Versta Research Blog

Versta Research Blog

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Versta Research is a marketing research and public opinion polling firm that helps you answer critical questions with customized research and analytical expertise.

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Versta Research Blog

Explore industry trends, research methods, and tips for your own research projects in the Versta Research Blog. All opinions are our own, and some may change over time.

First time reader? Check out the Best of the Blog for the most popular posts from almost 10 years of blogging. We’re glad you’re here.

Versta Research Post

Avoiding Phony Precision in Your Press Release

I recently saw a press release about a study showing that only 19.5% of news release headlines are optimized for SEO.  It brought to mind all kinds of issues about how best to report numbers in press releases.  In particular it highlighted the important issue of whether specific numbers are meaningful  and whether they communicate…

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Versta Research Post

Research Makes Cross-Selling More Profitable

Conventional wisdom is that your current customers are your best customers.  Indeed, when marketers focus on cross-selling as a strategy, they typically see substantial increases in revenue and profit.  Not only that, but when you look only at customers who cross-buy a lot, the profit from these customers is huge compared to customers who do…

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Versta Research Post

Consumers Eagerly Answer What You Don’t Ask

Most people who take surveys want to share their opinions, which is important for researchers hoping to get a few nuggets of data from willing respondents.  The trouble is, if a survey it not written carefully, a respondent’s urgent desire to share their feelings may bias their answers to other questions. Two marketing professors at…

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Versta Research Post

Why Every Business Needs the Census Bureau

Every ten years the Census Bureau provides a count of all people living in the United States.  More importantly, the Census Bureau and other agencies conduct ongoing surveys of the population to document crucial facts and figures about who we are. And every year, it seems, these agencies come under attack from politicians who would…

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Versta Research Post

60 Million Surveys Is Too Many

How big of a sample size do you really need? A recent article in the New York Times cited the following statistics: A small Voice of the Customer (VoC) research company called Mindshare Technologies collects satisfaction data from 175,000 respondents every day. That’s 60 million in a year. ForeSee, a small customer experience analytics firm…

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Versta Research Post

Five Classes to Make You Smarter

Summer provides an ideal opportunity to learn from our research colleagues in the academic worlds.   Many of them offer short, intensive “summer camp” training that is relevant and practical for market researchers.  You get training that is far more rigorous and comprehensive than courses offered by “training institutes” and other commercial providers. Here are our…

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Versta Research Post

Bad Charts and Good Charts for Kony 2012

We came across this chart from Invisible Children, the group that produced the Kony 2012 video.  It shows the organization’s expenditures by category.  It is a poorly designed chart for three reasons: 1.  The pieces of the doughnut are not correctly proportional.  For some reason, the arc widths were compressed for some categories (like Media…

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Versta Research Post

Your Customers DO Care about the Numbers

Coincidentally in the same week that Versta Research published its winter newsletter on Turning Data into Stories: A How-To Guide, last week’s AMA event in Chicago was a market research panel focused on telling stories with data.  The presentations were solid, with lots of helpful ideas.  But there was also a misguided idea working its…

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