Conducting a Focus Group
Before you sink a bunch of money into a new product or service, consider running it through a focus group first. A focus group is a relatively inexpensive way to test a new concept for a product or service.
If you don’t have the resources to have a professionally facilitated focus group, there is little risk in running your own focus group. Before calling up a bunch of friends and talking to them about your idea, however, consider the following points.
Conducting a Focus Group:
- Getting the Right People
Take your time to make sure that you get members of your target demographic. The group should be uniform if possible (same gender and age). The more similar the group, the more likely they will be to talk openly about the subject. The similarity of participants, however, is not as important as making sure that they are representative of your prospective customers.
- Getting the Right Facilitator
Try to get someone who is not personally involved in your venture to facilitate the discussion. If it is your idea, you’re likely quite invested in it. If you’re facilitating, there is a very good chance that you will steer the group towards what you want to hear. A strong facilitator is essential in getting an unbiased exploration of the subject. A strong facilitator will also keep the discussion on track and will not let one or two people dominate. - Conducting the Focus Group
Prepare the questions ahead of time and ask them in a ‘funnel’ manner. By that, I mean that you should ask very broad questions first and only get to specific product or service related questions later. This will prevent the group from ‘anchoring’ too quickly on a specific thought or idea. For example, if you are thinking about launching a new customer rewards program, start by asking very general questions about shopping habits. You can then move into incentives like sales and coupons, and finally into different types of reward programs.
- Interpreting the Results
Record the focus group and interpret the results afterwards. The interpretation will require a couple of passes. The first pass should note common themes and the second pass should record the number of times each theme was mentioned. Note the emotions relating to each theme and pay special attention to strong emotions, both positive and negative.
The key thing to remember is that a focus group allows you to explore an idea. Keep an open mind, listen to what people say, but don’t take them too literally. People will often say one thing and do another. A focus group just helps you to explore some thoughts and ideas before charging too far down a path.
Further Reading: Beyond Listening: Learning the Secret Language of Focus Groups by Bonnie Goebert
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
