Carly Buxton, PhD

I was honored a few months back to be asked to participate in an online focus group for my favorite podcast, Marketing against the Grain, a Hubspot podcast heavily focused on how AI is changing growth marketing. I love the podcast and was happy to set aside a block of time to share my thoughts about it. But the session itself was so haphazardly run that I nearly piped up to ask if I could “drive” it myself, despite the fact that I was a mere participant. I walked away with a strong need to Carly-splain to other companies out there that may be asking their superfans for their time and feedback. Here are my key points:

1. Great that you’re sharing time with superfans. This is one of the best ways to get a certain sort of customer take: an “extreme.” When you take the time to interview, hold a focus group, or survey customers, the go-to practice is to reach out to a “typical” or “general” sort of user profile, but IDEO taught me that projects designed to reach out to “extremes” can yield a whole new perspective–and can be really valuable alongside the more “general” user research. At my company Parentswarm, this looks like talking to parents with LOTS of kids (like a “Supermom” running a household with 4+ children) rather than just playing to the average. 

2. Simply holding the conversation, though, without structure, without an underpinning of user research best practices is irresponsible. Companies, I think, too often give themselves credit for “talking to customers,” even when they’re doing it in an irresponsible (at best) or detrimental (at worst) way. If you’re lucky enough to have a group of customers (especially die-hard customers) on the line, do not waste the opportunity by holding an unstructured conversation that just bops around wherever the wind (or the blowhard) takes it. We 15-ish participants literally all popped on the call and were asked to loosely “share our thoughts” about the podcast. I’m sure the folks in charge were giving themselves a hearty pat on the back for “connecting with the voice of the user,” but honestly, this was a massive missed opportunity. Well-structured, insights-driven questions are SO important when your customer is on the line. 

If your brand decides to gather a feedback group together, here’s what I recommend:

1. Brief welcome / kickoff / facilitator shares why are we all here and for how long
2. All-group introduction: 60-second limit each to answer some specific question that is also insights based, like: Name, location, job, and how you found this podcast
3. Focused questioning that aims at whatever you’re struggling with, for example, if distribution: when have you shared one of our episodes with someone, and why? Tell the story. Or if you’re trying to get more people to watch on YouTube instead of via RSS feed: Let’s have 2 or 3 of you describe your typical listening or viewing setting. When is it in your day? What else are you doing? Why did you start watching or listening at that moment?
4. Some “raise your hand if” questions or broader-scale questions to hit the whole crowd at once. Focus groups always have people who tend to dominate, and it can be harder for more reserved types to express their feelings authentically. If you have a focus group, ask questions that hit everyone, such as: I’m going to play a clip, and I want you to rate it 1-10 in the chat, or everybody take 30 seconds to choose the emoji that you feel best reflects your feelings about this show; put it in the chat now with a brief explanation of why you chose it. 
5. Thank you for your time. If you have follow-up thoughts, please email actualhumanwhofacilitated@hubspot.com. 

3. Research should ALWAYS make the participant feel valued. Hubspot gave us nothing for devoting 45 minutes (? I can’t remember how long it was) of our time to this focus group. I am very anti- “free insights.” It presumes that your time (as company/product) is more important than your users’ time, and that leaves a very bad taste in their mouth–even if they’re superfans. Research requests should ALWAYS include some sort of “what’s in it for me?” bait, and it doesn’t have to be money. Hubspot could have done any of the following, for example:

1. Participate in the session, and we’ll have [hosts] Kipp and Kieran thank you by name in an upcoming episode.
2. Participate in the session, and we’ll post that you did so with a tag on LinkedIn that thanks you for your time!
3. Participate in the session, and we’ll send you an insider survey that asks for you to vote on our next 10 episode topics. (This is actually a win for Hubspot veiled as a “win” for the user/participant)
4. Participate in the session, and we’ll give you a free ticket to the Inbound conference.
5. Participate in the session, and you get to dictate (by group vote) which jumper Kieran wears in the next episode we record.

Any of these–all of which are essentially free to Hubspot–would have been a way to make us feel valued as participants, to have a little fun, and even to help things go a bit more viral by making for a good story.

Instead, they actually asked us to give even more of our time for free by participating as moderators in some sort of online community they want to construct. I was like: no. I’m sure they have plenty of people taking them up on this, so maybe that’s all they care about, but honestly: if you’re asking for people’s time, please ask yourself what you’re giving to them in return. I would have accepted this “moderator” gig for, I don’t know, a Hubspot sweatshirt or a chance to put it on my LinkedIn as some sort of official “customer advisor” position, but because it wasn’t structured that way, I walked away feeling miffed and less likely to participate in their platform.

Do others out there feel this way? Is this just a chip on their shoulder that people carry when they grow up worried about money all the time like I did? 

In any case, if you’re planning to ask people for their time and insights in the future, that’s wonderful. But please take my advice and repay them somehow for their time. And MOST IMPORTANTLY, respect their time by structuring a session that garners quality insights.