Market Research Startup 'Ask Your Target Market' Gets an Answer

Ask Your Target Market is an online, self-service market research platform based in San Francisco with a built-in panel of survey respondents from all over the country. The company was a Launch Pad finalist at the 2010 Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. This week the site got an upgrade based on user requests for psychographic targeting and video response surveys. Founders Lev Mazin (right) and David Handel (left) gave us a tour of the new features and explained why startup companies especially should give the platform a try.

By day, David Handel is a radiologist with a private practice in New Jersey, but he’s also an inventor. Five years ago, he hired designer Lev Mazin to do the branding work for Camileon Heels, a line of shoes with adjustable heels that Handel created with his sister, Donna “Lauren” Handel. “It was a freaking incredible idea,” Mazin said, but his partnership with Handel outlasted the shoe business. In September of 2009 Mazin, Handel and their CTO, programmer Evgeny Gorbunov launched the Beta version of Ask Your Target Market.

Mazin and Handel tested the platform at two Lean Startup Weekends in Boulder, CO and Dallas, TX. The Lean Startup model is the brainchild of entrepreneur Eric Ries and it’s based on the idea that companies should start small by launching the most basic version of a product that a customer would be willing to buy in order to get feedback from early adopters. Participants in the three-day workshop collaborated on a prototype for a new product and used Ask Your Target Market for feedback from potential customers. Within 90 minutes, they knew if they were heading in the right direction, as did Mazin and Handel. “This was the perfect test field for us,” Mazin said. “You can learn something so fast and change your company’s direction.”

Like a lot of other market research services, the panel members are lured in with a sweepstakes. A battery of lie detector tests and a computerized fact-checking system help weed out the users who aren’t telling the truth or who aren’t paying attention. Researchers can use 9 different parameters, including age, gender and income levels to further target their demographic and, as of this week, can also target their psychographic, or group with similar interests such as “Facebook User” or “Frequent Traveler.”

In addition to the multiple-choice, true or false and “check all that apply” options that are common to a survey, there are also open-ended questions for typed-in responses and a new feature, video responses. “It’s qualitative rather than quantitative,” Handel explained. “You get the feel of looking into their eyes and seeing their body language.” A respondent can also answer, “yes” to one question and continue on to a follow-up question or “no” and skip ahead to another one. If the user wants the answers “double checked,” the panelists will unknowingly take the same survey twice. Inconsistent answers from panelists will automatically be removed from the results. “Most people don’t change their minds over the course of three hours,” Handel said. Once the survey is complete and the respondents have submitted their answers, researchers can view the statistics graphically with a pie chart or a bar graph that can be e-mailed or embedded on a website or blog.

When it comes to navigating the site, building a survey is almost like taking a survey – the administrator highlights a circle to choose the type of question and when needed, types in text or uploads a photo or video. From start to finish, the instructions are either to point and click or to click and drag. “Lev’s an expert at user interface,” Handel said.

As the parameters of the surveys change, so does the price, which is measured in points rather than dollar amounts. The cost updates itself in real time so that survey administrators can see what they’re spending and make changes before they go over their budgets. According to Mazin, hiring a consumer panel usually costs thousands of dollars, which is a “no-go for a majority of startups,” he said. Surveys on this site start at $29.95. Mazin got the idea for a point system from iStockphoto. In the future, he might also use a subscription model. “We’re passionately working on making it a huge success,” Mazin said.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.