Every business knows (or should know) that market research is essential for keeping up with your customers’ changing needs. Not to mention maintaining your competitive edge.
Getting the data you need to make informed decisions is critical, and that means the incentives you offer your survey and research participants are, too.
Evaluating the effectiveness of your market research incentive programs should be part of your year-end planning, especially now, with artificial intelligence (AI) set to change how market researchers work.
To help you finetune your market research incentive programs in 2024, we’ve rounded up what you need to know about three emerging industry trends (besides AI).
Just like it sounds, voice of the customer (VoC) research boils down to listening to what customers have to say about their needs and expectations so your business can improve its products or services. While listening to customers is nothing new, there will be a growing emphasis on tracking customer feedback across multiple channels, such as surveys, social media, and customer reviews, to gain a more cohesive picture of their opinions.
Understanding how customers truly experience your brand is invaluable. To ensure your market research incentive programs give your team the most useful data, gather feedback from a representative sample of customers, not just ones who are super satisfied or those who have had a negative experience — the so-called “squeaky-wheel syndrome.” You want to get the most accurate picture possible.
Incentives tip: Make sure your incentives motivate every kind of customer — positive, neutral, and negative — to provide feedback, and you’ll get more insightful results.
The growing use of mobile research should come as no surprise, given how much people rely on their smartphones. In fact, as soon as 2025, it’s expected that 73% of internet users will access the web only on their smartphones, according to the World Advertising Research Center.
Insights gathered from surveys, in-app feedback, and location-based research are on target to become integral methods that will need to be incorporated into your market research incentive programs. When interacting with your survey and research participants on mobile, delivering their incentives within the same platform is a best practice.
After all, they completed the survey on their phone, so they will expect your response — and incentive — on their phone. Not only will this approach help your brand provide a consistent user experience, it will support strong engagement rates.
Incentives tip: If you’ve been relying on email for digital reward delivery, switch to sending virtual incentives via SMS for your mobile respondents to reach your audience where they’re at.
READ MORE: 3 Reasons to Send Virtual Gift Cards via SMS
Businesses continue to be under pressure to work more efficiently and on tighter budgets. Market researchers were already relying on automation — and machine learning — in 2023, and that trend is expected to continue in 2024.
AI is being hailed as the answer to relieving researchers of tedious and mundane tasks, like organizing and analyzing raw data. Technological advances like these have already decreased the time it takes to complete every phase of the research lifecycle. Surveys that took weeks to complete can now be wrapped up in a matter of days.
That reliance on new tools makes market research incentive programs ripe for automation as well. Integrating your reward platform into existing research tools and workflows allow you to automate delivery and eliminate manual processes. That frees up your team to focus on the strategies that lead to a competitive edge. BHN Rewards, for example, integrates with many of the survey and research platforms you’re already using.
Incentives tip: Take advantage of automation to instantly reward your survey participants, send reminders about redemption deadlines, and monitor your incentives budget.
Looking to gain efficiency in 2024? Recruit, retain, and engage your survey and research participants with a platform that does it all. Sign up now for a demo of BHN Rewards!
BHN Rewards puts the power of digital rewards to work for marketers, researchers, and HR managers. Don't forget to check out all the great content in our Resources section!
BHN Rewards puts the power of digital rewards to work for marketers, researchers, and HR managers. Don't forget to check out all the great content in our Resources section!
