Protecting Your Market Research from Spam and Bots

Before tackling growth in your company or launching a new initiative, conducting thorough market research can be extremely valuable.

That way, you can base your company’s decisions and new direction on actual consumer behavior, market trends, and your industry’s landscape. Whether you conduct focus groups or launch surveys, market research gets you priceless information. 

If you do your market research online, however, there’s something you need to be aware of. 

Spam and bots have skewed the results of many a research project. 

If you want to have total confidence in your market research results, it’s time to protect your research from the unhelpful side of modern tech. 

Seamless, Simple-To-Implement Anti-Spam Strategies

Here are our favorite ways to build bot-proof research initiatives: 

1. Use CAPTCHAs. Did you know that CAPTCHA — those picture tests and quick surveys we fill out to prove that we’re human on some websites — stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”? Now you know! Add CAPTCHAs to your questionnaires and surveys, if possible, to deter bots from submitting data. 
2. Verify any email addresses you accumulate. Generally speaking, human research participants will have real addresses. Bots often use fake ones. Use email verification tools to confirm email authenticity whenever you can. 
3. Leverage data validation rules. As you set up surveys and questionnaires, put rules around the answers that identify potential bot behavior. For example, you might set parameters around your form that check for submitted answers within specific ranges or with certain formatting. That can help you efficiently reject any responses you deem invalid (or spammy). 
4. Monitor your data closely. Setting up tech tools to help you sift through your data is key, but there’s no substitute for monitoring your data yourself — in real-time, if possible. Checking your data as it comes in can help you identify potentially suspicious patterns. Then, you may be able to tweak your data validation strategies or other anti-bot strategies to be more effective in the future. 

Interested in Assistance To Get High-Value Market Research? 

The above strategies should help you feel more confident that your research will be as valuable as possible. If you’re looking for further assistance, turn to Ebony Marketing Systems. We’re experts at designing multicultural research that matters! Call us at (718) 742-006 for more information, or send us a message anytime.