest

1936, USA Presidential Election: Landon vs Roosevelt….

Predicted Landon Predicted Roosevelt

Gallop

18 million questionnaires2 million replies

Nationally representativeSample of 1,000 Voters


Unbiased and clear questions


And keep questionnaires to 10 mins


Thanks!

nixonmcinnes.co.uk@nixonmcinnes@kindleresearch

poking insights

Technology

free data

research expertise

lot of tracking data

good stuffhttp

location volume

trained writer

essential loneliness

big website