As experts in recruiting participants for market research, at Calma we know that the selection of participants is key to the success of our research.

In the previous post on recruitment for market research, we analyzed the bases and guidelines to take into account to correctly select the users who will participate in our market research.

Today we want to go a step further. We will analyze which are the most common channels for recruiting participants for market research studies and which offer the most guarantees. To do this, it is necessary to make a differentiation: will our research target our own customers or NON-customers?

Let’s look at the different options we have in each case.

1.- When researching our own users

If the target of our research is our own customers, we can use different channels to recruit them:

Live messages: which may be sent in real time both within our website and an app, and depending on the user’s actions or participation, account information, etc.

Organic social networks: If you have created a group of active and engaged followers on social networks from your own customer base, you can recruit users for your research through these profiles. The good thing about this formula is that it is free (a priori) and very easy to implement. You should be aware that certain social networks (such as Facebook and Instagram) mean that the organic reach of your posts is decreasing. Therefore, you could have too small an audience when it comes to recruiting users for your research.

In this case, to achieve a larger reach and audience, it is advisable to boost that publication by promoting it. How? Through the advertising platforms offered by those social networks (although this, as is logical, will require a budget allocation).

Customer Service: Those responsible for this service must be in contact with customers every day. The opinions, suggestions, complaints, etc. of these customers can be the key that tells us who can become great candidates for your qualitative research.

Your own research dashboard: You can create your own research dashboard using any of the channels discussed above. You can also import your database into User Interviews. This way, you can manage the entire research process from a single platform: profile creation, scheduling, response tracking, incentive payments, etc.

2.- When we research NON customers

But what happens when recruitment is focused on users who are not current customers of our brand/company? Then, we will opt for other recruitment channels:

Research companies: Undoubtedly, requesting the help and advice of a company specialized in recruitment or recruitment of participants for market research is the best option to ensure the success of our research. At Calma we are specialists in recruiting participants for market research. We have our own databases, we comply with the RGPD and we have an expert team that will advise you on the feasibility of recruitment to optimize success.

User interviews: A quick and easy way to recruit high quality participants for market research. At Calma we conduct personal ethnographic interviews (through our EtnoCalm platform), which allows the interviewee to share their images, videos and answers with us remotely using their cell phone. The selection of participants is personalized, taking into account demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavioral, etc. criteria established by the client. If your ideal users are not already in our panel, we take care of finding them.

Manual outreach: This involves using various channels (such as LinkedIn, for example) to locate a specific user profile. To do this, it is necessary to invest a lot of time in tracking professional profiles, conversations, sending messages, etc.

Paid social networks:Platforms such as Facebook Ads are also a powerful tool for recruiting participants for research studies. The key here is to define very well the audience to which we are going to direct our publication or ad. Segmentation is everything. If we don’t fine-tune it, we will not be able to achieve the proposed objectives (which in this case are focused on our message reaching the target we want to recruit for our research).

Organic social networks: We have already mentioned that social networks are a good tool that can help us in attracting users for market research, but the organic reach of publications is limited nowadays. What is particularly interesting is the activity in groups and pages/communities on certain topics, which can be useful when it comes to locating the user profile you are interested in targeting.

There is no doubt that user recruitment is the key to guarantee the success of a research or market study. Finding the perfect target is sometimes not easy, so having the help of a specialized company is essential. At Calma we have been offering qualitative field services in market research for more than 25 years.

If you are planning a new research, do not hesitate to ask for information, and we will advise you without obligation.