The need for communication research has long been felt by a variety of industries and business activities, including marketing, public relations, advocacy, website development, and media.
But now, in the age of Web 2.0, organizations of all kinds increasingly need to promote themselves through their own content production or through social-media applications that engage customers. OpinionPath’s services address this need by using research methods to find the best frameworks for each communication effort.
While the content of a single ad may be easy to control, it is hard or impossible to micro-manage the content being produced in many settings, especially in social media–where users are producing much of the content. Nevertheless, marketers can guide the direction and impact of the content by establishing the linguistic, thematic and messaging frameworks, stories or worldviews for the content that will best resonate with each target audience. OpinionPath’s content-development research applies learnings from social psychology and behavioral economics and recent technical developments in qualitative and quantitative analysis to find those frameworks.
Core Services
OpinionPath’s research services focus on the development and evaluation of content, especially marketing communication content.
Depending on a client’s needs, OpinionPath executes qualitative and quantitative market research through a variety of modes: online, telephone, postal, face-to-face—including integration of survey responses with Web-traffic and transactional data.
For its communication research, OpinionPath typically uses the following four types of research projects:
Positioning
Investigate your brand’s current and potential positioning relative to competition, for key market segments.
Content Preferences
Based on brand’s desired positioning, evaluate which communication frameworks are most likely to engage and motivate the target audiences, depending on factors such as tastes, lifestyle and purchasing-process stage.
Communication Testing
Compare and diagnose the direct and viral impacts of alternative copy or communication frameworks, using systematic experimental design.
Effectiveness Tracking
Evaluate the impact of changes to communication strategies, through brand-perception and content-satisfaction studies.
Project Stages
Each of OpinionPath’s projects typically encompasses the below stages.
- Review of Client’s Research Needs
- Proposal of Research Design Options
- Qualitative Research (focus groups, discussion forums, one-on-one)
- Questionnaire Design for Quantitative Research
- Interview/Response-Rate Management
- Tabulation Design and Production
- Top-Line Reports
- Analytics