As my final project for COMSTRAT 565: Professional Marketing Communication Management and Campaigns, I build and conducted focus groups for two marketing products for The Victorian Petal. You may recall I worked with Sarah and The Victorian Petal last semester with my Final Project: Digital Content Promotion for The Victorian Petal.
Summary of Market Research
Washington State University graduate student Heather Haynsen conducted two focus groups in conjunction with local floral designer Sarah Sherlock, of The Victorian Petal. Heather worked with Sarah during a previous graduate course, building product release social media campaign for her business. After the success of that project, Sarah expressed a desire to create a physical Thank You card for clients, as well as to expand the information available on her website, TheVictorianPetal.com.
Sarah allowed Heather complete creative liberty on the Thank You card. Heather created a 5×7 postcard with the intent that it would be mailed to new clients once their contracts had been signed, with the hopes that the postcard would be simple for Sarah to write, mail, and for her clients to hang on their refrigerator. Together, Heather and Sarah wrote a “Floral Design Services†webpage for the site to answer the most frequently asked questions she receives during initial consults with brides. The webpage was designed to be text heavy; detailing every single type of floral she can create as a list of options for brides to consider while wedding planning. As The Victorian Petal is an extremely new and small business, photographs of her work are limited. This is the largest problem in creating marketing material for The Victorian Petal, and one that Heather and Sarah are not able to remedy within the confines of this graduate course. A professional photo shoot is scheduled for May 4, 2019, during which Sarah will build and display at least one of every type of floral design service mentioned on her webpage.
With these ideas fresh in their minds, Heather moderated two hour-long online focus groups via Google Hangouts (with Sarah present to answer business questions). The first focus group held March 26, 2019, consisted of six women who had all planned weddings (or wedding-like events). The second focus group, conducted April 4, 2019, consisted of seven men and women who had various levels of experience with weddings. Feedback received from each focus group was used to edit both pieces of marketing material, making them more accessible and pleasing.
Full transcripts of each focus group and in-depth changelogs of the Thank You postcard and Services webpage can be found in the following sections of this report.