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Tighten Up Your Focus Groups for Better Quality Feedback

Focus groups are a qualitative research method, one of many, that validates opinions. The feedback they provide can support the expertise of the professionals involved with your projects and help bring about successful outcomes.

For instance, many boomers today feel that their needs are not being considered when it comes to the design, development or marketing of new communities. Focus groups provide potential prospects with a venue for expressing their needs while giving you a better understanding about what your specific market finds desirable.

Focus groups should be used:

• When time-efficient, in-depth data is needed
• To explore ideas
• To provide input for a new project
• To give feedback on floor plans, features and amenities

• To identify target market perceptions/opinions/beliefs and attitudes (POBAs).

For an existing community, a focus group with an unbiased moderator rather than a company employee can:

• Solicit ideas on resident referral programs
• Gain input on operational issues
• Uncover customer service issues

Inviting a group of people to a luncheon or similar social event and soliciting their ideas is not a true focus group. It’s just an informal information gathering. Although information from such a gathering does have value, it is less reliable because guests are generally reluctant to offer direct comments or to criticize their hosts.

How to Get the Most Out of Your Focus Group

It doesn’t matter what segment of the active adult housing market you are involved in — small subdivisions, infill, rental or large community developments. By following these simple focus group guidelines, you can transform your sessions so they will provide you with rich, useful customer feedback:

• Determine what you want the focus group to accomplish. The more specific you are, the better quality input you will get. If you ask a group to conceptualize, your results will be disappointing.
  
  
• Let the purpose and goals of your focus group, and the scale of your project, determine the number of groups and the type of facility you will need for gathering information.
  
  
• Create a carefully drafted guide for participants that incorporates the questions to be discussed — while also acknowledging that there might not be enough time to answer all the questions before the session is over. Information shared as the group’s discussion develops may be more valuable than answering every question. This guide can be provided in advance.
  
  
• Use an outside moderator specially trained in working with focus groups to create the guide and facilitate the discussion. A knowledgeable, neutral person not affiliated with the builder can elicit useful, honest feedback. The moderator’s training and experience are essential. Improperly trained consultants lack depth and accuracy and can skew participants’ opinions, resulting in misleading information.
  
  
• Consider using a professional facility with one-way mirrors, audio and video taping and refreshments. Professional facilities enable you to see the focus group participants’ reactions and hear their comments. If a professional facility is unavailable or beyond your budget, audiotaping is essential for accurately recalling the discussion. The moderator will need to have the freedom to facilitate the discussion, not be busy taking notes.
  
  
• Pay participants for their time. Potential recruits should not be professional focus group participants who do this more than twice a year. But participants will take the focus group seriously if you pay them. Payment will also ensure attendance.
  
  
• Serve refreshments during the session. Focus group facilities normally include this as part of their fee and service, but if you are using a hotel, conference room or other location, be sure you provide refreshments.
  
  
• Limit your group's size to no more than eight persons of the same sex. Female participants tend to be much less outspoken when among a mixed group.
  
  
• Be sure that the handouts and visuals used during the session are clear and legible. Also, when preparing this material, take into account the potential visual challenges of people in this age group.
  
  
• Focus group facilities will often help in securing participants, relieving the builder of this burden and assuring that participants will attend as promised. To be sure that participants match your buyer profile, develop good screening specifications regarding age, income, employment status and gender.

Focus groups are the coming wave in qualitative research. Embracing this tool now will help active adult communities compete and establish themselves on the cutting edge with their customers and prospects.

Janis Ehlers is the founder and president of The Ehlers Group, Inc., a Fort Lauderdale, FL-based marketing and communications company that specializes in seniors housing communities and real estate development. Ehlers also is author of the book “Marketing Seniors Housing,” available at BuilderBooks.com, and an active member of the NAHB Seniors Housing Council. She can be reached via e-mail, at 954-726-9228 or visit The Ehlers Group Web site.

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