On 10th December 2021, GreenBook published an article written by FlexMR’s Emily James. In the article, Attracting the Right Members for a Successful Community, Emily explores how to find, attract and recruit members into a research community for the best chance of success.
Insight communities are a pivotal part of market research, so making sure the right respondents are settled in and engaged in the research is key to a successful community that generates valuable continuous insights. The more relevant and active the members are in a community, the better-informed key stakeholder decisions will be. With some great input from FlexMR’s Charlotte Duff and Samantha Nicholson
Attracting Community Members
One of the more crucial aspects that determines a successful community is it’s members, so how can insight teams attract the right respondents?
Finding the Right Participants
Finding the right respondents for an online community is the first step. This can be tougher than first expected though, especially if insight teams are conducting a more specific study that requires a niche, hard-to-reach subculture of consumers.
The guiding notion that underlines exactly what sort of community members needed is the research itself. The topic, the platform used, the timeline, and the incentives attached to all the research will dictate which relevant respondents have the time and inclination to take part in the research community.
Recruiting the Right Members
Once these respondents have been identified, recruiting them will require a bit more knowledge on their communication habits. There are usually two types of respondents, those who are technologically-savvy and those who aren’t. For whatever research community insight teams need, a representative sample will likely need a good few of the two to make sure all voices are heard. Finding the communication channels they choose to use most is a good way to notify them of the research opportunity.
Incentivising Research
Incentives are a fantastic way to attract community members, whether it’s an incentive for joining the community or incentives to complete the tasks, or a mixture of the two. Insight professionals have developed a few good ways to incentivise engagement from physical rewards to intangible emotional incentives, the best way to make sure these incentives hit the spot is to use a mixture of them depending on what the community members respond to most.
Want to find out more? Read the full article on the GreenBook website now.
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