Gaining a fresh perspective on your products or services and how they are perceived can be an enormous asset in refining your marketing efforts for a more effective punch. Sometimes, businesses lose touch with their market or neglect to notice that the market has changed and they haven't made appropriate adjustments.

Focus groups are becoming an increasingly popular method for all kinds of businesses and organizations to learn more about their customers or members. Conducting focus groups is an excellent way to understand people's attitudes, opinions, concerns, problems and new ideas. The experience allows a company to obtain in-depth information on precisely how products are viewed in comparison to the competition. The results can be extremely revealing and provide the impetus to develop more desirable products and services.

Typically a focus group consists of 8 to 10 participants who are selected for a particular characteristic or a common set of interests. For instance, they may all be men working in the construction industry who are being targeted by a shaving cream manufacturer interested in knowing the right language to use in tapping this market. Or they may be a group of students who a progressive university staff wants to test for their reactions to new policy changes. Or a new local bank may want to understand the specific needs of the small business owner.

A facilitator or professional market researcher moderates group discussions, which are guided by predetermined topics aimed at uncovering deep motivations. Often people don't really know why they are doing the things they are doing, and their motivations are unconscious. Or they may have a feeling but can't really express it or simply don't want to tell you. Focus groups help to get beneath the surface to unveil more deep-seated thoughts and perceptions. Most companies who use focus groups want to find out the crux of why people buy their products, what people's unfulfilled needs or real concerns might be, or how to move people to buy a particular product or use a specific service. The group's insights can help develop new features for a product, create advertising campaigns or be able to help a business anticipate trend shifts in order to stay ahead of the competition.

The session usually lasts about two hours in an unstructured environment that encourages an open flow of opinions and ideas. It is critical that the physical surroundings are comfortable and informal, like a living room or a casual hotel suite. Participants need to feel reassured and rewarded by their participation or they will not feel safe to risk sharing their feelings. The experience should be fun and non-threatening.

The true dynamic of a focus group is the interaction amongst participants who through their dialogues, language and body movements reveal important information that could not be gleaned through any other means. The discussion is often fueled by reactions to each others' comments, building on each others' ideas. The key is having an experienced facilitator who is attuned to eliciting responses from the group in the right way. It is important to properly probe the group with non-directive questions that cannot be dismissed with a quick yes or no answer. Probes can take the form of "give me a description of ..." or "I'm wondering what you would do if ..." or "tell me about a situation in which you..." Such stimulation encourages participants to offer opinions, create excitement and ultimately deliver new ideas. The outcome can mean the difference between the success or failure of a product.

An essential step in managing a focus group is being clear as to the purpose and goals. The problems need to be identified before any solutions can be generated. Are you looking for strategic positioning of a product, identifying present perceptions of a service or exploring a new product concept altogether? A good facilitator will assist in defining your purpose and help you achieve results. However, try not to be too ambitious or cover too much with one focus group or the quality of the information will not be very reliable.

Focus groups have proven to be especially useful in situations where you are concerned that you are not seeing the whole picture. However, there are a few drawbacks to focus groups. Unlike surveys, everyone in the group does not have an equal voice because the information that is collected comes only from those individuals who openly participate. While participants are often representative of the population, they are not usually a statistically representative sample since their numbers are too small. However, other techniques which can pinpoint complex relationships in precse ways cannot discover what can be tested and refined with real people in focus groups. The focus group is a more qualitative than quantitative method, and it can be extremely effective.