Vision Critical Podcasts - Transcripts

How Do I Recruit People to Join a Customer Advisory Panel?

Caroline

Today we’re going around the block with Jennifer Reid, Vision Critical’s Senior Strategist. My name is Caroline Hickton, and we’re going to talk to Jennifer about what to consider when recruiting for an online Customer Advisory Panel.

Jennifer

Thanks Caroline.

You know, the secret to recruiting panelists, I think, is really matching the target of who you’re looking for with the source, the hook, and the offer. The first piece of it really is the target. Understanding the audience that we’re looking for is really important. Obviously you’re not going to look for and talk to young men the same way that you would look for and talk to mothers of young children. Understanding the target is really the first piece.

Once we understand that we move into source. We have a list of about 20 different sources that we have used and use on an ongoing basis for recruiting panels. We will go through and figure out what’s available based on the target, and then suggest a mix that we think is most appropriate. I really like mixed methodology recruitment because I think it gives you a nice balance to your panel. So we might use a mix of invites to people who subscribe to a client’s newsletter, with maybe URLs printed at the bottom of a receipt, and we might throw in some paid search advertising on something like Google, and that might be the mix of sources that we start with.

The next piece of it is the hook. The hook is going to be what actually makes the panelist or potential panelist read your email or click on your banner. In this case we’ve really found that we use a lot of ‘you’ messages. Getting someone to join a panel is all about trying to tie into that engagement that they have with your vertical. People want to make the products and services around them better, so we do a lot of talking about we want you to come and join this panel, we want to hear what you have to say and your feedback is important. Tying into the VIP nature of this special group that we want you to join.

The last piece of that is the offer. I think a lot of people, when they think about the offer, rush to the incentive. The incentive today is really table stakes. We try to underplay the incentive. You have to have one, but we use a lot of really basic sweepstakes draws at the offer stage for recruitment. We really think what’s more important is to make a credible promise about a two-way piece of communication. If I’m answering questions for you, I really want to understand what is going to happen with my answers. Are you actually going to make decisions, or is it just going into a black hole? We have the opportunity in custom panels to give information back. That is really at the heart of the good and really successful campaigns that we’ve run. They have really been about making some clear promises about how that information is going to be used and fed back to people.

Obviously, the last piece is the client’s budget and their need for timing. The cheap, fast, and good philosophy. We’ll mix inside and outside assets to fit whatever budget our client has. That’s the basics of panel strategy for recruitment.

Caroline

Thanks very much Jennifer. Just before we go and end this podcast, could you give us a quick story on a brush with greatness?

Jennifer

About a year ago I had the opportunity to meet Bill Clinton at a private party and listen to him get up and talk to a room full of about fifty people about charitable giving and the crisis of AIDS in Africa and the place for NGOs. It was really an amazing, amazing speech. He really is a very intelligent man and it was an honor to meet him in person.

Caroline

Thanks Jennifer for sharing your story and your expertise on recruiting a Customer Advisory Panel. If any listeners have any questions for comments, our email is podcast@visioncritical.com.