When it comes to market research needs, companies typically go 1 or 2 ways to fill the need to do it regularly. Option 1 is a company going fully in-house with its market research by hiring a team that focuses solely on that. Typically this can be costly and can have a lot of bias, but it gets the job done.
Option 2 is hiring outsourced market research, typically done by a trusted third-party company. The primary motivations behind hiring a third party that we hear a lot are cost-effectiveness, timeliness, and data quality (especially bias). Those are just some of the reasons why so many companies trust us with their market research needs.
If you’re still wondering why you should outsource your market research, especially your surveys, then read on.
Should You Outsource Your Market Research Surveys?
Outsourcing your market research surveys is what a lot of high-performing companies do. In our experience, partnering with a third party survey agency helps businesses tap into skills not readily available in-house. Everything from survey launch to final data analytics is covered when you’re partnered with an expert market research agency.
One of the reasons we mentioned that a third party is often better is the time it takes to complete a project. With an in-house team, resources are usually finite and not always readily available. That’s why even though many projects can be started and done well - they normally take a long time to complete.
In business taking too long to complete market research projects can be detrimental (especially for projects related to advertising). Getting data quick helps make business decisions based on real data.
With the right third-party agency, a survey project can take a fraction of the time. Typically our turnaround times are fast, and for some clients, they have been rushed/urgent to be completed even quicker. An agency has all of the resources available to meet deadlines quickly.
Let’s discuss the other reasons you should outsource your surveys along with some challenges that come with it.
Pros & Cons of Outsourcing Your Surveys
Pros of Outsourcing
Here are some main reasons you’d want to outsource a survey project. The most notable are:
- Time - From what we’ve seen in the market research industry, third-party agencies are usually quicker than in-house teams
- Cost - Even though third parties may seem like they cost more, having an in-house team is most likely a larger investment over time
- In-depth project resources - Everything from data analysis to respondent access since agencies normally have more resources and can fulfill needs with ease compared to an in-house team.
- Bias - A third party is much less likely to have any sort of data bias when compared to an in-house team. While we’ve seen in-house teams do great work, they have a high incentive to allow bias into the data.
Cons of Outsourcing
Just as there are pros to outsourcing, there are some challenges. Here are the most common challenges we hear:
- Data ownership - A lot of companies want to own the data from their market research projects and third parties end up owning the data. This is a myth actually since all of our clients own their data and can have it in any format they ask.
- Up front costs - For certain projects, third parties can cost more. With resources typically comes costs associated with it.
Market Research Survey Components We Help With
Survey Programming and Design
For survey setup, programming, and design an expert third-party company is a great choice. In our experience, setting up, writing, and programming surveys is not easy. It’s only because of our experience that we do a great job for clients every single time.
Not all in-house teams can execute this step, but we at Drive Research have the ability to set up and test surveys before they are live. That way we ensure that surveys work as intended and it makes the data collection runs smoothly.
Survey Question Writing
Crafting questions is undeniably one of the hardest parts of creating and executing great surveys. The questions are where a survey can be bad, good, or great. It’s somewhat of an art form to craft questions. While we’ve seen in-house teams do great at this since they understand their brands, third parties typically have more experience and data points to craft better questions.
Here at Drive Research, we use our collective 80+ years of experience to write the best survey questions we know possible.
Survey Data Analysis
This is the biggest difference between an in-house team and an expert outsourced market research agency. With data analytics, in-house teams can go very in-depth. However, they sometimes lack the expertise needed to add expert-level insights which is where the real insights can be found in market research data.
At Drive Research, we take adding expert insights for our data analysis step seriously. We believe the main way to get expert insights that can help with business decisions is by adding great insights from what the raw data tells us. That’s why we take the data analytics step seriously and focus on adding all the market research value we can.
Why Drive Research Is The Best For Survey Outsourcing
We at Drive Research are the survey experts with all of our experience working with 100+ companies on their surveys. We get our clients real, expert results with insights that help them grow towards their business goals.
We’re there for you 24/7 as your survey consultants and help you through every step of the process from launch to wrap-up. It’s why so many companies choose us at Drive Research as their survey partners.
If you’re wondering if we can help with your next survey project or not, get a quote with us today or contact us with any questions.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Austin Parker
Austin has an extensive background in SEO as he's been blogging since 16 years old back when the internet was in its infancy. As fitting, he holds a Bachelor's degree in English with a concentration in creative writing.
Learn more about Austin, here.
