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. 

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 partic...