Recruiting the right participants is one of the most important aspects of a successful market research project. We strive to fill our projects with participants that struggle with the issues our clients are working to solve, and that are eager to participate so they give thoughtful feedback. Above all, we avoid participants that are not the right fit for the project. The key is to develop a recruiting guide that ensures that those who meet the specifications are the right people for your project.
Sounds kind of obvious, right? Unfortunately, this can be very difficult. Clients can always tell us who they WANT us to recruit. It is our job to drill down into those specifications and understand who they DON’T want us to recruit.
For example, let’s assume the client is targeting software developers. It turns out that different types of developers have very different purchasing behaviors. If we just say “software developer” as a criteria for participation, we may get the single entrepreneur in a garage developing tools sold via word of mouth, alongside a senior architect from a financial services company responsible for a mission critical online trading application, next to a low-level firmware developer for printer software – probably not similar pain points! It’s important to pinpoint, prior to starting the recruiting process, which type of developers we want to recruit, and filter out everyone else.
If the goal of the project is to decide which kind of developers your product is most suited for, then of course you want a wide range of participant types and will intentionally recruit a mix with broad representation. In this case, it is important to recruit several of each kind of participant so there is enough feedback to correlate responses at the end.
Obviously, expertise in technology is highly important for a targeted technology recruiting process. We have worked in the IT corporate world and are highly experienced and understand technology – so we know how to write a productive recruiting guide that weeds out the wrong participants.