How to run a successful focus group

As a product manager, you often find yourself in situations where you need to make decisions around new products and features. Going into these decisions without adequate research can jeopardize the success of your product moving forward. To combat this, PMs conduct market research to evaluate market acceptance, opinions, and opportunities.

When it comes to market research you can lean on either quantitative or qualitative methods. Quantitative methods include things like surveys or conjoint analysis, whereas qualitative methods might be focus groups or in-depth interviews.

While a number of these methods might be effective, this article will discuss the most popular qualitative approach — focus groups. You’ll learn what a focus group is, the different types, and how to conduct one effectively.

What is a focus group?

A focus group is a small group of people (usually six to ten members) who discuss and answer various questions to provide insights, feedback, or experience about a topic, product, service, or feature.

You chose members for a focus group based on common interests and experience. Alongside the members, a moderator guides the discussion by introducing questions for the participants.

What are the roles in a focus group?

A successful focus group requires you to have clearly defined and established roles. By doing so, you help to ensure that the session runs smoothly and that you achieve your desired result. The most important roles include:

• Moderator — A moderator guides the discussion and is responsible for steering the discussion in a productive direction. They ensure that the discussion remains on schedule and covers all the topics/questions planned for discussion
• Participants — Participants engage and actively participate in the discussion. They share their experiences, give their opinions, and provide feedback on the discussion’s topics or products/features
• Note taker — This person observes the speaker’s body language and expressions and records them for analysis post discussion. If recording equipment is available, the notetaker should record the session
• Observers/internal stakeholders — Internal stakeholders comprise team members from engineering, design, architecture, managers, etc. They don’t participate in the discussion and only observe the participants speaking
• Analyst(s) — An individual or group of analysts helps dissect the information collected during the sessions and prepare a detailed report on it. They also build information about the customer’s willingness, satisfaction, or dissatisfaction with the product or service being discussed

Common attributes of focus groups

Focus groups tend to include a small group of people, usually between six and ten people. By doing so, you create an environment that encourages active participation where everyone has an opportunity to speak. You can run these in either a virtual or physical setting, however you need to be mindful of keeping participants comfortable.

Your focus group will be most productive if you have an effective moderation that keeps the session between 30-90 minutes. When focus groups extend beyond 90 minutes it’s often a sign that the discussion has veered off track and participants will be more likely to become distracted or disengaged.

Ensure that you select your participants thoughtfully so that you represent similar demographic traits, experience, product/service usage behavior, and attitude. This will help you have more useful results.

As far as the questions go, keep things open ended. Your moderator should avoid questions that can be answered with a yes or no. You want participants to share their feelings, which are difficult to quantify. Because of this, none of your questions will have numeric results.

What are the different types of focus groups?

Before you decide on which focus group to pursue, it’s important that you familiarize yourself with the range of options and select the one that makes the most sense for your product team. The different types of focus groups include:

• Traditional – The standard setup where a moderator and participants of around six to ten people discuss and share their opinions as answers to the questions
• Dual moderator — In this focus group discussion, there are two moderators. One moderator focuses on schedule and smooth execution of the session, whereas the other focuses on facilitating the session and ensuring all the questions are being addressed
• Dueling moderator — This is another version of dual moderator where each moderator takes a side of the discussion and tries to engage participants on both sides of the discussion to gather their viewpoints. This works best when you have two features, products, and ideas for comparison
• Observational — Here, stakeholders are involved as a silent audience and observe the complete discussion. It’s mostly used when you have clients involved who want to observe the discussion
• Two groups – In this type, there are two moderators and two different groups. Each group will do discussions separately and while one group performs, the other group observes them. It helps in generating in-depth information and feedback and deriving multiple insights
• Informed — Here, the materials and artifacts related to the discussion are shared upfront so that the participants are familiar with what they’ll discuss prior to the meeting

The importance of focus groups in product management

Thorough market research is key to any product’s success. Focus groups help to enable market research. Alongside this, there are several benefits to conducting focus groups.

Discover needs and expectations directly from customers

Using focus groups you can learn customer’s thoughts on needs, opinions, and feelings regarding the product. Focus groups help product managers discover the hidden desires and motivations of a customer through open-ended questions. Customers also help explore new ideas during the session.

Gain trust and build relationships with customers or prospective customers

Focus groups allow customers to express their opinions about the product or service and this lets you use it as an opportunity to make customers feel valued and heard. This will help you build good customer relationships centered around trust.

Gather market trends and competitive insights

Customers reveal insights on market trends they’re experiencing and also how your competitors are better in certain areas of product/service. This helps you to build a competitive advantage in the product/service for upcoming releases and cater to market trends.

Reduce risks and overheads during development

Focus groups are a powerful tool to identify usability and design flaws at early stages, evaluate products/features before release, and develop products/features targeted specifically to customers/markets.

Step-by-step guide for conducting a focus group

Conducting a focus group requires thorough planning and effective facilitation. By following these steps, you’ll be on the right track in no time:

1. Define clear objectives — The objectives defined must align with the goals of the research and should gather all the information/insights you’re seeking
2. Identify and recruit participants — Based on your research objectives, define what characteristics your audience members should have. Identify the attributes and recruit the audiences. Also, recruit facilitators such as moderator(s), note taker, etc.
3. Decide the venue — Decide on a suitable venue that’s convenient for most of the participants. Ensure the environment is conducive to group interactions and encourage open discussions and communication
4. Prepare a session questionnaire and discussion guide — Prepare open-ended questions that align with the objectives of the research. Ensure to have a list of introductory, exploratory, follow-up, and exit questions to gather as much information from the session
5. Create/procure equipment/aids/materials if any — Procure required equipment such as recorders, whiteboards, etc. Create or procure visual aids, prototypes, or documentation that are needed as per the questions prepared during the session
6. Prepare facilitators for the session — Let facilitators practice and ensure that they’re aligned towards the objectives of the research. Ensure facilitators understand the questions and discussion guide on how to conduct this session
7. Conduct the session — Welcome the participants and introduce the moderator(s) of the session. Brief about the session objectives and ground rules of participation. Let the moderator follow the discussion guide and conduct the session
8. Analyze the data and report findings — Have a continuing de-briefing session only with facilitators to discuss key observations, challenges faced, and initial impressions. Look for patterns, conflicts, contradicting opinions, unexpected viewpoints, and inconsistent information
9. Create action items and plans — The final activity of any focus group is to create required action items and plans based on the insights generated in reports. The product management, marketing, sales, and other related departments would receive/develop their action plan based on the insights from the session

Common challenges with focus groups and how to overcome them

Now that you know how to conduct a focus group, let’s discuss a few major challenges that organizers face and how to overcome them.

Groupthink

Participants can adapt to herd mentality subconsciously and conform with others resulting in biased, unrepresentative opinions. You can overcome this by using icebreakers between participants and emphasizing the importance of their perspective on the subject. A moderator can solve this by asking follow-up open-ended questions to each participant and letting them express their views.

Dominant participant

Some participants might be loud and dominate the session resulting in biased discussion. To overcome this, the moderator should politely manage such participants and ensure freedom of speech for other participants. A moderator can use techniques like time-bound round-robin to let every participant speak and delay the continuous speaking of a dominant participant.

Shy participant

Some participants are silent and shy to speak out their opinions. Either they nod towards the moderator with yes for letting the situation go or they might remain quiet throughout the session. To overcome this, the moderator should have ice breaking sessions with such participants and make them comfortable. Also, the moderator can point towards them with follow-up open-ended questions to speak out their perspective.

Moderator bias

This is a common problem found in focus group discussion where instead of facilitating the discussion, a moderator is involved as a participant and biases everyone’s opinion towards their perspective. To overcome this, a moderator should act with neutrality and impartial involvement. Having a mock-up with other facilitators before the session would help the moderator stay out of the discussion and allow participants to express themselves.

Final thoughts

A focus group is a qualitative research method where a small group of participants of around six to ten people discuss a topic. The information gathered via discussion helps product management teams evaluate the product/feature before or after release. This results in enhanced customer engagement, trusted relationship with customers, and increased customer retainment.

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