Resources

Let’s face it, we all like to get value for money. Insight Communities are always touted as being ‘cost-effective’ but what is this in comparison to? How can it be measured? Most importantly, at a time when budgets are likely to be tight, how can you ensure a return on investment?

1

Reducing cost of research

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.

2

Get more strategic

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.

3

Tailor your approach

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.

4

New Product Development

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.

So there we have it, just 4 ways in which a community can help lower costs. Our clients certainly love having all of their members, tools and data available through one platform…so if you’ve not heard about ex-plor, why not arrange a demo and see how we could help your brand?