Need Fast, Reliable Insights? Consider Online Anthropology

It’s hard to overstate the importance of speed in today’s research ecosystem. It’s especially true when you’re faced with impending deadlines and you still have so many unanswered questions. Unfortunately, there simply aren’t many research options that offer actionable insights within a matter of days. Then again, few research options are as powerful and nimble as online anthropology.

What Is Online Anthropology?
Online anthropology examines how people interact, engage and explore their interests within the digital space to uncover fresh insights that drive innovation and business growth. It’s not another dog-and-pony dashboard about sentiment. It’s about deep listening … listening to people’s unprompted online conversations to understand attitudes, actions and advocacy.

Deep listening goes way beyond analyzing chatter about your brand. It takes a deep look at your brand within the context of your category to help you understand missed opportunities and unmet needs.

There are several benefits to online anthropology. But here are five that truly stand out:

1. Online anthropology is fast. Like, really fast. Most deep listening studies can be completed in two to three weeks, giving researchers relevant insights within aggressive timelines. It also offers an iterative approach, allowing researchers to react to the data and guide the exploration.
2. Online anthropology offers a ton of relevant insights. It opens opportunities to identify new customer segments and discover competitive white space. It linguistically explores how different groups of people engage with categories, products and brands – and why. And it can expose deeper behavioral insights such as product hacks and advocacy triggers to inspire innovation and improve communications.
3. Online anthropology schools you on your category. When you listen beyond social networks and tap into online communities, you expose deeper category-level insights. You may be surprised to learn new ways that consumers interact with your larger category, and how these learnings can inspire new ways to design and market your products.
4. Online anthropology puts your research in a time machine. Ever wish you could turn back the clock to understand the dynamics and drivers of change in your category? Deep listening provides a sort of do-over on research questions that you wish you asked several years ago. Now you can examine capsules of sentiment toward products and categories at specific points in the past.
5. Online anthropology keys in on your true fans. Online advocacy is a powerful metric that consistently correlates with changes in market share, sales, or customer acquisition. Rather than asking consumers if and why they’d be willing to recommend a brand, online anthropology can observe and measure that behavior directly.

Online anthropology’s deep listening-based approach gives new perspectives and allows companies to quickly monitor consumer attitudes at scale and at speed. If you need fast, reliable insights to round out your research or if you need to inject your products and marketing plans with fresh ideas, then online anthropology should be at the top of your list.