Have you ever traveled across the country to sit in the dark and eat M&M’s in cities that you would normally just fly over? That’s the experience marketers know as “doing focus groups.” While focus groups have a specific use (they should be limited to gathering breadth of perspective, not making decisions), did you know that there are new data gathering options that you can access right from your office?

With Invoke Solutions online groups, you (or your moderator) can engage hundreds of participants from anywhere in a conversation and an interactive survey (perhaps for a brand exploratory / ideation). Given that you’re in an online environment, you can also easily serve up different media stimuli and watch in real time as the participants answer your prepared questions. There are many other features of the Invoke system as detailed in this 5-minute demo

While this type of system costs less (but not bargain basement) compared to booking focus group facilities around the country, the real benefit is the ability to gather focus-group like perspectives in a lot less time. How long is your to-do list and how much do you like M&M’s?