What are panels?
Panels are curated groups of people who fall within a particular niche. These groups can be general, such as tech opinion leaders or blog authors, or they can be more specific, like construction workers in the Greater Chicago area.
In order to create a Panel, the People Pattern platform trawls through vast amounts of social data to identify individuals who identify themselves as part of the specified niche. Using a variety of machine learning techniques, the platform isolates unwanted accounts, such as bots and those posting adult content, and removes them from the sample. It also uses an “account type” classifier to determine whether the account in question is an individual, an organization, or a media outlet. Finally, the People Pattern-certified accounts are collected into a Panel, which can be analyzed to produce actionable results.
Using Panels, marketers can search through post-level data instead of relying on vanity metrics (such as Facebook likes or retweet counts), creating more helpful and nuanced insights into a particular audience.
Get statistically significant results without the cost.
Traditionally, in order to gain insight into niche populations, marketers have had to convene focus groups. These sessions are expensive (around $6,000 for an eight-person session), and by virtue of their size, they rarely yield truly useful results. Using Panels, marketers are able to study the interests, values, and media consumption choices of thousands of individuals within a particular audience while spending a fraction of the time and money that it would take to conduct a small focus group.
See your audience react to relevant events.
Let’s say you’re a marketer studying blog authors. You need to monitor how your audience reacts to new developments in the blogosphere, but the traditional method of contacting each blogger is prohibitively time-consuming and impractical at scale. With Panels, you can gauge the entire blogger community’s opinion on each event as soon as it happens, allowing you to position your product or service in a way that reflects the latest attitudes and values held by your audience.
Find out who influences your target population.
“Influencer marketing” may be the buzzword du jour, but there’s a reason why it’s such a popular strategy. Panels allow you to instantly identify the individuals and organizations that hold sway with your audience so that you can craft a media planning strategy that appeals to them across a variety of different channels. Whether you decide to partner with a Twitter user popular with your audience or advertise in an up-and-coming trade publication, understanding the opinion leaders for your niche will give you an edge over the competition.
Gain insight on difficult-to-reach groups.
While it may be costly, time-consuming, and inefficient, convening a focus group of bloggers is definitely possible. However, if you’re a marketer studying Fortune 500 CEOs, sitting U.S. senators, or prolific YouTube personalities, you might have a difficult time arranging a focus group. With Panels, you’re able to monitor and learn about these hard-to-study populations, gaining insights into their honest and unbiased opinions.
To learn more about what panels are available, contact us.
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