I’ve written about this before in a much earlier blog but the question “why can’t I do my own research” is something that I’m often asked so it’s worth talking about again.
Of course you can do your own research.
Lots of people do. And they do it really well.
But lots of people do it REALLY badly.
If we all had a bottomless pit of money, we’d pay for experts to handle all the areas of our business that were out of our area of expertise – I’d have an accountant, a tax adviser, a marketing consultant, a content creator, a social media manager, … the list could go on and on. BUT I’m a small business, I don’t have a bottomless pit of money so some of these tasks I need to do myself.
I appreciate the same true of research, not everyone has the budget to outsource their market research products. There are so many free software tools that enable you to create an online questionnaire, within minutes you can distribute a survey to 10,000s of people. But the end result is only going to be as good as the ingredients you put in.
7 things to think about
- A poorly constructed questionnaire will lead to unreliable answers.
- Not having a clear objective will mean that you are likely to be asking questions for the sake of it.
- Giving respondents an incomplete list of options to choose from WILL annoy them.
- Sending a questionnaire to just your favourite customers, or doing a poll only on Twitter is going to skew your results towards that particular group of people.
- Who is completing your questionnaire? Can people answer it twice? Three times? Are all the replies real?
- What does the fact that 27% of men v 35% of women strongly disagree with a statement actually mean?
- How will you present the results?
I could go on, but I’m running out of space ….. so I’ll just say that my new service ROCK YOUR RESEARCH can help.
You’ll be able to keep control of the process, but you’ll have access to my brain before you start. It’s a 90 minute one to one session where we’ll talk through your research questions and you’ll leave with tips, advice and ideas to help your research project be a success.
Find out more here
