The simple truth about sample today is demand far exceeds supply for any single sample provider. As a result, the vast majority of studies will include respondents from multiple sample companies. That is, you may be working with or purchasing sample from a single company, but behind the scenes they are blending in traffic from multiple providers. This simple truth suggests it may be in your best interest to buy directly from each of these suppliers and manage your own blend.
So what does going it alone mean? Well one solution would be to leverage technology that allows you to buy and administer sample yourself. In most cases, you will be able to negotiate better pricing and be in control of the fielding process from start to finish. While there are several technologies out there, I will use Lucid as an example of a highly disruptive technology that gives you more control over your projects.
Lucid is a buyer and seller marketplace. Lucid does not own any sample – they are a marketplace providing you with the following:
- Access to millions of respondents available from 250+ sample sources – and yes these are the same sample sources several of the big name players use as “partners”.
- The ability and flexibility to set your own price throughout the duration of your study. Think about it, you may be paying your current provider $10 a complete but they are likely paying significantly less for a portion of the completes. You can control the price and increase or decrease CPI’s based on the productivity of your study.
- The ability to create your own custom blend of suppliers allowing you to make sure your results are consistently accurate. You get to choose how many completes you want from each provider and can carry that over from project to project or study to study. Most importantly you have transparency – you know every supplier feeding your survey. This is often not the case when working with most sample providers today.
- An easy to use interface that allows you to control traffic and quotas on the fly. Think about it, no more emails going back and forth asking to send to more males or females or changing demo targeting. You can do it yourself in a matter of seconds.
By leveraging this type of technology you are in essence serving as the sample provider. In going it alone – you are now the sample company. You control everything including price, supply, traffic, quotas, profiling and targeting, etc. Think about it this way, if everyone is brokering sample (and they are), then why not be the broker yourself? In most cases, you should be able to provide better prices to your clients without sacrificing quality. This is a win for everyone.
About Brookmark Research:
Brookmark is a full-service custom market research agency. We support both brands and other marketing research suppliers with survey programming and hosting, sample procurement, field management, data delivery, and dashboard analytics. Brookmark provides a full outsource solution for all your research needs.