Empirical Path Web Analytics & Market Research

Not all public service advertising is created equal.

Our long-time client, Washington, DC social marketing firm Noral Group International, just revealed how PSA gatekeepers at radio stations perceive the issues and audiences needing support in their markets.  With Empirical Path's help, Noral surveyed more than 100 radio station community service directors to provide government and not-for-profit advocacy organizations valuable guidance on what makes a good social marketing campaign in the eyes of the decision-makers who choose which PSAs to air.  In short, health is hot:

"...the numero-uno chart topper is the health of radio listeners.  This was the consensus of the 100+ radio community service directors surveyed across the United States.  Health came in as the most important specific issue for stations to support and the issue they most wanted our government to take on with public service advertising.

After mentioning diseases affecting their communities, radio media directors flipped their focus to human behaviors associated with health.  These ranged from a person acting on a prevention-related service (e.g., vaccinations) to modifying lifestyle choices (e.g., eating healthy)."

In keeping with our data-driven approach, the survey also explored the trends in airtime available for stations to donate to public service advertising, and the news is good despite the economy:

"Not only do radio media directors believe public service advertising is very or extremely useful, 12% project a rise in the time allotted for PSAs.  A further 82 out of 97 predict that PSA time will remain stable..."

Empirical Path supports Noral's twice-yearly proprietary research into PSA decision-making by crafting survey questions, creating online and phone survey data collection tools, and analyzing results to unearth trends in the priorities of TV and radio station media directors.  Congratulations to Eva and Kyle for connecting with these hard-to-reach decision-makers and providing the social marketing community with unique insights.

For more examples of how Empirical Path brings together online questionnaires, telephone surveys, third-party data, and targeted interviews to take the pulse of markets, please click here.

Turns out you can use quantitative data to understand the qualitative features of a market.

Empirical Path published a new case study on using web analytics data as a market research tool to uncover the intents and needs of a not-for-profit client's current and prospective customers.  Working under the new agency of record for a leading children's hospital, we explored Google Analytics data not just to improve a website, but also as part of a larger discovery phase of market research.  Not only did we map the physical location of website visitors in relation to the client, we mapped their reasons for reaching out to the brand online:

"One theme dominated the visitor behavior analysis, creating a potential hook for future marketing messages, and two unexpected secondary themes were discovered as well.  The differences in usage among themes – on-site vs. off-site and search vs. website – revealed potential roles for each of the major themes in users’ discovery and exploration of the brand, as well as tactical improvements to the site’s information architecture and navigation.  Geographically, while distance was the clear driver of website visitation, certain markets delivered audiences that far out-performed expectations, highlighting potential targets for media buying efforts."

Please see the case study for more details on how we aggregated keywords in on-site and off-site page names and search queries to unearth the themes that drove visitors to the client website.