Background and Client Objectives
A non-profit wanted to understand how participants in a government-subsidized program received and perceived their marketing and advertising efforts across newspaper, radio, social media, and television. Which advertising forms could be validated as program drivers, which could not, and how could their campaigns be refined to ensure maximum efficacy?
They additionally needed to investigate whether the program was reaching low income families as this was critical to ensuring continued governmental funding. At what rate were low-income families participating in the program, how did they become aware of it, and how could campaigns be uniquely tailored to target this particular demographic?
Program Development and Methodology
Leveraging decades of market research experience, TrendSource designed a custom-built program to address the client’s research questions. TrendSource’s Insights Managers determined that customer intercepts would offer the combination of flexibility, depth, and cost efficiency the client’s query required.
TrendSource deployed field agents to seventeen different program locations, conducting well over three-hundred intercepts, interviewing participants about their program entry points and perceptions of advertising campaigns while also gathering crucial demographic information.
Results and Analysis
Having completed the necessary in-field market research, TrendSource turned the data over to its advanced analytics team, which then transformed the results into actionable insights and recommendations. These included direct answers to the client’s questions regarding the efficiency and efficacy of current advertising campaigns, as well as some surprising outcomes. The results also focused heavily on the relative participation of the low-income respondents critical to the program’s continued funding.
They further offered key recommendations to refine marketing campaigns to better target particular groups, including scuttling one especially ineffective advertising medium.
Conclusion
In this engagement, TrendSource quickly determined the correct methodology, executed the field work, and provided advanced analytical inquiries to offer the insight required by the client. More significantly, TrendSource also produced an easily-digestible, penetrating executive summary offering key top-line recommendations as well as deep dives into specific research questions.
Particularly in companies and organizations with multiple program stakeholders, such executive summaries provide clarity, offering clients a lingua franca with which to discuss their program and the improvements required.