In quantitative research we are, by definition, all about numbers. But numbers aren’t just numbers when it comes to survey participants. More is not always better. This is why we’re cautionary about recruiting participants through social media. You may get many survey participants, but are they the right ones?
Take this fictional and simplified, but very possible example.
- You have a product that is for 15 year old females.
- You have a Facebook page with heaps of likers.
- The Facebook page statistics show the age and gender of your likers mostly fit your target market (assuming those people have entered into Facebook their demographics accurately).
- You need to develop your strategy for the next 6 months and want some feedback from your market, so you set up a survey using online software.
- Then you post a link to the survey on your Facebook business page.
- For added measure, you also post the survey on your personal page asking for help.
- Friends do the survey and share the link asking their friends to help you out.
- You’re really happy as you have heaps of participants so you close the survey, look at the results and start to develop the strategy.
But…
- Your friends and their friends aren’t 15 year old girls, they are mostly mum’s of 15 year old girls, so the feedback you’re getting isn’t from your target market.
- If you didn’t ask in the survey if they are a 15 year old girl, then you wouldn’t know to exclude those not in your target market, or analyse them separately (they could turn out to be a new market).
If you did ask questions to identify if participants are in your target market, although the number of relevant participants is lower, you can still develop your strategy, assuming you have enough of them. However if you didn’t ask the questions to identify if participants are in your target market, then you could develop a strategy for your business that is completely wrong.
Some ways to make sure the feedback is relevant and you can develop strategy using it:
- Develop a good database for your business in your own system/software, so that you can contact people directly for feedback.
- You can buy participants from panel providers that will distribute the survey to only those in your market.
- If you distribute the survey on social media as well, use a copied survey or separate links so that you can look at those participants separately.
- Think about whether your market could be better reached offline and consider using as an alternative or in addition.
- Include questions in a survey that will help you segment your participants for the needs of your business.
- Make sure you communicate back some of the results so that they know you have listened.
If you’re using the feedback to develop the strategy for your business, you don’t want the design of the survey and the way you collect it to give you feedback that sends you in the wrong direction.
