Focus Group Interview Worksheet
Focus groups are an opportunity to listen directly to your audience’s ideas and
opinions.
They are most effective in gathering the following types of information about
your target audience:
• Their attitudes, perceptions and beliefs.
• Their knowledge and experience with regard to your campaign or
product.
• Their insights and ideas about the problem you’re investigating.
Focus groups are not effective for gathering the following types of information:
- Ideas for new products or features (people are really bad at predicting what
they’d use).
- How well a specific campaign or product works (one on one interviews are
optimal here).
A focus group should take between 1 and 2 hours (any shorter and you want
have a chance to ask many questions; any longer and your participants will get
antsy.
We hand out a worksheet based on this template at the beginning of each focus
group and give all participants 5-10 minutes to fill it out before the discussion
begins. This practice has two major benefits:
1. The sheet ensures that the ideas and thoughts of the quiet participants
are captured.
2. Participant’s ideas can shift during discussion, so capturing their
thoughts at the beginning ensures that we capture their first reactions,
ideas and insights.
An additional bonus to using this worksheet is that it prompts the project team
to think critically about what 3-4 questions are most likely to draw out the
insights we’re hunting for.
This is an editable template. We filled it out using questions that we have used
in a focus group designed to get insights from a sales team that can be used in
a marketing campaign.
Focus Group Interview Worksheet
(Sample Worksheet)
Name of Session
Name:
Job Title:
1. When you start the conversation with a
lead, what words and phrases does the
customer use to explain the problem that
they need you to solve?
2. When you’re talking about how you can
solve the customer’s problem, what’s the
tipping point for them? What features or
services do they respond to with a pause or
say “oh, wow”?
3. Describe your ideal lead. Include
information like job title, business size,
current frustration. What makes [company]
the best solution for their business?
4. If you were creating a marketing
campaign, what is the most important
message you’d want to convey?
Focus Group Interview Worksheet