Qualitative Recruiting Firm Recruits 25+ Focus Group Participants in One Week

A renowned feminine hygiene product company was looking to recruit female participants with heart disease, diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, and bladder control issues for a focus group in Florida. 

Due to this specific participant criteria, the incidence rate of finding qualified women was extremely low. This was a tough audience to target nationally, let alone within driving distance of a specific city in the U.S. They had previously used a self-service vendor that was not able to fulfill the recruitment project.

The team came to our focus group recruitment company needing more than 20 low incidence rate participants (i.e., highly targeted/difficult to reach) in less than a week.

The Drive Research qualitative recruitment process included 5 steps:

• Step 1: Target participants online
• Step 2: Have participants complete a short online screener
• Step 3: Re-screen qualified participants by phone to confirm survey responses and ask additional questions
• Step 4: Register the participant for the research
• Step 5: Follow up through confirmation emails, reminder phone calls, and reminder texts leading up to the designated date and time for the session

Our market research recruitment company received an email from the renowned feminine hygiene product company project manager at 3 p.m. on Monday, December 9 seeking out our services. Within 10 minutes, Drive Research replied with more information regarding our recommendations for their specific project needs and requirements. 

From here, we had a proposal and agreement sent at 11 p.m. that day. The project was confirmed the following morning at 12:30 a.m. 

The Drive Research team had the screener programmed and tested on Tuesday morning while other team members worked separately to create social advertisements to generate interest of potential focus group participants. 

By 11 a.m. on Tuesday, the social advertisements and online recruitment screener were set to fieldwork. Less than 20 hours after the initial email from the sponsor of the study asking for help, our qualitative recruitment company was actively calling pre-screened participants in our system.

In total, Drive Research recruited 22 participants for the project, with a show rate of 95%. This was all completed in less than one week.