Maximizing ROI from Your Research Spend

Research is a critical investment and no matter your budget, you always want to get the most out of your investment. With the right approach, you can be sure to extract maximum value from your research.

Larger more focused research studies usually have a specific goal in mind and likely won’t benefit from these tips. Here instead we are focusing on optimizing your more general overall insights research.

1. Target the Right Respondents

One of the most important parts of primary research is determining the survey audience. Make sure you spend ample time thinking through whose opinion matters to you most and develop an effective screener to reach that audience to make every dollar spent worth your while.

It is also worth considering leveraging multiple sample sources to recruit respondents cost-effectively. If you have access to a customer email list or database that can be a recruiting tool or supplement to traditional panel data.

2. Optimize Survey Design for Efficiency

A focused survey is an efficient survey, you should have a very clear list of goals and questions you would like the data to answer. Don’t let a lack of research knowledge keep you from drafting this list. A research team like Lab42 can help you turn that list of goals into an effective survey tool. Clearly determining the goals of the survey ahead of time will help to avoid unnecessary data collection that doesn’t drive action.

That being said, while you have the target audiences attention ask away! While the survey should be streamlined to only actionable questions, that doesn’t mean it can’t pull double duty. Creating modules within a survey to broach multiple topics or meet different goals is a great way to get more bang for your buck while paying for survey data.

3. Repurpose and Extend the Value of Your Research

Once you’ve collected your survey data the work to extract as much information as you can begins. To further your ROI turn survey findings into multiple assets: reports, blog posts, social media posts, webinars, infographics, the list goes on and on. It is also important to share key insights with different teams, they can each leverage that data in a way that works best for them.

And finally, refresh and update surveys periodically to track changes over time. Often when duplicating a study you save in the upfront costs of writing and programming so you can get updated data as well as trends with a much smaller investment.

Conclusion

When planning general survey research, we would encourage you to think beyond just data collection and focus on the insights and application instead. This focus will help you get the most out of your research spend.

Our researchers at Lab42 are experts in taking your survey wish list and transforming it into the survey tool that will maximize your ROI.