So you need to do some focus groups?

You were in a meeting and somebody threw it out there. We need some answers and we need them pretty quick. Why don’t we do a couple of focus groups and toss the questions to our customers? Or convene a focus group of the people who don’t do business with us and ask them why? (Are those non-customer bozos even worth talking to, really?)

And YOU - for whatever reason - were handed the responsibility of getting it done. Or at least of getting the answers to a few important questions, such as:

Will focus groups give us the answers we need? How many groups are enough? How many should be in each group? Whom do we recruit for the sessions, and how do we do it? Who should actually lead the discussion? What kind of questions do we ask? How much do focus groups cost, anyway?

So here we are. What now?
Will focus groups give us the answers we need?

First, consider whether focus groups are the right tool for the job. Focus groups are a method of qualitative research that investigates WHY people do things. WHY they go to certain stores. Why they buy some products and not others. WHY they get tattoos in strange places. Or how anyone could ever believe that inhaling 43 known carcinogens is somehow “cool”.
Qualitative research deals with emotions, psychology and motivation, such as what needs your product or service satisfies. And what needs force people to take money to your competitors. Qualitative research involves distinctions - or comparisons based upon distinguishing characteristics. Its goal is to understand the feelings, values, and perceptions that underlie and influence behavior - understanding that will help marketers make better, more informed marketing decisions when they are TRYING to influence that behavior.

Focus groups will help you connect with your market: to become
More aware of what is going on with your customers More aware of their patterns of evaluation and thinking More aware of their imagery and perceptions and how those relate to purchase decisions More aware of customers’ likes, dislikes, frustrations and desires More aware of your relative competitive position in the marketplace

What you do with all of this awareness is what creates your marketing advantage. The goal is to use this information as the underpinning and foundation of your marketing decisions - that you hope will assist in taking you from where you are, to where you want to be - in terms of profitability, market share and market position. 

What focus groups are NOT:

Focus groups are in no way quantitative. They will not answer the question “how many”, such as how many or what percentage of customers will like or buy our new Illudium PU-36 Space Modulator. But they CAN answer the question of what aspects of our new Illudium PU-36 Space Modulator make purchasers very angry, very angry indeed.
They cannot answer questions of how much - such as how much more do women like Brad Pitt than they do Rick Moranis.

But they can answer in rich, provocative detail what it is about Brad Pitt that gives them the thigh sweats and makes them do inconceivable things like subscribe to People Magazine.

Excellent objectives for focus group investigation are ones such as these:

Why do people buy our product? Why do they NOT buy our product? What could we say or do or be to sell more products? What do we have to do to increase our market share, or to increase the size of the market pie?
How do customers USE our product? Is it like we think it is, or different? How could we make it even more useful to them (and make them buy more)?
What opportunities are we missing? What markets are we ignoring? What’s happening out there that we should know about, but don’t? How are our markets changing? How are our customers’ needs changing? What do customers find frustrating about doing business with us? Why don’t blacks, women, seniors, or other groups buy our stuff?
What are our strengths and weaknesses? What are we doing right, and wrong? What could we do better?
How could we do a better job of reaching (or meeting the needs of) a particular segment or market? (Rich people, women, ethnics, suburbs, etc.)
How do people in certain segments communicate with each other? How should we reach them? What could we say to have more credibility?
How do people use our website? What could we do to make it more useful for customers, and more effective as a business development tool for us?

TERRIBLE and WRONG objectives for focus groups include the following:

If we make this change to our product or distribution, how many more people will buy it? Or would they be more likely to buy it?
What would be the right price to set for this product? How much is the maximum price would people pay? What is their choke point?
Asking people to come up with new product ideas, or even to pass judgment on new product ideas that they have never seen in use. Imagine doing a focus group of people regarding the feasibility of air travel in 1915. Sometimes people just aren’t qualified to make judgments, and this is almost always true regarding what they are going to use in the future.

Before running an advertising campaign, let’s ask customers and prospects what they think of the creative. How much will people like this advertising program? (Focus groups CAN be used as “disaster checks” or to investigate “what” exactly the people think the ad is trying to communicate.)
How satisfied are our customers compared with customers of the competition? (They can investigate what people think the competition does better - or what customers WISH you did that you don’t.)
Focus groups let you dive deep. Have you ever had a conversation with a child where they asked “why” after every one of your answers? Children may do it to put off their bedtime, but focus group moderators do it for enlightenment!

Because if moderators can answer the question of “why” customers buy or don’t buy a product and provide their clients with that understanding, all of a sudden the job of marketing the organization just got a lot easier; the motivating issues just became clearer.

Focus groups provide foundational understanding that can help you make better, more informed, more relevant marketing decisions. You will think in terms of customers’ needs - see the world through their eyes - use words customers use in real life - and position your product in a way that customers and prospects will understand and will be meaningful to them. You will, in short, come closer to “getting it”, and your marketing will reflect this understanding. In the “competition for eyeballs”, you stand a much better chance of being noticed - and being noticed saying relevant things that motivate consumers to action.

PART 2 - How many groups are enough?
Do you need geographic diversity because opinions or product uses are likely to differ by where people live? 

Do you need understanding of age, ethnic or demographic differences?
Do you have a budget that has to be spent before the end of the year or you lose it, thus diminishing your clout within your organization?
These are the kinds of situations that suggest more than one group may be needed. 

Some things to consider:
You should almost always do more than one group - one set of information is never enough, and many times the learning from the first group makes for a fantastic experience with the next group.
If you do need diversity of opinion and you have a small budget, don’t fall into the trap of having only one group but making it as diverse as possible - doing this will guarantee you get nothing of value, and that your boss will conclude that you are a bozo and that focus groups are a worthless methodology for collecting useful information.

Generally speaking, homogeneity is better than diversity when you are setting up a single group. You can dive deeper regarding the recreational needs of seniors if every one in your group is over the age of 60. And you will emerge with a better understanding of what ethnic segments want and need and respond to if your participants are separated by ethnicity. In a group that is very diverse, much of the conversation is diluted, and you never know what perspective might be attributable to which segment. Confusion results!

You may want to separate participants by gender if ay of the issues may be gender-sensitive. A few years ago we did groups of men’s underwear purchasers, and separated the participants by gender. Turns out the women said they were much more likely to notice the packaging (and then buy the underwear) if the models on the picture had abs that looked as if they were chiseled from stone - and since 65% of all men’s underwear is purchased by women, too bad if the guys wanted pictures of Tiger Woods.

If you’re a grocery store thinking about groups with female shoppers, there may be no reason to segment shoppers by age. Recruit participants from all age groups and watch the fun as they interact with each other. You’ll learn a lot about how women view their shopping experience. 

But if you’re a health care provider looking to offer specialized services for women, and you know the needs are likely to differ by age, you may want to have two groups: one with older women and one with younger ones.
How many groups you do depends should be driven by the following issues:

Whom are you going to be targeting with the resulting marketing? The broader the market, the more likely you might benefit by breaking it down into segments. (If your target segment is “men”, you would be well served breaking that down into categories such as “men under 35”, or “men from the midwest”.

Does one market segment have different needs or have a very different perspective than other segments? (ATV users in Michigan as opposed to those in Texas; cooks of different ethnicity and cultural heritage)

So, in conclusion, do as few groups as possible to get the answers you need, from a geographically and demographically diverse group of participants. And do as many as your budget can swing. Just be sure that with each group you give yourself the opportunity to get the information with a slightly different twist! 
 How many should be in each group?

“Diads” have two people Triads have three people Small Group interviews have four to five people Focus Groups may have from six to twelve people

The optimal size for a focus group is eight to nine people. If you have more than that, introverted participants may not talk, and the conversation can get to be unwieldy. This will limit the amount of ground you can cover in the group, and can frustrate the participants into stony silence.

With eight to nine participants, the group is not so large that introverts can hide - and it is small enough to permit in-depth discussion of the meatiest issues. Everyone can fully participate, and participate at a high level of involvement. It cuts down on the “surface” answers, and will let a moderator probe deeply for additional insight.

Part 3 - Whom do we recruit for the groups and how do we do it? 


Whom you recruit depends upon the project objectives, and what (geographic and/or demographic) markets are important to you.


Many large to medium size cities (www.greenbook.org) have a focus group facility that specializes in recruiting and hosting focus groups in that area, like our four in Virginia - (www.martinfocus.com) These companies will do your recruiting according to your project’s specifications (teens with long dark hair and more than 4 pimples who use mascara), and provide a focus group room for the moderator and participants, and and viewing room for the clients. They typically will take care of food needs for all of the participants and clients, tape and video record the groups, and provide the moderator with all of the things she needs to have successful groups: flip charts, post-it notes for brainstorming, pads and pencils, etc. All the moderator has to do is fly in, moderate the groups, pick up the tapes and notes, and fly out to the next city.

If the purpose of the groups is to explore packaging options or advertising messages, the rooms can even be modified to display some different treatments, or mock store situations for evaluation by the group participants. 

If you’re travel-averse, some of the facilities even have the capability of video-conferencing so that you can watch the groups from the safety and comfort of your office. Or in some cases, by linking in on your computer. Very cool!
There are some very important considerations as you are choosing a facility:
Reputation for sticking to the screening questionnaire. Nothing is more infuriating than to go to the time and trouble and expense of traveling to a distant but crucial market, only to find that the people sitting in the conference room do not conform to the screening questionnaire. You want to talk with democrats, and everybody in the group is a moderate. Or they should be frequent users of a product, and during the introduction you find out that no one in the group has even heard of it. (When that happens, the moderator can feel the client’s evil eye searing a hole into the back of his neck from behind the one-way glass, and he develops a very strong desire to share the pain with the facility.)

Reputation for “gittin’ ’er done” - of course it’s hard to find left-handed bass fisherwomen, but you still need this crucial market for your groups. You don’t want to find out your facility has recruited exactly two qualified participants (when the goal was ten) the day before you are supposed to catch three different planes in order to get to the groups. Good focus groups facilities will find a way to make sure you have groups full of qualified, intelligent and articulate participants.

Location - the facility should be located in a spot that is central to your target market. For instance, there are 49 facilities in Chicago - be sure you choose one centrally located for the people you need to recruit (such as shoppers of a particular store, or members of an ethnic group.) The moderator can help you with this selection, and in many cases, an experienced moderator will have first-hand experience with the facility in question, and will able to vouch for their integrity and ability to bring in the tough participants.

How much do they charge, and for what? Some facilities charge an all-inclusive fee, while others charge a basic fee for facilities and recruiting, and everything else, such as audio and videotaping, is extra. Most will charge cost plus handling for food, as well as any extras they incur, such as when the moderator has to have a Double Shot Mocha Latte with skim milk at 3:00 in the afternoon, or decides she needs an elephant for the 8:00 group.

Which brings us to the next question:

Part 4 - Who should actually lead the discussion?

Nothing you do will have a bigger impact upon the success or failure of your focus groups than the decision you make here. Make it carefully. 

 Think about this for a second. If you take your car to a mechanic, and he does not fix it, your car will not run properly. In comparison, the focus group moderator could completely botch your groups, and you might never know it. 


There are NO barriers to entry to becoming a focus group moderator. There is no certification process. No license to get. I have seen people with no experience or training decide, after watching three or four groups, that it would be the perfect job for them to begin after their baby was born. Start up expense? Business cards.

Focus group moderating can be lucrative, and leading groups looks fairly easy to those who fancy themselves to be good with people or are easily conversational - just like Tiger Woods makes it look easy to hit a golf ball straight down the fairway. (But in golf, if you land in the rough you KNOW it was a bad shot - it’s simple to quantify good vs. the bad - NOT so with moderating.)

There are atrocious moderators out there who are completely comfortable in the knowledge that no one can ever PROVE their response or approach or moderating style was wrong. They are safe in their incompetence, because there is no safety net to protect clients from bad advice. I have seen moderators do a terrible job in the discussion room: lead respondents, put down disagreement, show favoritism, ignore body signals from people who want to talk, and be intimidated by dominating participants, only to have the client sing out “nice job!” when the charlatan came back into the viewing room.

The truth is that it is pretty easy to lead a lively group discussion. It’s a little harder to keep participants on subject, to keep the discussion moving, to bring out the people who are not participating, to inhibit the dominators, to bring people back to the subject when they stray, and to move them along to the next topic when they run out of productive discussion, all the while keeping the project objectives in mind.

You may be tempted to use a newer moderator because she is almost certainly cheaper, she may be available quickly, or he may be a fraternity brother. Or you may have heard that Bob in the PR Department has experience leading his Society of Young Republican discussions every week. He’s willing to do the groups, and he would be lot cheaper. And who knows, each of these may even do a decent job. But if they don’t, how will you know? And what will you trade off by having them do the groups?

Experienced moderators can be a godsend to clients who want an informed and objective perspective on various marketing issues pertaining to the project. Many of them have direct experience in the product category, speak the language, know which facilities are the good ones, and aren’t afraid to take a stand when it comes to projecting an opinion that may be politically difficult. (You know, the one where someone has to tell the CEO that his nephew’s idea for a mass marketing tin-foil hats truly sucks.)

Focus group moderators are paid pretty well to know what is important and relevant to the objectives of the study, to understand implications of verbal and body language, to interpret ambiguous or incongruent behaviors, to conceive and develop strategies for getting the answers necessary to reach a successful conclusion, to generate and develop new ideas, and to use qualitative methodologies to project behavior. They not only have to be practiced psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists (disciplines from which most of the best moderators come), but they first and foremost must be superb marketers. 

And what makes a superb marketer? Study and experience.

Before you can know or be able to predict what REALLY moves people to act, you have to have lived through a hundred or so new marketing campaigns and new product launches. You have to have experience with failure as well as success, to develop a sense for what BOTH look and feel like.

And what about companies doing their own focus groups with their own moderators? We have already mentioned the obvious problems with objectivity and internal politics. That said, people on the inside have an in-depth knowledge of the product, company vision and strategy, and current marketing and advertising that outsider consultants can rarely equal. However, unless they also have experience leading groups, and unless they do focus groups constantly and practice these skills, they are unlikely to have the level of professional expertise that is necessary to do a first class job. Other guidance and benefits that may be offered by a professional and experienced moderator:

Help clarifying the objectives of the research and sharpening the focus of the discussion guide, to prevent “while we’ve got them there, let’s ask...” thinking (this can tremendously dilute the effectiveness of the groups)

Providing and objective perspective from the project beginning through the final analysis - they have no corporate objective or axes to grind. They can even help you see through that stuff.

Stay focused on clients' bigger marketing questions, to ensure the research findings are relevant and actionable and actually address the objectives.
> Provide external credibility and clarity to internal politics when necessary. When you need someone to present the findings to management, especially wen they are likely to argue about the findings, the professional researcher can come in very handy.

In short, a professional moderator can make you think in different ways, explore divergent points of view, challenge the corporate perspective, destroy groupthink, undermine political gamesmanship, and find better, innovative ways to market the company. She or he can also make you look very good and very smart to a dubious C-Suite of executives who all want to second-guess every marketing decision. 


So BE CAREFUL. Investigate the experience of the moderators you are considering. Ask them how many groups they have done. Ask them to explain some of their techniques for establishing rapport with respondents, and for handling defensive or quiet participants. Ask them how they know they are getting “real” answers in the groups. See how quickly they “get” the marketing issues, and ask their advice regarding how your groups should be set up. Ask them for references, and call the references. 
For more information, take a look at the website of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association. (www.qrca.org) This is a very well-informed group of professional researchers who spend most of their days thinking of ways they can do a better job improving their clients’ profitability.
Part 5: What kinds of questions do we ask?

In one hyphenated word? Open-ended. 



Following are some general principles of focus group questioning:

• Warm up with innocuous conversation that lets people begin to establish rapport and get used to talking in a group • Start with general questions, and move to the specific • Spend the most amount of time on the project’s central issues. Think in terms of, “if I had to come away from these groups with only one answer, what would it be?” • Don’t let the agenda get sidetracked by having to cram too many questions into it. When this happens, the moderator ends up having to choose between accepting the first answers or leaving out questions. • Stay away from questions that allow “yes” or “no” as a response. • Probe, probe and probe some more. Do not accept the first answers, or assume you know what they mean. Ask - play dumb - or just look confused and stay silent - it opens them up. • Encourage stories - just be sure it’s on point, and that there is a “moral” at the end relevant to the objectives. Like, “tell me a story about one time when you received exceptional service.”

Part 6 - How much do focus groups cost anyway?

You knew I was going to say, “it depends”, or “call me for a free quote today!”

Straight answer: Usually between $5000 per group for the easy ones, and up to $10,000 for the extremely difficult, like say, surgeons. 

There are three main subsets of charges for focus groups: 1) the facility fees for recruiting and hosting, and incidentals such as food, 2) the Moderator fees for pre-group consulting and planning, making the arrangements with the facilities, leading the group discussions, and preparing the report/summary of findings, and 3) the participants’ incentives.
Facility fees
Facilities earn their money. They recruit and host the focus groups, making sure participants are qualified and that they show up at the right place on time. This might mean making 100 phone calls; it might mean 25,000. They arrange for the diverse food needs of clients, and are always ready to run out and pick up a vegan meal because the moderator forgot to tell them that the new VP of Carbon Footprint Reduction was coming. While the moderator and product managers are busy incorporating the CEO’s last minute changes to the outline, the facility is replacing cancellations, checking in participants, and making sure they are provided refreshments and informed of the “cell phones off” policy. Facilities also provide a neutral location, helping clients to get out of their office away from distractions, and providing participants with an objective location where they will feel safe to say whatever comes to mind.
Moderator fees
Moderators earn their money, for all of the reasons enumerated earlier. They constitute the linchpin for the success or failure of this project. For their fees, they should:


1. Secure the facilities for the dates agreed to by the client 2. Write the screening questionnaire that ensures the participants will be the ones the client needs, and provide that to the facility following client approval. 3. Follow up with the facility to ensure they are making adequate progress with the recruiting, and crack the whip if they are not 4. Report to the facility any special food or other needs of the clients 5. Consult with the clients to refine the objectives, determine the group locations, decide upon the right number of groups, and create the moderator’s guide. 6. Conduct the groups 7. Prepare a top line summary of findings within 3 days pertaining to the objectives of the study. 8. Make recommendations for action that address the objectives 9. Present the report and recommendations to management if necessary 10. Make the client look as good as possible to all of the management team in attendance.

Participant Incentives
Respondents must be paid. For one thing, it ensures they show up instead of having something better come up. It also means, psychologically, they have to play by the rules set up by the Moderator. If we are paying for their time, then we get to set the agenda. How much participants are paid typically depends on who and what they are. Everyday joes and mere mortals get around $50 to $75 per group, depending on the market. Since participants in bigger cities earn more income, and have to be enticed out into traffic and vehicular mayhem, they usually command more than participants in rural groups. 

Captains of Industry, physicians, opinion leaders and influencers can command up to $500 per session, depending upon how many there are and how they are to recruit. (More money usually makes the job easier.)
And if you scrimp on the fees, you end up paying more to the facility, because they have to work harder and make more calls to fill the groups. Listen to the facilities here.
Bottom line? Check with a couple of qualified moderators and have them provide you with 1) a recommended approach, and 2) an all-inclusive fee to get the groups done. Recognize that as the moderator is selected and gets involved, the objectives and specifications of the groups are likely to change, but at least by then you’ll have a handle on the way the whole process is packaged and priced.