Market Research Through Online Communities

I am half-way through a terrific new book titled GroundSwell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. It is by two very active experts on social media, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, who work for Forrester Research. (Harvard Business Press, 2008)

Groundswell is all about web 2.0, or social media. The book is targeted at businesses, but many of its examples involve nonprofit organizations from the National Cancer Society to the Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute, so it is clear that nonprofits can certainly apply Li and Bernoff's techniques.

I was taken with how they suggest using controlled online communities to conduct market research. Companies such as Communispace set up private communities for their clients. The company recruits 300-500 people in the client's target market to join an online community that is like any other online community with profiles, discussion forums, online chat, and uploaded photos. But, in this case, the community is private...no one can see it or use it except the members, the moderators, and the client.

The members are usually thanked with Amazon gift certificates, and they agree to spend an hour a week on the site. The company or nonprofit can start any conversation it likes with questions. But, the members start discussion threads as well.

Groundswell uses the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as an example of one organization that is using one of these online communities to "listen" to their customers. Although the service is quite expensive, Sloan-Kettering teamed up with other cancer centers to spread the cost among several organizations.

Sloan Kettering found something unexpected through its community. They had assumed that cancer patients chose the facilities where they would be treated because of the cancer center's reputation. Thus they spent a lot of effort in polishing that reputation. However, they found that those patients don't choose a cancer treatment center the same way a business executive might choose a supplier.

Patients said that they were shell shocked when they received their diagnoses and were not up to those kinds of decisions right away. They, by and large, turned to their primary care physicians for recommendations. They turned to trusted sources to guide them at a crucial time.

Before this insight, the cancer center had not invested a lot into its relationship with referring doctors, but after hearing what their patients said, they changed their marketing from a broad reputation building effort into a more targeted one.

Of course, these kinds of insights happen with any market research, but the online community provided a number of benefits, from instant feedback to a natural setting where people were comfortable talking about their experiences.

We would like to know if you are using online communities to "listen" to your donors, users, volunteers, or public. How do you do it and is it working?

More about market research:

• 8 Ways Your Nonprofit Can Do Market Research