January projects gain momentum with GutCheck

GutCheck projects are ramping up quickly this year. For the week of January 9th, we were evaluating an average of over 3.8 million profile every hour! And like most weeks, we are looking for very unique and targeted audiences. One example from last week was finding people who had recently had an over-the-phone tech support or help experience in the last 6 months, or who had paid to utilize premium, in-person tech support services.

Have a unique audience you need to find? Simply shoot us an email, or even send us a tweet,  and we’ll be happy to help.

Is 2012 the year for online qualitative market research?

Our August power user profile: Mark Travel

Last month, we kicked off our series highlighting the users that make GutCheck work — users who teach us about the app and give us insight into how marketers, advertisers, creative groups and entrepreneurs make research happen. In August, we noticed Mark Travel did a lot of chatting in a very short period of time, and since we saw them pop up so much, we asked how they used the tool.

Like many of our first-time users the Mark Travel team used GutCheck paying as they went, just to make sure they were getting the results they needed before committing to purchasing chats in bulk. They needed quick feedback on some marcom work — including magazine and online advertising campaigns, a brand video, and a revised homepage. They used GutCheck not just because they thought it would be fast, but also because they had to screen out respondents based on age, income and certain travel behaviors using custom questions.

Lauren Schreiner, the director of Mark Travel’s research department, collaborated with the brand team to develop the chat guide. Though she had a guide entering the chat, Lauren told us she was “pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to pull in questions from the ‘question bank’ – or to slip in an unplanned probe to an unanticipated response.” This kind of on-the-fly editing to discussion guides is crucial to getting good feedback, and editing as you go is an easy way to continue to streamline your process and improve your results.

Since their first chat went well — with an engaged respondent and quality feedback — Mark Travel used Team Edition to conduct 15 additional sessions in 8 hours. Like our July power user, (r)evolution, Mark Travel’s moderators also communicated throughout the chat process, and adjusted their questions and guide as the chats progressed. They were able to deliver their topline report to the brand team the next day, providing direction for each of the materials included in the sessions.

Mark Travel really caught our attention for the volume of chats they were able to do in such a short time. As we saw them on the system again and again, it was really inspiring to see work done so quickly and so well. We’re looking forward to seeing how they use our tool in the future!

Want to be a power user? Let us know how you’re using GutCheck or how can we make GutCheck work better for you. Leave us a comment below, let us know on Twitter, or drop us a message on our community page!

The Peoples Choice Award

Over the past few days Matt and I have been attending the DEMO Spring 2011 conference in Palm Desert, CA. This is a bi-annual event that showcases up and coming start-up companies and provides a stage to make product presentations that solve given industry problems. We were absolutely shocked and happily surprised to win the DEMO Spring 2011 People’s Choice Award!!

52 companies from a variety of industries and categories were selected and invited to make their presentations. Judges award 5 DEMOgod awards for great presentations and the companies ability to offer a unique opportunity and product and 1 company winning The People’s Choice Award of $1M in advertising spend with IDG media. The People’s Choice is determined by a vote from attendees, sponsors and press that attend the event.

Thank You
We are truly honored to be recognized by those in attendance that voted our product as worthy of having our message spread to an even larger audience. In our time at the show we networked with many great entrepreneurs and company representatives that have unique products that aim to solve current problems within their industries. In speaking with them about their experience about what kind of research they did, we were amazed at what they have gone through. From taking out Craigslist ads to recruit folks for usability testing, to sending online surveys to a list of friends and even the old classic of using family and colleagues, again and again, to review prototypes and messaging; we clearly heard a pain point. This is something we’ve heard repeatedly- a need for a simple solution that allows any business to get feedback from a target audience that provides guidance and direction to a campaign or strategy.

Our Own “GutCheck”
The GutCheck product makes sense, clearly there’s a fit. GutCheck clearly could have offered the companies at this show a better way to get feedback from their target market. In learning about GutCheck so many folks told us that we were on to something. We ourselves were the recipients of our own “gutcheck” during a live onstage interview between Owen Thomas, Executive Editor of VentureBeat and Doug Mack, CEO One Kings Lane, the hot e-commerce retailer for designer decor and home accessories.

Owen Thomas: You’ve seen a lot of cool technology in your day, including this morning, you and I were watching backstage. Did anything strike your fancy from this first batch of social companies we just saw?

Doug Mack: Yeah. I thought they were all amazing. As an entrepreneur I fall in love with every idea. So i think they all look great. I have to say, I was pulling 40 bucks of my wallet for GutCheck.

Owen Thomas: Right on

Doug Mack: I thought that was, so spot on, because the cycles on the internet are so fast. The notion of commissioning a $50k customer research focus group- pull it together- all your employee time, when you run a company like One Kings Lane inevitably, everybody is going to want to go to those. So like 25% of your employees base is at the focus group. They kind of say, source it, really target. We know who our audience is, women, 30s-40s-50s, own a home, mid-upper income- and to be able to go online and say i want to source this audience…we launch a new sale every day..and to say cost effectively i can go in and test that audience, i think that’s awesome. I think it’s going to be a big deal.

To see the full video interview click the ‘View Full Program’ within the embed below; jump to 13:21 for the live discussion of what is transcribed above.

“Did he just say that?”
After Matt and I looked at each other and exclaimed hush reactions of “Did he just say that?”, “Is this really happening?” we realized, that’s exactly the point. Companies need a cost effective solution to test an audience and get feedback and insights to make their business better. More of them just need to be made aware that now there is an option for them to try.

We are truly humbled that the attending audience voted us as The People’s Choice. Clearly, the people have spoken and we intend to use our $1 million advertising to get our message out to more people. Have you seen the GutCheck presentation at DEMO yet? View it here. For more information on our launch, please visit our launch page.

What is DIY Online Qualitative Research?

Since we announced the launch of GutCheck last year, I have seen a fairly regular flow of those claiming to provide do-it-yourself capabilities around online qualitative research.

I think they have missed the point. DIY is a pretty simple concept.

The first key requirement is the ability to DO IT YOURSELF.
So what does that mean? To us that means being able to set up and execute a project all by your yourself. Crazy concept, I know. It is NOT entering some recruitment information, and then having someone call you back to let you know the project feasibility and when it will field (for completion). DIY qualitative research online is entering your recruitment information, and then the application delivers a research participant back to you when you are ready for them. After that, you interview the participant, not a fancy overpriced stand in who knows a fraction of what you know about your business. And lastly, you look at and interpret the results, because you are the one who is going to live with the decision generated from the analysis. That is it…start to finish you are in control.

The second key requirement is that you don’t need to go through an approval process to get it done.
Marketing managers and agency folks need insights right now, not after the rigamoral of some extended approval process for a new research project. That means the entire project can be accomplished for well less than $1,000, and can be put on a company credit card or a even a personal credit card without needing to ask all the muckety mucks if it is OK.

While there are some other intriguing online solutions out there. We know of no other DIY online qualitative solution that meets the requirements above except for GutCheck.

Let us know what DIY online qualitative research means to you, and if we are missing something.