Increase the volume of research whilst reducing the overall cost. Community members will have been through a process of recruitment and onboarding including detailed profiling. This means you can conduct tactile research without the cost/time of setting up a project.
Over the last decade we have seen big industry disruption come from brands who have put customer needs at the heart of everything they do. Uber for example saw that passengers wanted to track exactly where their taxi is, have more information on who was driving people and be able to rate their service. By truly listening to and understanding the needs of their customers, brands can optimise campaigns, products and services for competitive advantage. Less trial and error means less money wasted on mistakes.
"It's quite easy to see the cost savings of using communities for tactical research, but tying them into more strategic goals is where you'll see the biggest ROI." Telyn Roat, Senior Engineer
It’s tricky for any brand to properly map out realistic customer journeys. Insight Communities allow you to understand which touchpoints are commonly used, timescales at play as well as external factors which influence decisions. With this know-how you can more easily allocate resources and refine your sales/marketing approach. You can also use your community to test out ideas and- approve campaign assets. This all comes back to the idea of using real customers to supercharge your certainty around key decisions.
One of the riskiest areas for any brand is a new service/product or market. Extensive research is key in making critical decisions and so having an engaged audience familiar with your brand is a fantastic resource. Whilst it can be difficult to quantify the significance of impact of community work on new business initiatives, it’s still useful to measure which decisions your community affected.
