Niche B2B market research sample

Editor’s note: Patrick Stokes is founder and CEO of Rep Data, a data collection solutions firm.

As digitalization accelerates, and consumer personalization becomes more and more refined, we see demands for market research sample follow suit. Market researchers must find targeted consumer audiences that have been deeply profiled for multiple characteristics. In lock step with this trend we’re also seeing an increased demand for niche business audiences for B2B primary research projects. This can be a tough bill to fill for any sample provider. 

When seeking extremely narrow B2B audiences, projects can take a long time to field and costs are often extremely high. Obtaining representative sample and filling quotas can be a struggle, with mid-field scrambling to fill quotas and deliver usable insights. Traditional challenges with tapping into these kinds of audiences include unqualified contacts, unscrubbed lists, low participation rates and an uphill battle to gain enough data. With demands rising for data quality and speed, this is no longer tenable. 

Sample sourcing challenges: one example

Let’s take a closer look at an example. A strategic consulting firm that primarily serves the private equity fund and investment space often needs to deliver fast insights, in a very fast-paced industry. In one such project, the firm required respondents who were corporate financial decision-makers – much different than the potentially more accessible financial services professionals and brokers. 

In the past, the firm had struggled in situations like this when using traditional sample sourcing processes – often filled with unqualified contacts. Obtaining representative sample and filling quotas was extremely challenging for specific audiences, and the team was sometimes left scrambling mid-field to gain enough respondents to deliver usable insights. This posed a wide number of challenges including unqualified contacts, unscrubbed lists, low participation rates and a struggle to gain enough data.

To avoid these kinds of problems, the firm was ultimately able to find success by working with a data collection and sample supply partner to obtain highly nuanced B2B sample from a wide variety of sources resulting in consistent, quality data for building client strategies. This is just one scenario that shows how a small shift in the way market researchers approach sample sourcing can make a huge difference in outcomes.

Sample suppliers must understand intricate audience subtleties to avoid wasted time, or to avoid discovering mid-field that a respondent pool does not meet the desired requirements. This can delay timelines irrevocably and result in shaky (at best) data.  

Five questions to ask your sample supplier

There are some best practices that primary researchers can follow in order to ensure their B2B projects are executed smoothly and result in solid insights – from the right audiences. The first is to ask the sample supplier a series of questions. 

1. How are you sourcing respondents? If the supplier is just using large consumer panels that are profiled for a very few high level B2B characteristics, think again. You need a partner that’s sourcing with more advanced methods, tapping into a wide variety of sources, to find the audiences you really need. 
2. How are you incentivizing respondents? Business executives are unlikely to give you 20 minutes of their time in exchange for virtual currency, so it is important to engage a partner who has alternative incentive methods for engaging your target audience and to keep the respondents coming back for more research. 
3. How much experience does the team working on my project have in market research? There’s no replacement for this. Experienced team members have a higher likelihood of grasping exactly the type of data you need to get out of any specific project, and will do what it takes to get to the finish line.
4. What steps do you take to ensure a quality sample? Data quality is a persistent theme in the market research sample space. It’s important that your sample partner conduct intermittent and ongoing data quality checks throughout fieldwork, such as checking for sensible answers and that the data is making sense in the context of what the researcher already knows. This kind of hands-on approach and formal review process should be combined with the latest fraud mitigation technology to ensure that no issues arise. 
5. How exactly will the job get done on time and on budget? Both of these metrics can be a challenge with niche B2B sample audiences, so work must be done up front to ensure success. Things like fine tuning screeners and reframing questions can help ensure that the screener fits the desired audience. Finding the audience itself by leveraging multiple modes and methodologies to tap into wider pools of respondents and achieving more diverse sample will contribute significantly to meeting goals. 

We are seeing the need for extremely niche audiences more and more, especially in the B2B market research space. In order to fill quotas, achieve quality data and get fast, accurate results, the way researchers approach sample sourcing must be examined and refined. Like so many things we’ve seen happen over the past few months, traditional ways of doing things will no longer suffice. By asking the right questions, you can set the stage for success, even for the most narrowly targeted market research projects.