Brands need an always-on approach to sampling and data collection across their target markets to get actionable insights — ones that are accurate right now. Consumer behaviour shifts too quickly to have to wait for consumer data each quarter.
Daily fieldwork is the heart of our market research methodology here at Delineate. That means consumer surveys and data collection happen every single day. While most tracking projects rely on fieldwork at regular intervals, like monthly or quarterly, we take a unique approach to capturing a balanced sample each and every day. This daily cadence provides numerous benefits that help our clients extract actionable insights to guide their business decisions.
We tap into their episodic memory by getting this “in-the-moment” snapshot. Those vivid recollections of recent events drive actual insights. It’s more precise than asking them to reflect on their general habits. And when we collect these episodic details every day and put all the data points together, we get a really robust, granular view of all those individual consumption moments. That level of insight is pure gold.
Think about how much easier it is to remember what you had for lunch today compared to recalling what you typically eat for lunch. When we ask people about specific events right after they happen, consumers can give us incredibly rich details. They’ll tell us exactly what they did, why they chose it, who they were with, and how they felt about the whole experience.
Furthermore, this methodology is able to pick up change in data and trends driven by outside influences, for example a news article about your brand or sector, or a competitor lauching a new product – what impact would these examples have on your brands, brand health?
Better actionable insights through consistent daily sampling
One key advantage of daily fieldwork is the improved data quality. Collecting daily data avoids the pitfalls of front-loading easier interviews and leaving the harder-to-reach respondents for later. This approach ensures we survey the same mix of people – in terms of age, gender, region, etc. – daily. This prevents data skews and provides a more representative, robust overall sample.
For example, traditional research might aim for 1,000 interviews per quarter, we conduct a weekly sample of 200 (about 28 per day) to a set quota. Getting these same types of respondents daily, rather than a different mix each day, yields higher-quality data to fuel insights.
Get faster actionable insights today with Delineate Proximity
Real-time insights enable in-campaign optimization
Monitoring data in real-time also empowers our clients to track changes as they happen and immediately act on the insights. After all, they are supposed to be actionable insights, and that’s how we provide them.
We specialize in brand health tracking, measuring awareness, consideration, and preference for a company’s brands, and campaign engagement to assess how a new marketing campaign resonates with target audiences.
Typically, we field a survey covering overall brand health and specific campaign-related questions. This allows us to gauge campaign performance metrics like awareness, enjoyment, message takeaway, and impact on behaviour and understand how the campaign affects perceptions of the brand. By linking the data, we can uncover those relationships.
Traditionally, companies rely on pre and post-campaign studies. A survey fielded before the launch establishes brand health benchmarks. Another after the campaign will measure impact of the campaign overall. But this makes it hard to explain any movement in the data from a brand health perspective, since many factors could have influenced brand perceptions in the interim.
Our approach of collecting a small sample every day within one survey provides a clear, holistic, always-on view. Think of it like an EKG of the brand’s health and how marketing activities alter it. Watching the daily data feed, our clients gain insight into how news articles, competitive moves, or operational issues impact different brands. It can pinpoint what’s moving the needle.
Read next: Why your brand tracking isn’t working and how to fix it
Decisions in the moment
These real-time insights enable in-campaign optimization. While annual media plans and budgets are often locked in advance, our clients can use the live data to adjust. That includes dialing spending up or down to shifting which channels are utilized. If awareness and persuasion metrics indicate a campaign is landing well, they can steer more money there.
If a certain execution isn’t connecting, they can pull it and focus on those generating positive impact. Getting frequent insights throughout the flight, rather than one postmortem, provides visibility to make critical decisions before it’s too late.
At a minimum, always-on data allows learning to be immediately applied to the next campaign. But too often, post-campaign results come in so late the team has already planned or even launched a subsequent campaign, missing the chance to course-correct. With our real-time approach, those insights always come in time to guide next steps for maximum effectiveness and efficiency.
Taking action
The cadence and nature of data collection matter. So does the speed of delivery. We provide live daily updates. Clients must regularly review the data to extract insights and take action. An insights-rich real-time data feed doesn’t help if it’s not monitored and utilized.
To make the data more accessible and digestible, we offer two solutions:
- API feeds that stream data directly into the client’s internal systems for analysis alongside sales, media, financial, and other metrics
- Online dashboards that visualize the key performance indicators allow filtering by various audience attributes like age, gender, and region to dive deeper.
For clients conducting campaign tracking studies, there’s a natural desire to see how the creative is landing and if people are taking away the intended message. By mirroring in-market activity within the survey, we collect relevant data from day one.
Logging in for a quick check of the dashboard takes just a couple minutes and provides a gut check on if a campaign is on track or needs optimizing.
Delivering actionable insights that spur decisions and action
The ultimate goal of any research is to produce insights that drive smart business decisions. But too often, study results are delivered in a long report, well after the moment of relevance has passed. Tracking surveys typically involve periodic check-ins and don’t provide frequent enough insights to course-correct campaigns in flight or nimbly respond to current events.
That’s why we focus on delivering timely data and actionable insights. Asking the right questions and probing recent specific moments provides detailed data. Capturing a consistent, representative sample every day reveals how those factors trend over time. And visualizing that data in a real-time dashboard or automating an API feed into a client’s system makes it easy to access those insights and take action.
Companies need to understand what’s happening as it happens and respond in the moment. They need insights delivered at the velocity and frequency required to make critical decisions.
By rethinking how tracking research is done, we deliver data with the recency and regularity needed to inform important choices before windows of opportunity close. And that makes the research not just interesting but truly actionable.
