Today’s leading organizations are increasingly employing agile approaches to developing new marketing programs, product or service innovations and customer experiences. By leveraging agile market research methods, your organization is able to simultaneously design, test and build new solutions before going to market. This approach speeds time to market, while still ensuring your go-to-market strategy fits with consumers’ lifestyles, situations and needs.
Our monthly blog post offers practical tips and advice on how to implement agile research. January's agile tips focus on the ways in which you can use new technologies within your research and are provided by Karon Kiffel, an independent marketing consultant and one of Digsite's expert consultants.
Tip 1. Combine Technology and Expert Support
Being agile doesn’t mean you have to do everything yourself or have a full DIY solution. Being agile means embracing technology that can help you work smarter and faster. When you’re using new tool, rely on their tech experts to help you translate that tool into your work instead of thinking you must learn it all on your own.
Tools like Digsite combine technology and expert support together, enabling you to achieve the speed you need to focus on the insights you need to accelerate your innovation efforts. Having the right support can help you make the transition to agile research.
Tip 2. Choose Technology That Fits Your Target
It’s important to remember that just because new technologies exist, it doesn’t mean everyone knows how to use it - especially market research participants. Look for technology that can work to address a broader group of people - not just the most tech savvy people.
Aim to use an accessible platform that works on mobile, desktop, and tablets so everyone can use it.
When you choose a web enabled app over a native mobile app, the platform works seamlessly on all devices. You can give users additional functionality within a mobile app, but it can be a bit more work for users to download an app. Understand and work with technology that fits your target audience.
Tip 3. Consider Voice-Responses to Questions
With new voice-control devices constantly popping up, you might be wondering how you can leverage voice-command technology within your market research efforts. Voice to text is an area that can be useful for market research participants.
Within Digsite, participants on mobile can speak in a conversation task and have their device transcribe what they said, making it fast and easy for participants to respond to a research task. Choosing an agile tool that offers voice to text capabilities gives flexibility to your participants, allowing them to easily and quickly provide feedback, even if they’re on the go.
Tip 4. Simplify Your Research
When doing research, it’s tempting to throw every question you have into your research study. But if you want to iterate quickly, it’s important to focus on the most important questions first. Simplifying questions doesn’t mean getting less learning, it means getting insights that are more precise, focused, and accurate.
The way that you ask questions can also help you get better results. Using tools that allow a mix of structured and unstructured questions plus live or asynchronous video responses can improve the speed and quality of your analysis.
To learn more about how your organization can make the move to agile research, here are some resources to check out:
- How Innovation Teams Use Agile Research to Build Better Products
- Agile Research Guide: How Teams Can Innovate Faster
- How to Build an Effective Agile Research Team
- How Leading CPG Companies Use Online Qualitative Research for Better Business Outcomes
