Evaluating Your Marketing Results

Evaluating the results of your online marketing campaign must be an ongoing challenge for any Web hosting operation. Determining the effects of your marketing efforts allows resellers to measure the success of their advertising and branding. One of the best methods that you can employ to qualitatively measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaign is the use of focus groups.

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Utilizing focus groups can sometimes be prohibitive to small and start-up Web hosting operations due to cost, but are imperative to any mid-sized or large hosting firm that can afford the expense.

Focus groups are qualitative dialogues with a small number of carefully selected people that are brought together to discuss a series of topics. Focus groups generate data through interactive dialogue, and are therefore unlike a one-on-one interview where answers to specific questions are solicited. They are also unlike surveys or polls, in which a representative sample of the population is selected for study. A focus group represents a targeted segment of the population.

The composition of a focus group is based upon the similarity of the group members. In the case of a Web hosting organization, a focus group should represent six to nine customers or potential customers who will be seeking hosting services within the next six to twelve months.

A focus group can be conducted either by a marketing/public relations firm or by a hosting operation's trained marketing staff and must be conducted in person. A focus group usually runs for two hours. The goals of the focus group can be to determine whether your brand is influential and where is can be improved. A focus group composed of customers might examine whether your brand corresponds with competent service provision.

Typically, the group is conducted a moderator who helps facilitate a lively and productive discussion about your marketing and its effects. The discussion that occurs should not resemble of that of a simple poll. Questions should be open-ended, allowing both your current and potential Web hosting customers to be able to elaborate on multiple topics. The goal is to have the group respond with more than a "yes" or "no" answer.

Professional moderators will ask clearly formulated and easily understood questions that are neutral so that they will not influence the response. Moderators will also sequence their questions so that difficult questions are broached at the end of the session.

In the session, Web hosting companies can ascertain what the select group people feel about their brand identity and how it influenced their purchasing decision. The group can provide input on how they feel the brand can be improved and what steps can be taken to reinforce the brand and make it stronger.

The main strength of using a focus group is that a Web hosting company can also present different examples of re-devised brand imaging for consumer input to determine whether it would result in sales amongst the selected group.

The use of a focus group therefore provides Web hosting operations with a wide range of benefits. Firstly, the use of focus groups allows hosting firms to obtain qualitative data about their brand that provides more depth than a quantitative survey or poll. Focus groups are advantageous because they allow a firm to obtain a wide-ranging amount of information in an extremely short time frame. Further, focus groups allow users to provide interactive feedback through dialogue, which permits for the exploration of unanticipated topics. Most importantly, focus groups do not require complex and untimely sampling techniques such as those employed for accurate sampling of the general population. Dependent on the response, focus groups are also advantageous since they can be used for the gathering of testimonials about a hosting service.

There are limitations to use of focus groups, of course. Firstly, the hosting company must recognized that focus group samples are not representative of the general population, and therefore cannot be treated as a true statistically accurate sampling. Further, the results from the focus group are usually only as a good as the moderator conducting the session. While focus groups are excellent marketing evaluation tools since they bring out a consumer's spontaneous reactions and ideas, it must be noted that they are not behaviorally accurate. Focus groups will only assess what customers say but cannot determine how the consumer truly acts.

Though focus groups have many inherit disadvantages, they are one the best qualitative marketing evaluation tools at the Web host's disposal. Not many hosting firms make use of them. Any hosting operation that does utilize them will exercise a level of advantage over their competition.