step 3: conduct the research Sample Plan

Probability Samples
• Random
– everyone in the population has an equal chance of selection
• Cluster
– divide population into mutually exclusive groups and random
clusters are drawn to sample
– Believe that there are no differences between groups
• Stratified
– divide population into mutually exclusive groups and random
samples are drawn from each group
– Believe that there are differences between groups
 step 3: conduct the research Sample Plan

• Convenience
Nonprobability
– Select the easiest population members to sample Samples
• Purposive
– Researcher judges if subject fits their purpose
• Snowball
– Subjects help researcher find additional subjects
who have characteristics of interest
• Quota
– Researcher finds a prescribed number of subjects
across several categories
step 4: data analysis and
interpretation

What does the data tell us?

Descriptive Group Hypothesis

Statistics Differences Testing
step 5: address the problem

executive
summary

Take an
recommendations
objective
look at
survey technical report

findings
limitations

next steps
Marketing Research Examples
1. Conversions: How effective were we at
moving students through the funnel (from lead to
application)

2. Traffic: Did we see an increase in traffic due to

the changes we made?

3. Page performance: Did we decrease our

overall bounce rate and how do we determine if
more time spent on a page results in more leads?

4. Engagement: Did the user spend time

engaging with this new design or piece of
content?

5. Surveys, polls, recordings: What group of

pages did a user visit before making a decision to
move forward? What personas visit our website?

6. SEO: Did we improve our overall organic traffic

to the website or did we improve our overall
keyword rankings?