Using Twitter as Your Focus Group

It Showed Us an Asset We Didn't Know We Had

Posted by Lee Mikles on 12.29.08 @ 04:57 PM

Lee Mikles

Recently we ran a series of banner campaigns supporting new products being launched by one of our CPG clients. While the client was launching multiple products, not all of them were being promoted through advertising.

Shortly after launch of the campaign for our client, we began monitoring Twitter for buzz on the products and online campaign. Almost immediately, the tweets started raving about one of the new products that we didn't promote.

Armed with this information, we met with the client and got the green light to run advertising for this new product. The Twitter research worked: The campaign for the new product generated a click-through rate 55% higher than the rest of the campaign. The number of people actually tweeting about the new product was small -- maybe a few hundred. But the number of additional people who followed the new banners was an order of magnitude more.

Twitter has a been a great tool for us to monitor buzz about products or campaigns for our clients. Simply searching a few key terms will expose you to a wealth of tweets that can quickly let you know what the public is thinking. Not scientific, but very helpful.

It's an example of how, more broadly, social networking has taken conversations that previously happened around water coolers and put them online, making them searchable by marketers. What marketers do with that information is up to them.

~ ~ ~

Lee Mikles is CEO and founder of The Archer Group, a Wilmington, Del.-based interactive shop that has worked with J.P. Morgan Chase, SunGard, Warner Brothers, Gore-Tex, Wawa and others. Lee named The Archer Group after its fictitious leader, Bob Archer, who is Lee's nom de plume when writing the internet marketing blog, Meet Bob Archer.

11 Comments

By gautam_ramdurai | Richmond, VA December 29, 2008 11:27:32 pm:

Absolutely - It's a great way to monitor conversations and thanks to the OpenAPI - you don't have to spend a dime on the tools. A 'summize.com' would do - all it needs is committed effort. I have been working on analyzing how Twitter can be used as a marketing communication vehicle - read more at http://twistedfunnel.blogspot.com/

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By frankiejohnson | Phoenix, AZ December 30, 2008 09:04:57 am:

It's good to hear success stories like this one. I've been recommending Twitter for some time as part of our Deep-Sweep™ approach. Using that, we monitor several social media sites, listening for just the sort of clues you describe. We still do classic focus groups, but "market research 2.0" such as this is inexpensive, immediate and fresh. Twitter itself is on the verge of going mainstream. It's no longer, and has never been, just about "what I had for dinner" as its detractors claim. It is a rich source of information about how people are living their lives and what they truly care about.
- Frankie Johnson www.researcharts.com

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By nickkinports | Chicago, IL December 30, 2008 09:32:42 am:

I am also interested in the overarching idea presented here: listening and reacting to "conversations about ideas with people in communities".

Buzz monitoring, in my mind, does not add much value to a pitch these days and should be standard for just about anything. The real value comes from the actions taken AFTER you collect information. Mr. Mikles' example is an excellent point of reference - agencies should consider adding this type of followup to any campaign.

http://admaven.blogspot.com

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By tobyb | Atlanta, GA December 30, 2008 10:42:06 am:

Lee -

For me the most important sentence in your post - "What marketers do with that information is up to them." - should begin every social media marketing initiative. To continue that thought I would encourage marketers to ask: How will the data be use? How will you respond to concerns (keep in mind this information was not derived not from tradition research but from active conversations usually among peers)? As important, are there processes in place that cross silos to ensure the right people are hearing and responding?
- Toby Bloomberg www.divamarketingblog.com

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By JIM | WATERTOWN, MA December 30, 2008 11:15:53 am:

Thanks for putting this in the right perspective, first "Not scientific but very helpful" and second "What marketers do with that information is up to them." As a high-end social media analysis business, we are the first to admit that it doesn't meet the traditional market research hurdle or representativeness. Nonetheless, there are great insights, especially when you use a more comprehensive tool to look not only at Twitter but blogs, discussion boards, review sites, etc.

Marketers should expect great service, insights, and ideas from their agencies and brand monitoring vendors. But if they get them, it is their responsibility to make them actionable.

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By FreshCoast | Milwaukee, WI December 30, 2008 12:36:35 pm:

Their are many ways to gather qualitative data, it would be interesting to see a quantified Twitter data around given data sets. For instance, how popular was the Whopper virgins campaign after initial release? Perhaps by gauging tweet popularity within a certain amount of time, you could use it as a more effective marketing tool. i truly think so.. Watch a near real time spike of of communication during the Superbowl.

- Ryan Thompson | The Fresh Coast
Mobile: www.Twitter.com/WebMedia

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By JakeRosen | Charlotte, NC December 30, 2008 02:43:10 pm:

Monitoring is a vital step in the marketing process. Without monitoring conversations, whether online or offline, you will be playing a guessing game with your marketing efforts. It is research like we see in this article that allows for a focused effort to promote a product/service.

I completely agree that monitoring can't be the end-game of a media campaign. Researching with an unaided focus group like Twitter users is useful for providing knowledge about the successes and failures of a product/service/campaign, but that knowledge has to be applied to get its full value. At Sports Media Challenge we are strong proponents of engaging consumers. We think it is vital to build relationships with influential consumers not only to seek out more information, but to leverage their knowledge and influence by turning them into advocates. We target specific consumers with the help of our search engine Buzz Manager™, which determines who is leading the conversation and therefore who would be most influential moving forward. We have built social media campaigns for Shaquille O'Neal, Natalie Gulbis, RSM McGladrey and others that have been successful because key social media figures were targeted to become advocates of their brands. The authentic, honest content that they provided for their communities was accepted as if a best friend referred a movie to you.

Ultimately, I think the equation boils down to monitoring/research + targeted engagement = successful marketing.

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By Rocky Mountain Creative | Silt, CO December 30, 2008 04:02:16 pm:

This type of focus group is uniquely valuable due to its accessibility and affordability. Tapping into a social stream is a novel approach to an enduring question. But this resource, like a traditional group, is affected by bias specific to the context around which information is shared.

Twitter and other social network sites are influenced by the free-range, anything goes commentary of contributors - and the collective 'vibe' that acts to push conversation and tone one way or another... like our commentary here.

Responses from traditional focus groups are guided (which can be liberating and constrained, depending) and influenced by a different motive.

Identifying these influencing factors will help a researcher make the most of any social networking resource... and make it a little more scientific and therefore quantifiable to boot.

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By MikeMacLeod | Scranton, PA December 30, 2008 05:12:27 pm:

Twitter is definitely a great source for finding out what people are saying about you, your company, your brand, or your product. It's a tool that can be used in conjunction with other free tools like Google Alerts. SamePoint.com is also a new service that aggregates conversations from several places on the interweb.

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By bwsmithee | Dresher, PA January 3, 2009 06:14:34 pm:

I think that you are very correct in "what marketers do..." As a consultant in the MR industry, I feel innovative methodologies for capturing consumer insights and opinions are the way of the future, and by future I more so mean now. The myriad of tools at our fingertips that allow market researchers, advertisers and marketers to gain masses of opinions very quickly is a dream! Now, more than ever, consumers are eagerly waiting to offer their opinions and express their wants and needs.

The information is readily available, and even more astounding- It's free!!

It is up to us to sift through the opinions and data and find consumer solutions that are highly customized and successful. I think successful market research is a vital stepping stone toward your next "win".

http://www.squidoo.com/spych
http://www.squidoo.com/youthresearch

Coming soon in 09 - www.spychresearch.com

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By srich0268 | St. Louis, MO January 6, 2009 11:25:37 am:

It might be worth clarifying that the very valuable information Lee gained from Twitter is really about monitoring PR buzz and not about using Twitter as a focus group, as the headline suggests. Focus groups and other forms of qualitative research unearth consumer insights as only qualitative techniques can. They do this by engaging respondents in extensive dialogue with trained pros who are looking for deeper understanding of consumer motivations vs. initial, top-line reactions. Also, Twitter users are not screened or defined demographically ahead of time. So while their comments may be useful and interesting, they are neither targeted nor representative of a given market. The web site www.qrca.com has much more insight about focus groups and qualitative research.

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