For sponsors
You want to hear the market, and the market is now available to you.
An association is engaged with the members you sell to, and the members will answer your questions when their own association asks. The research is built for your own specific needs, at the scope you need, and the findings are published through your own channels and channels the association members already consume.
The audience
You reach your target market itself.
The respondents are the association's members, precisely the buyers you sell to.
The respondents are verified members of the field.
Participants are known and engaged. They participate because their own association asked them. And, the association knows who they are.
You learn which market segments express which opinions.
Research findings describe respondents in enough demographic and organizational detail to separate segments. Individual identities are never disclosed to you — though options exist to ask members if they want contact.
What you can do with the research
Discover the demand and important improvements for your products and services.
Listen to what the market thinks of what you are producing, how they feel about your competitors, and where you need to focus resources.
Publish first on an emerging subject.
Examine a new development before anyone else reports on it, and become the recognized first expert on it.
Measure brand recognition and brand preference.
Learn which companies the market knows, and which one it would choose.
Measure your market position.
Describe the competitive landscape as the market describes it, rather than as your own team assumes it.
Learn how the market understands the problem you solve.
Find out what buyers believe about the problem and about the solutions available to them.
Record the market's own language.
Capture sentiment, vocabulary, and psychographic tendencies, then write marketing material, advertising, and sales training in the words your buyers use.
Establish baselines.
Measure market behavior, identify the concerns buyers raise, and record the solutions the market itself recommends.
Measure interest in what you sell and capture leads.
Learn about members who want to know more about your product or service.
What the process asks of you
No RFPs: you issue no request for proposals.
There is no agency selection and no onboarding period. Research companies commonly require a lengthy onboarding process and pursue a larger and longer relationship than you need.
Your obligations are to define the need and to approve the solution.
State what you need to learn and by when, then review and approve the research. The association does the rest.
The work almost always costs much less and finishes sooner.
A research project alone, or a bundle of research and communication products, almost always costs far less than a project or bundle of the same scope purchased from an agency, and usually reaches findings sooner.
The methods available
| Online surveys | Measure the whole field quickly and report differences among segments. |
|---|---|
| Telephone interviews | Ask why an answer was given, and follow the answer where it leads. |
| Intercept interviews | Collect reactions at an event, while the experience is current. |
| Focus groups | Watch a small group examine a product, a message, or a price. |
| Discussion groups | Let practitioners describe a problem in their own words and in their own order. |
| Interactive webinars | Present a subject and measure the audience's reaction as it happens. |
| Asynchronous discussion groups | Collect considered answers over several days from people who cannot meet at one time. |
What you receive, and what you may do with it
Collection, analysis, and publication are one process.
You publish through the association's channels, use the findings internally, or do both.
Findings published by an association are accepted more readily.
Members and the trade press treat an association's research differently from research a supplier publishes about its own market.
You usually hold authority over the results.
Use of the results is agreed between you and the association. The sponsor usually has full access, use, and reuse of the results, and authority over their use unless the agreement states otherwise.
Sponsorships are often exclusive.
Exclusivity is set within a period and a subject area agreed by you and the association.
Bring the question. The rest is already built.
The Dashboarding page contains twelve sample dashboards. Each one is an abbreviated illustration of what a sponsor and an association receive from the research at the end of a project. Or, contact us and ask for a walkthrough and discuss what a study of your own field would involve.