Active listening with digital canvassing
A more regenerative way to be a part of an ever evolving living system.
Traditional market research, surveys, and focus groups rely on extrapolating samples of opinions from a small group of willing participants to a large population.
But people are messy and as parts of a living system we are constantly changing what we value as we connect and interact with others. By the time a research project has run its course the data is often outdated and full of biases drawn from a few privileged people.
Perhaps a better more regenerative approach is one of active listening through continuous question and response activity from the community at large.
Digital canvassing is a technique that can be used to inform decision-making, to uncover new solutions, and to develop better strategies for engaging with the public and for creating consumer-centric products and services.
The goal is to build a two-way communication channel that is both informative and collaborative.
Let’s explore one way to approach this is by leveraging paid promotion on Facebook.
Begin with curiosity
Who do you think your customers are?
How would you describe their essence?
What value add do you create in your customers' lives?
Is there a promise you have made to them?
Are there things they wish would change or improve?
Craft questions
Then get specific about questions you want to ask. Brainstorm with the entire team on what they need to know in order to deliver on their promises to the customer.
Is X something that more people need to know about? (YES | NO)
Is X causing Y and could be resolved with Z? (YES | NO | DON’T KNOW)
How does the idea of X make you feel? (HAPPY | SAD | ANGRY)
How important is X in your life? (VERY | SOMEWHAT | NOT)
Put these questions into a simple poll tool. Something that allows for a multiple choice response and ideally lets people answer anonymously with the option to verify themselves in order to see how others are responding too.
AI image generation (ex: MidJourney) is a great tool to think about using here to accompany each question with a compelling and eye-catching image inexpensively.
Canvass with ads
Post each of the questions and then use ads to deliver them to people as broadly or narrowly as your curiosity about your audience is.
We are looking to get those questions in front of as many people as we can so we will use engagement as our ad goal metric.
Ideally we will initially spend $150 per question over a 3 day period. If response rates are good and budget allows we will increase the spend for an additional 3-7 days.
Understand the data
There are a number of things we can learn
Firstly we can understand more about general interest and awareness. Did people care about the question enough to respond? Looking at the cost per click, cost per comment, and cost per response compared to other questions will give you an idea of whether it’s aligned and intriguing.
If you’ve canvassed with ads targeting different demographic segments it might even illuminate where and with what types of people there is more or less interest.
Secondly the response results will help us directly understand what people are feeling. Was there an overwhelming leaning or is there a split.
If you instrumented the ads with UTM strings and the poll tool captured those you might even be able to split out the responses by demographics gaining a deeper understanding of whether there are significantly different patterns in the way people responded across different demographic segments.
Thirdly look at the comments that were left on the promoted posts and on the poll responses. How are people talking about the question? How did it make them feel? What emotions are they transmitting in their words?
And lastly look at how an individual might be responding over time to different questions. Are they continuing to engage and share their thoughts and desires?
Patterns and essence
With this approach we are not looking for statistically significant outputs. We are looking for subtle patterns in the real-time fabric of life. What were people willing to spend a bit of their time sharing? What do the answers tell us about the collective essence of all of these complex wholes?
In particular we are often looking for what went unsaid. What did people ignore? What questions did people have no desire to elaborate on? What was shared but not liked.
Continual iteration
This is best accomplished as a continual and ongoing weekly process. With insights shared back with the team at large and new ideas for questions contributed by all based on what is being heard and experienced.
This feedback loop allows for the learning to infuse into other activities such as marketing, sales, and product development. Which will provide new insights into additional areas to explore and solicit answers. In addition these activities themselves are also places of active listening and can be part of the feedback loop sharing what they hear from their interaction with the living system as well.
Living systems are a process of ebb and flow, continually in a state of movement. A regenerative process needs to be an active part of this activity. By using digital canvassing an organization is able to participate more actively in this process. And through continual monitoring and understanding of it’s community be a better participant in delivering real value.
What do you think? What are some other ways an organization can be an active listener in ways that are regenerative and of benefit to their communities?