Focus Group

Before you release your product or business idea to the public, you need to know what they think of it.

With this information, you can change your offer for:

• A better response
• Better sales projections
• Focused marketing strategy

But you need to do market research to know exactly how your target audience will receive your product or services.

Data collection with surveys will give you quantitative information.

But for qualitative information on what your target market thinks about what you’re selling.

You need focus groups.

So in this blog post, we will learn:

• What a focus group is
• How can it help your market research

Let’s dive right in.

What’s a focus group?

When doing market research for businesses, a focus group is a group of people in a guided discussion about:

• A business
• A brand
• A product
• A service

A focus group is conducted by the business in question and consists of individuals from the business’s target market.

These individuals will then begin to share their thoughts on the subject of the focus group.

Focus group purpose

Focus groups purpose is to carry out market research to get qualitative information on:

• A product
• A service
• Brand image

The types of information collected from your target audience includes:

• How they feeling
• Their opinions
• Their perspectives

Which helps make sure your products or services are helping your target market.

And that your marketing materials are persuading your target market to purchase.

Focus Group Format

A focus group is conducted by members of the business in question.

They will typically ask 5-10 questions to the participants of the focus group, which will last about 30-60 minutes.

Also, another member from the business in question will take notes on the focus group questionnaire.

Focus group size

The size of a focus group can be between 3-15 participants.

But a lot of groups are usually between five and eight participants.

A focus group’s size depends on the businesses resources and the outcome they want.

For example, the group size will be smaller for a few in-depth opinions or bigger for more opinions.

Focus Group Pros

Get the story behind the data

Survey data is powerful but you also need context.

Focus groups help understand how someone feels about your business and why.

You can dig deeper if an answer to a question interests you.

See facial expressions, tone of voice and how people react in discussions.

This gives you emotional input from your target market that survey data cant provide.

Interactive

In focus groups, participants can pick up your products or use them, but not with a survey.

This gives you a chance to observe and ask questions about:

• How they use the product
• Feel about the packaging and design

Doing so helps see your product through the eyes of the end-users and gives you insights you didn’t have before.

More efficient than interviews

Interviewing people takes longer compared to running focus groups with the same people.

For example, if each interview or focus group takes one hour and you want 100 participants.

Interviewing 100 people would take 100 hours.

But the focus groups would take 20 hours, with participants broken down into groups of five.

Doing so gives you quality feedback from more people in less time.

Focus Group Cons

Not fully representative

Focus groups take longer than surveys.

Meaning getting information from hundreds of people takes more time compared to surveying thousands.

And you can even look up secondary research like previous studies or surveys.

So because you get people’s input, the results wont represent all of your target market’s opinions.

Could encourage group thinking

Groupthink is when everyone gets behind an idea but not everyone agrees with it.

And the people don’t agree, fail to voice out in order to move on or avoid conflict.

Even with focus groups one or two participants give most of the answers and the rest silently agree.

So you only get input from two participants, not the whole focus group.

You can ask specific participants for in-depth answers, but might be shy or disinterested.

Moderators may have confirmation bias

Moderators can influence the directions of a focus group because they are attached to the project itself.

Observer dependency is when a moderator leads the discussion towards pricing, packaging or colouring a product a certain way.

This is based on the moderator’s preferences for the product.

So focus group moderators should put their personal preferences aside.

Or hire a market research firm, who will have less interest in the product compared to those in the business creating it.

Conclusion

Focus groups might not be efficient for gathering data.

But it puts real faces and emotions behind the numbers and data.

And doing so helps improve your:

• Business
• Marketing
• Product development

Before conducting your research with focus group, make sure:

• Questions are organised before
• Notes are taken on a focus group questionnaire

Now it’s over to you.

Tell me about your experiences when using focus groups?

Let me know in the comment section below.