• Rethinking Focus Groups
• New: LearningAbled
• New: Bounce
• New: FIG
• New: Family Credit
• New: Prairie Biz
• Cover Letters From Hell
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Are Focus Groups Obsolete?

Nothing is certain but taxes and death ... unless you're launching an ad campaign. Then you can certainly add dropping truckloads of dollars to conduct focus groups. They represent the conventional wisdom, a seemingly inevitable tactic. After all, if you can't marry the market to the message, you're sunk, right?

But wait – there's less. How 'bout we skip conventional research, go straight to consumers, deliver a variety of messages (some of which will be off target), and in the process, tailor your message to maximize ROI, uncover hot-button messaging, and maybe, just maybe break even on cost. Whoa. Impossible? Not if you consider creative (some would say radical) new ways to employ sponsored search.

You may already be using sponsored search (AKA pay-per-click or PPC) or be at least familiar with it. (If you aren't, click over to see our white paper, Pay-Per-Click 101.) We call PPC the "microwave of advertising" because you can deliver highly refined messages directly to specific target audience segments, close sales sooner, and measure the entire process (response rates, time spent, pages visited, paths taken, exit points, purchase behavior) in real time. Those attributes, which make PPC a powerful sales medium, can also make it a precise research medium.

Okay. We hear traditional market researchers screaming. Focus group research is qualitative, and what we're talking about sounds quantitative. In response, we say pay attention. Read on.

Think about it: say your brand has two strong differentiators, three potential audiences, and two possible positioning objectives. You may have a product or service advantage, or maybe you're the low-cost provider, or you believe your customer service is superior. (Swell. And your mom loves you, too. But we digress.) Which credible attribute appeals most to potential customers? Where's the hot button that really lights them up? You could spend tens of thousands of dollars on focus groups to get an inkling of which messages elicit the most favorable responses and (one can hope) the most sales.

But what if one loudmouth in each group becomes an opinion bully? Or the smartest lady in the group was too shy to speak up while two other participants were weathering hangovers? Then there's the unavoidable "polite bias" in focus groups: people can say all they want – it means nothing until their wallets come out. There are whole ethnic groups who are culturally driven to search politely for "the right thing to say" – they'll speak well of your new widget or service or candidate, even if they will never, ever buy it, try it, or vote for her.

On the other (unraised) hand, what would happen if you were to use pay-per-click as a research tool? You could run ads for a few dollars each pushing different benefits and differentiators at multiple audiences, ads which lead to unique landing pages, each one illuminating a single differentiator, and asking for the order. Mix them all up, run constants and variables, tweak individual words daily – you can play the mad scientist in an advertising laboratory until you have created the perfect way(s) to sell your brand.

It seems complicated, and it is, but it boils down to this: Run ads until you find the one with the best ROI. That ad becomes your Control. Write more ads. If one beats the Control, it becomes the Control. Write more ads. Rinse and repeat.

Note that you're no longer holding focus groups to assess communications that you later create. You're testing messages directly. Polish until perfect.

How do you know it's perfect? Rather than simply getting groupthink from ten tired people around a table, you're proving efficacy – "wallet-voting" with real dollars in a real market of real-world buyers.

The best part? You didn't invest a bunch of money fishing for ways to express ideas to move markets. Your research created real sales which lowered your costs – if lucky, you might even break even! At that enlightened point, you can kick the proven message into high gear, confident that you're employing an optimal strategy. And you can do it sooner than is possible bouncing back and forth from focus group to drawing board.

It's our radical new take on research: less bias, opinion, time and cost – more thorough, accurate and actionable results. The biggest hurdle for you is finding an innovative branding agency who knows how to do it right. May we recommend the disciplined creativity professionals at Killian & Company? Drop us an email.

New ... and improved!

An interesting, inspiring and downright cool group of education professionals who have confronted learning disabilities (either personally or in their families) have come together to change the way reading is taught to all children. They use tried-and-true methods in innovative ways that work, when all else seems to have failed.

Our challenge was to create a relevant, memorable name, not focused on overcoming the "burden" of a learning disability. The solution? Not only a professional, clever name with an available URL (yeah, we couldn't believe it either), but a name that changes the way one should think about learning differences:

The tagline touches on the process of approaching learning disabilities in this revolutionary service that can improve life for millions of people – because everyone deserves to be LearningAbled.