4 Step Process for DIY Recruiting for a B2B Market Research Study
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Recruiting seems to be one of the most intimidating parts of market research, and for good reason! When you have a niche B2B audience, it can be a challenge to make sure you’re sourcing the right participants for your study—especially if you’re not entirely sure who your ideal audience is. When you target the wrong audience in a research study, you might end up with answers that are completely different from your true audience which can lead to a failed marketing plan.
Story Time!
Recently, my team and I conducted in-depth interviews for a tech company who told us that their audience was Chief Technology Officers of energy and manufacturing firms. We spent hours recruiting CTOs and after interviewing just a few of them, it became clear that this wasn’t the right audience at all!
Yes, these were the people signing the checks, but these were NOT the people making the decisions on what software to buy. Instead of going to the CTO, this company really needed to be selling to a mid-level data analyst- who has a completely different mindset than a CTO! We had to quickly pivot and recruit a whole new group of participants (more time and money!), and we found that their answers to our interview questions were much different.
The point here is that if you’re not finding the right participants, your research results may not be valid. Finding the right audience for your company is easier said than done! But stick with me, and I will show you the 4 step recruiting process that my company uses to find people who are the right match and can articulate enough to give us good insights in our research.
Step #1:
First, let’s talk about recruiting methods. There are a couple ways to go about this.
You can do recruiting on your own, using a DIY method, or you can go with a done-for-you recruiting agency who has experience with B2B recruits. Because this post is all about DIY recruiting, let’s dive into ways you can recruit your audience on your own.
Photo by Oleg Magni
DIY Recruiting Methods:
Use your current customer list- This will be your most reliable source for finding the correct audience for you!
Reach out to the right kinds of job titles on LinkedIn
Send an email to your specific customer- For instance, if you want to speak with property managers at apartment complexes in your area, search for apartment complexes and then either find an email or phone to contact them.
Run paid ads to find specific groups of people- Usually with B2B audiences, LinkedIn ads are most helpful. If you need a tutorial on this, check out the LinkedIn Learning course by AJ Wilcox on creating LinkedIn ads.
Utilize Job Postings- My team has used platforms like Upwork to recruit participants with certain niche business skillsets in the past.
Check out trade associations or message boards- This is more for if your research is industry-specific, but Reddit threads work great for this!
Reach out to people in the industry, and see if they know anyone- Offer them a referral bonus if they do refer someone who ends up completing an interview.
As you recruit more, you’ll start to grow what we call a panel, a group of people who have participated in research in the past, and might want to do it again. Having a panel makes each new research study that much easier!
Step #2:
Once you’ve recruited people, you’ll need to screen them to make sure they’re a good fit for your study.
Photo by cottonbro
That’s why you’ll want to create a set of specific characteristics for your recruit. These characteristics could be based on demographics, age, etc. You’ll want to write these characteristics in the form of questions, known as a screener. Basically, it’s a few questions designed to disqualify people who would not be a fit for the study.
Example screener question, if you want to recruit only the most actively involved students on a college campus:
How often do you attend in-person events organized by the University or a student organization?
a. Once a week or more
b. 2-3 times per month
c. Once a month or less [disqualify]
It’s a good practice to make screener questions as simple as possible:
Have you run for elected office?
a. Yes
b. No [disqualify]
These questions can be behavioral (like these examples), geographic (where they live, where they’re from), demographic (for example, age), or psychographic (attitude, opinion, lifestyle, or how they see the world).
Step #3:
Next, we make sure they can provide clear, articulate, and thoughtful responses by either calling them on the phone or using software tools like Vurvey or Dscout, which allow you to do a video application as a part of a screener. This would act as a double-check to make sure the person speaks your language and is the right participant for the study.
Step #4:
Finally, let’s talk about price.
Often companies don't realize how much more expensive it is to recruit for a niche B2B audience -- in fact, recruiting is often one of the most expensive parts of a B2B study.
Realistically, if you’re recruiting a hard-to-reach audience like a CTO of an energy company, they will need a reason to get on an interview with you -- this is what we call an incentive. That incentive might need to be a couple hundred dollars for a 30-minute interview. And that’s just what’s being paid to the participant! Add in the time and cost of running social ads, or organic outreach, cold calls and emails—total, this could wind up costing $200 - $1,200 per participant on top of the incentive.
I tell you this not to scare you, but so that you have a realistic estimate of your recruiting costs when you’re budgeting for a project with a hard-to-reach audience.
No matter which way you go, recruiting for your B2B research is going to take time and money, but if you do the work to identify the right audience the work will pay off in the end.
Or utilize companies like Bixa, who can save you time and money by going through the recruiting process for you! 😉
Ready to start your B2B research study? Schedule a call with us here!
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If you liked this article, you might like…
Recent Blog Post on 4 Questions to Help B2B Marketers Understand the Mindset of A Buyer’s Journey
My B2B Market Research Course on LinkedIn Learning
InstaBrain : The New Rules for Marketing to Gen Z (grab your free chapter here)
Sarah Weise is the CEO of award-winning marketing research agency Bixa and the bestselling author of InstaBrain: The New Rules for Marketing to Generation Z. For 15 years, Sarah has been a guide to hundreds of leading brands including Google, IBM, Capital One, Mikimoto, PBS, and U.S. Army, to name a few. Sarah helps brands achieve a laser-focus on their customers and build experiences that are downright addictive. She lectures at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and speaks at conferences and corporate events worldwide.