Panels and communities are the foundation of market research. The quality of panels and communities defines the accuracy of the outcomes. They offer businesses a peek into how consumers think and feel about their products and services. These platforms change how engagement campaigns are designed by providing direct access to diverse perspectives and real-time feedback.
The community panel provider, Borderless Access, has been building and working with online panels and communities for over a decade, so we understand the importance of these platforms in market research. If you're looking for market research services for your company and your stakeholders, this is the blog for you. Here, you will find out the differences in terminology and answers to questions like: Do they mean community when they are talking about a panel? Or vice versa.
Here is a foolproof description of each of them, what exactly market research community panels are, and what is their function.
What are panels?
Panels are a collection of participants who have voluntarily registered as interested in participating in your company's research activities. An online panel hosts a large number of people who are ready to respond to your requests and doubts and share opinions.
Having your panel significantly improves your research response rates and turnaround times. However, you need to manage the online panel efficiently to ensure you get a response of a good size in your samples.
When you build a custom panel, you have the advantage of control over your panelists. However, custom panels need a proper panel management team. All panelists must be vetted to understand the context your responses come from. Since you are gathering insights for your company's major strategic decisions, having a solid panel management team is important.
What are communities?
A community is a group of people actively engaged in regular discussions and idea-sharing. In a community, customers have an open forum to converse and collaborate around topics related to the communities overall wavelength. This is different from a panel, where people participate in surveys in siloes or attend a one-on-one interview. A community is a platform to be vocal.
Market research communities are essentially qualitative. The peer-to-peer involvement of its participants determines their status. The main benefit of a community is its responsiveness and ability to identify issues without prompting. Feedback and suggestions become a by-product of the collaborative process in a community.
Research communities are the options to go for if you want to explore a topic in-depth and have many qualitative aspects to explore. They are also an excellent platform to flag issues as they arise among customers.
How do we create synergy using mixed methods?
There are numerous ways to make the best of both platforms. But first, you need to understand your research objectives in depth. Once your research objectives are clearly defined, you can achieve this without committing to a custom online panel. It can also be done through short-term projects with an existing community or through pop-ups.
Panels and communities have great trust among them. They work well together, and if you want to communicate with your customers long-term, it makes sense to use both communities and panels (as a subset of the community). Where you're conducting market research and plan to only get insights from a group of people who represent your target audience, an online panel would be the option. The benefits of communities do not end with their nature as a permanent entity of your business; there are many more pros to having a community.
Benefits of custom online community panels
Communities present numerous benefits, especially customer online research communities, in addition to being your company's customers. One of the primary benefits is the agile nature of the communities. It gives you quick insights. They are also great for iterative learning and A/B testing features. As the community members already understand the brand, gathering attitudes and behavioural data over time is easier. Since they have been a part of the community for a while, it is an excellent way to deep-dive with your customers and build a connection through empathy. They also allow you to release many tools for interactive engagement and provide different angles in which you can understand different consumer opinions while observing their reactions in real-time.
Types of custom online research communities
Whether you are looking to understand what makes your customer tick or what their opinions about a new product or an idea are, communities provide an easy way to collect the information; all our communities at Borderless Access are custom-built to suit the needs of our clientele. Existing industry-specific communities, too, are recalibrated every time a request is made. These online community panels are broadly classified into:
Long-term communities
These communities are ideal for tackling multiple research objectives on an ongoing, iterative basis through quantitative and qualitative approaches. Long-term communities allow you to dig deep and learn who your consumers are and what they want through rich discussions, audio, video, or visual media. While conducting research, we can mix quantitative surveys with online qualitative discussions and deliver these through activities. These activities include video journals, webcam interviews, mobile missions, or digital meetings.
Micro communities / pop-ups
Many clients choose the flexible option of a pop-up community. These communities are the ideal option for a hyper-specific research objective that needs attention over the next few months or multiple questions for specific audiences.
Engaging online community panels is the most effective way to get results
Borderless Access has a dedicated team of panel building and management experts who ensure community members feel valued and engaged. This process happens from day one of a functioning community until the research project is completed. We also offer several engagement programs to our community, which come with incentives to keep the morale going. These programs are specifically designed to suit your community and ensure we get information from them. Whether it's by incentives, member appreciation, or through share-backs, we always guarantee to get you high-quality participation results along with the rich insights you need. These programs give you outcomes you will be satisfied with and ensure that community members walk away feeling confident about their participation.
Copyright 2024. Featured post made possible by Borderless Access.