Our team just completed a week-long series of focus groups in Mississippi. We talked to both customers and prospects for a client in 3 different markets. If you've never done focus groups before, they can be awfully handy! They allow you to dig into specific subjects in a way that you simply can't duplicate with quantitative research.
Do you want to know why someone chooses a checking account or who they'd go to first for a loan? What about price versus service? Would your market be willing to pay 10 basis points for the absolute best service in town? Great ... now how do they DEFINE service?!?! You can find it all out with focus groups.
Here area few tips:
- Conduct groups in all relevant markets. You'll likely find that perceptions and purchase criteria are different from market-to-market (and if they're consistent, that tells us something too!)
- Talk to both customers and prospects. Your customers will give you great insight into their experiences with you. Prospects can tell you why they're not currently banking with you.
- Be very targeted in what you want to learn. Identify 3-4 things that you MUST learn from the session and 2-3 other items that would be nice.
- Be very targeted in who you want to learn from. Do you need to focus efforts on a specific demographic? Recruit them. Want to learn what a specific competitor's customers think? Recruit them. Just note that the more narrow your target, the more expensive recruiting will likely be.
- Stay consistent. use a professional facilitator who can keep each session consistent so you can use data across all your markets.
Take care,
Eric
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