Focus Group Testing: Researching Your Niche or Business Idea

Do you have a product idea or retail niche in mind but are uncertain about its market potential? Are you hesitant to launch due to insufficient validation of your idea’s success?

If you answered “yes” to these questions, you need to test your niche through focus groups.

A focus group is a small group of consumers that reflects your intended target market. By pitching your idea to them and analyzing their responses, you can gauge the viability of your idea and make changes accordingly.

As we’ll show you below, it’s both accessible and affordable to put together a focus group to test your niche. You’ll learn how to find the right people for your focus group, what to ask them, and how to analyze their answers.

What is a Focus Group?

A focus group is usually 7-10 people who are unfamiliar with each other but fit into a specific demographic profile. A moderator, usually someone unaffiliated with the business, asks the group a series of focused questions and records their responses.

Analyzing these responses gives the business insight into the way the group perceives the idea or product.

Primarily, focus groups give you qualitative insight into an idea, product, person (such as politicians) or even a piece of art.

The use cases are extensive. Businesses (especially in the FMCG sector) frequently use them to test everything from packaging to new product categories. Movie studios use them to test early cuts of blockbuster movies. Even government organizations use focus groups to assess their public-facing messaging, education initiatives, etc.

What focus groups CAN tell you:

• How a highly-specific demographic thinks or feels about a product
• Why people feel the way they feel about an idea or product
• How you can change a product or idea to serve the target market’s needs better
• How you can market the product or idea to its intended audience.

What focus groups CAN’T tell you:

• How individuals would react to your product or idea
• How individual preferences can change over time or the product’s evolution
• Whether learnings from one group apply to another demographic

Although they have their flaws — notably, groupthink and management issues — focus groups remain one of the best sources of qualitative research for any business. Combined with in-depth one-on-one interviews, these groups can tell you a lot about the viability of your niche idea.

In the next section, we’ll discuss how to create your focus group.

Related: Need Help Figuring Out What to Sell Online?

How to Run Focus Group Testing in 5 Steps

Qualitative focus groups testing involves four steps:

1. Identifying your target audience before running a focus group research
2. Finding appropriate participants
3. Developing a set of questions
4. Conduct interview sessions
5. Analyzing group responses for actionable insight.

Let’s look at each of these steps in more detail below.

1. Decide on who is your focus group

Identifying your target audience before running a focus group is crucial for gathering relevant insights.

Here are some steps to help you identify your target audience:

1. Define your goals: Clearly outline what you want to achieve with your focus group. This will help you determine the characteristics of the participants you need.
2. Analyze your product/service: Understand the features and benefits of your product or service. Consider who would benefit most from it.
3. Conduct market research: Use existing data to identify potential customer segments. This can include demographic information, purchasing behavior, and psychographics.
4. Look at your current customers: Analyze your existing customer base to identify common characteristics and trends.
5. Use social media and online tools: Platforms like Facebook Insights or Google Analytics can provide valuable data about your audience.
6. Consider competitors: Study your competitors’ audiences to identify potential segments you might have overlooked.

Your goal on this step is to figure out your target market. After this create a rough sketch of your target demographic. This will help you in the next step where you find and recruit your focus group audience.

2. Find participants for the focus group

The research you conducted on the first step should give you a good idea of who you should include in your focus group. At the very least, you should have the following information:

• Average age
• Location (rural, urban, city size, state, etc.)
• Household income and education level.

You’ll use this when selecting candidates for the focus group. Limit your group size to 6-10 participants. More than that and you’ll struggle to maintain order. Anything lower than six impacts the quality of discussion.

Places to find candidates for focus group testing

• Social media: Use platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram to reach out to potential participants. You can post in relevant groups or use targeted ads to find people who match your criteria.
• Email lists: If you have an existing customer base, consider reaching out via email to invite them to participate.
• Community boards and forums: Post on local community boards, online forums, or platforms like Reddit where your target audience might be active.
• Partnerships with organizations: Collaborate with organizations or clubs that align with your target audience to find participants.
• Recruitment agencies: Consider hiring a recruitment agency that specializes in finding focus group participants.
• Incentives: Offer incentives such as gift cards, discounts, or cash to encourage participation.

To screen candidates, ask them to fill out a form (use Google Forms or Typeform) with their demographics and interest details. Only invite people who meet your requirements.

Websites to find candidates for your focus group research

• UserTesting: A platform that connects businesses with users to test websites, apps, and prototypes.
• Respondent: Offers access to a diverse pool of participants for various types of research, including focus groups.
• FocusGroup.com: Specializes in recruiting participants for focus groups and other market research studies.
• SurveyMonkey audience: Provides access to a large panel of respondents for surveys and focus groups.
• Prolific: A platform for recruiting participants for academic and market research.

3. Get your questions ready

The next step is to create a list of questions for the focus group testing.

These questions should focus on the participants’ interest in the idea, their opinions, concerns, likes, dislikes, etc.

Here are a few tips for creating your questions:

• Be clear: Every question should focus on a specific issue and should solicit a single answer. Participants should not doubt as to what the question asks of them.
• Be open-ended: Your questions should focus on a specific topic, yet encourage discussion. Think in terms of broad qualities — benefits, flaws, things that can be improved, etc. — and ask questions related to them.
• Encourage discussion: Your primary goal is to get people to start talking. The more diverse the range of opinions, the better. In case the conversation stalls, don’t ask additional questions to solicit responses.

You can even group your questions into separate categories, such as:

• Product-related: “What features do you like about the product? What do you dislike?”
• Sales-related: “Would you buy this product? Would you recommend this product to a friend? If yes, why? If no, why not?”
• Results-related: “What results or benefits do you expect from using this product? What side-effects or inconveniences are you worried about?”
• Change-related: “How could this product be improved? What specific changes would convince you to buy it?”
• Pricing-related: “How much would you be willing to pay for this product? What could convince you to pay more?”

Ideally, you want a minimum of 10 minutes for each question. The larger the group, the more time you want to reserve for discussion.

Once you have your questions, get your participants to join-in via video chat.

It goes without saying that if you can get participants to meet in the same room together, you can skip the entire video chat process.

4. Run interviews

By posing the right questions during focus group sessions, you can gather valuable insights into participants’ expectations, concerns, and preferences. However, this is just one aspect to consider.

To obtain honest and reliable responses, it’s essential to create a comfortable environment and maintain a friendly demeanor.

• Create a comfortable environment: Set up a welcoming space, whether virtual or physical, where participants feel comfortable sharing their thoughts.
• Establish ground rules: At the beginning of the session, explain the purpose of the focus group and set ground rules, such as respecting others’ opinions and maintaining confidentiality.
• Encourage participation: Use techniques like direct questions, eye contact, and positive reinforcement to encourage quieter participants to share their views.
• Stay neutral: Avoid leading questions or showing bias, to ensure genuine responses.
• Manage time: Keep track of time to ensure all topics are covered without rushing participants.
• Record the session: With participants’ consent, record the session for accurate data analysis later.
• Follow up: After the session, thank participants and provide any promised incentives. Consider sending a summary of the findings if appropriate.

5. Analyze and implement the feedback

The final step is to analyze and implement the feedback from the discussion.

Start by asking the moderator about his/her general feelings about the focus group. Did the discussion go as planned? Did everyone get to participate or did one person dominate? Was there a diversity of opinion or did they fall into groupthink? What findings, if any, would the moderator draw from the responses?

Next, go through the discussion recording. You can analyze the answers in two ways:

• Individual-focused: Gather every participant’s responses to the questions. Map these responses against the participant’s demographic profile. Analyze how the participant’s interests, biases, income, age, and education impact his/her answers.
• Question-focused: Gather all the answers to a single question. Condense them into a few short takeaways. Analyze these against the average profile of the whole group. Compare them to individual responses. Does the average opinion of the group clash with personal views? If yes, why?

It’s a good practice to adopt both these approaches. You want an understanding of what the target market thinks as a group as well as individual customer responses.

Finally, draw a few takeaways from your analysis. List the following:

• Key benefits of the product
• Key flaws and shortcomings
• Things that can be improved
• Things that should stay the same
• Resistance to pricing
• Estimated market demand.

With this feedback, you can start implementing changes before launching your niche idea.

Conclusion

Launching a new product or business is rarely straightforward. Market response is often unpredictable. While you can estimate demand through competitor sales and research reports, nothing surpasses the insights gained from qualitative research.

Focus groups stand out as one of the most effective methods for conducting this type of research. By engaging a carefully chosen group of participants from your niche, you can obtain valuable insights into market demand, buying preferences, and potential challenges.

This approach can help you save money before launching by ensuring your idea is vetted by your target market.

• How to Sell Online: The Ultimate Guide for Business Owners
• How to Sell Online Without a Website
• 30 Ways to Make Your First Sale Online
• 7 Mistakes That Prevent You From Making Your First Sale
• How to Work With Focus Groups to Test Your Niche
• How to Write Product Descriptions That Sell
• Tips to Make Your Products More Attractive
• Top Reasons for Returns and How to Minimize Them
• Navigating the Luxury Market: How to Create and Sell High-End Products
• How to Pay Yourself When You Own a Business
• 8 Different Shopper Types And How To Market To Them
• Mastering Sales Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide