InSites Blog

On 23 June, InSites Consulting organized a Smartees workshop on research communities.

Tom De Ruyck, Senior R&D Manager introduced the wonderful world of research communities. The results of the Meet the Joneses are clear: 2 out of 3 marketers claim to know what their customers want, but only 33% actually knows their customers when confronted with the test. Research communities are a good way to sense the life of your customers and get really connected with them.

After the introduction on the InSites philosophy, we let our customer talk. Because who can tell you better how it feels to be connected than our clients, who are actually running a research community with InSites Consulting. Therefore, Martijn van Kesteren (Ben & Jerry’s – Unilever) and Barbera van der Wal (ING) shared their experiences on how they’ve gained insights into their target group by means of a research community.

Engagement is important. Not only engagement from the community participant, but also from the internal project team. Running a research community is an ongoing project, the community is 24/7 accessible and you must have an open mind. Once the moderator signals posts that need a reply from your side, you must be willing to do so in an open and honest way. The key is to give something back to the participants. They provide you with a lot of (personal) information and are willing to cooperate, but you have to give them something in return. Let them know what you’ve learned, which new ideas the community brought you and which actions you will take.

A research community is a very effective way for gaining insights because it gives you answers to questions you didn’t ask!

The healthcare market is using an amazing range of social media to develop new products, gather data, and speak to patients and healthcare professionals.

If you sign up for our free Healthcare Smartees in Ghent (BE) on 17 June, you’ll hear providers like AstraZeneca Europe explain how they use these techniques in real life, what they’ve learned from hard experience, and discover the practical advantages of techniques you’ll be able to bring to your work.

Smartees are free workshops for marketers and marketing researchers, led by internationally recognized researchers. They’re smart food for clever researchers, offering the chance to discuss industry developments with colleagues in a relaxed atmosphere.

On Thursday 17 June our Director of Health Research, Magali Geens, will also be presenting our 2010 Health Study called Social Media Use in Health. The study updates previous research and this year has also expanded in scope to include worldwide data. It shows how healthcare providers are using everything from Facebook to Twitter to understand their customers and start a conversation.

Sign up and reserve your place for the Health Smartees here.

Smartees are our free workshops for marketers and researchers. Led by experts, they’re a chance to get up to speed on the latest techniques in marketing research and practical techniques for better marketing.

Want to save our Smartees in your Outlook Agenda? Click on the below dates.

• Thursday 8 April 2010: Connected Smartees (NL – Rotterdam)
• Thursday 27 May 2010: Smartees (NL – Rotterdam)
• Thursday 17 June 2010: Smartees (BE – Ghent)
• Thursday 30 September 2010: Smartees (NL – Rotterdam)
• Thursday 18 November 2010: Smartees (BE – Ghent)

We invited members of our online research community, who use Twitter, to take part in this Twitter study and promote it to their followers and friends, on Twitter as well as on other social media. In total 620 tweeters from all over the world took part in the study. And it were the ‘real’ users of the platform as they do 17 tweets a day and are on Twitter for 14 months (on average).

The fully ‘fused’ research study, of which results could be followed in real-time on www.ultimatetwitterstudy.com, consisted out of three main parts that cover the full range of opportunities to conduct market research on Twitter:

1/ Discussions with users of the social media platform via their answers on the tweet/question of the day (during 2 weeks) and 10 in-depth ‘twinterviews’ (consisting of 15 tweets/questions) via the direct messaging system of the platform.

2/ A quantitative profiling survey among the followers of the account we made for the study and their friends.

3/ An observation of what our followers share on Twitter in order to enrich our findings. The Twitter API was used to download the tweets from the site; text mining software for conducting the analysis. In total, more than 52.000 tweets were gathered! As a last step, we discussed the results of the study with some experts via an online discussion group.

Some of the key findings of the study:

• The typical Twitter user seems to be a male in his late twenties/early thirties, who is quit tech savvy and active in IT, media/advertising or the consulting business
• The user generated definition of Twitter sounds as follows: “A social network of friends and/or business contacts where you can share and discover interesting, exciting, inspiring or funny news/links in a very fast way”
• It’s perceived that the people on Twitter are also influential in the offline world in one way or another (industry experts, journalist, bloggers, celebs, …)
• Most people started using Twitter out of curiosity and to stay connected with the people and trends within their industry
• People start following people who are able to make them: curious, smile and/or wonder
• Brands on Twitter should act like humans: listen carefully and talk back in a very personal way! This instead of spamming their followers with advertisement…
• Twitter is the new sharing platform: 20% of the tweets contain a link to a blog, site or movie
• Google, Apple and Amazon are the most discussed brands on Twitter. Followed by a mix of tech companies and strong international brands like Starbucks, Disney and HP
• People really address questions to brands, hoping that they are listening and will answer!

Tom De Ruyck: ‘Twitter is a conversation hive, and it could be very insightful for brands to tap into it and learn from what consumers are saying about them. Secondly, people tweet in the heat of the moment: when they experience something positive or negative with your product. This is never seen before! It’s a threat (negatives comments about your brand are in the open), but also an opportunity for your client services team to take immediate action and make customers happy again. And probably they will spread the word about that too!’

Profile your own Twitter network, take a look at the presentation and the ‘Ultimate Tweet Hall of Fame’ @ www.ultimatetwitterstudy.com!

The presentation with the full results from the study was given at ‘MRS’ Online Research Conference’ in London and ‘Digital Marketing First’ in Brussels. Next opportunity to catch-up with Tom and the results of the study is at the next ‘InSites Smartees’ on the 19th of November in Ghent (subscribe via www.insites.eu/smartees). The presentation will include concrete tips to use Twitter both as a marketing and a research tool within your company!

For more information contact Tom De Ruyck via tom@insites.eu.

Are you looking to understand the latest techniques in marketing research that will put you ahead of the game? Sign up for our FREE Consumer Insights Smartees on Thursday 22 October (2pm – 6pm) and hear how marketers are using new research techniques to gain new consumer insight.

Nanno Palte, Director Marketing Insights will co-present the Danone WaterWorld Community case with Michel Rogeaux, Senior Expert Consumer Science Danone. The case shows that fusion research is a successful and innovative recipe for gathering in-depth insights.

Want to find out more, check www.insites.eu/smartees

Want to know what your customers need before they know themselves? Are you looking to understand the latest techniques in marketing research that will put you ahead of the game?

Sign up for our ‘Taking Consumers Insights forward‘ – Smartees on Thursday 22 October (2pm – 6pm) and hear how marketers are using new research techniques to gain new consumer insights.

Find out more about the full program!

Last Thursday, InSites Consulting organized its first Health Smartees. More than 20 professionals from the healthcare industry listened to presentations of Magali Geens, our Director Healthcare Research, Rudi Van Campenhout from UCB and Annelies Verhaeghe, who presented a client case.

Magali kicked off and presented the results of our 2009 Pan-European patient study. This study revealed 4 actionable patient segments, which allow us to really understand the needs of different patient profiles. It showed us the increasing involvement of certain patients in their relationship with healthcare professionals. Today, it becomes very clear that pharmaceutical companies have to change their current sales and communication approach and start taking into account this new patient. Neglecting this influence might lead to a big loss in business potential.

Therefore, understanding patients and speaking the language of the patient is a key priority for healthcare marketers these days. In order to answer this need, InSites Consulting developed a ‘Daily 2.0’ website for Merck Serono. During the Smartees, Magali gave a demonstration of this tool: it allows Merck Serono to have live and continuous updates of patient news that appear on the internet. Through a smart system that relies on RSS feeds, marketers receive frequent updates of patient information to “keep the finger on the pulse”.

However, it shouldn’t stop here. More than just observing, InSites Consulting helps companies to analyze these patient conversations on the internet. For UCB, Annelies Verhaeghe conducted an online patient nethnographic study in the field of epilepsy. The analysis of more than 30.000 patient conversations leads to new insights and understandings towards their patients. Rudi Van Campenhout and his team are now translating these findings into concrete actions.

During the coffee break and lunch, the discussion about the “empowered patient” and the different patient segments continued, and clients started wondering how they could start implementing this in their own business. This really motivates us to keep on ‘Taking health research forward’!

For more information, you can contact Saartje Van den Branden (Saartje.vandenbranden@insites.eu) or visit our Smartees website.

On Thursday 11th June 2009, we invite you to our ‘Taking Health Research forward’ – Smartees.

At the beginning of 2009 InSites Consulting conducted a pan-European study on Health. The study covers 7 countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom). Magali Geens, Director Health Research will present you the key findings of this patient study discussing different topics such as:

• Doctor-patient relationship
• Reasons for (non)compliance
• The role of patients in choice of treatment/medication
• The knowledge about and image of generics
• The role of the pharmacist
• …

We also give the floor to our customers, giving you practical examples of innovative methods in health research.

• Daily 2.0: a customized extranet developed for Merck Serono (presented by Caroline Collard, Business Unit Manager Neurology)
• Patient nethnography research for UCB: analyzing patient generated content from different social media sites using text mining (presented by Rudi Van Campenhout, Global Manager Customer Insights)

This Smartees is a half-day workshop from 10am to 1pm (sandwich lunch is offered afterwards) and takes place in our offices in Ghent.

Find out more about the full program and sign up for your FREE invitation now!

For more information, you can contact Magali Geens (Magali.Geens@insites.eu).

“We all know that the consumer has changed during the last few years,” says Steven Van Belleghem, Director Brand & Communication Research. ”Many workshops have learned us about this new trend and is consequences. One of the remaining questions is still: what do we, as marketers, need to change in our day to day job to deal with this trend? At InSites Consulting, we developed a new view on advertising taking into account the perspective of the new consumer. In our vision, the brand becomes more central than ever. As a marketer you can still influence your brand by advertising, but on the other hand, the conversations consumers have about your brand may even be more important. From this perspective on, we created some new ways of doing advertising research. In our advertising research, we measure both the direct and indirect exposure. Next to that, we developed tools that measure both online and offline conversations”.
“On September 23th, we will present this vision in our Smartees, taking advertising research forward. The Smartees will contain this vision, lots of client cases and new research techniques that help us get more insights on the consumer 2.0″. Read more about our Smartees on www.insites.eu/smartees.

Smartees are a new smart food for clever researchers and marketeers. They’re a series of free half-day workshops about learning and sharing knowledge. Each session covers a different topic, giving you new ideas and practical techniques for better marketing by InSites Consulting experts. Topic for the first Smartees is Taking advertising research forward, hunting gorilla’s” on 23 september 2008 by Steven Van Belleghem, Director Brand & Communication Research. Want to read more about the full program or sign in for a free invitation, visit the Smartees website: http://smartees.insites.eu