By Leslie Turner – VP, On Demand Talent

Over the past few years, we’ve had the privilege of working with organizations navigating all kinds of change: leadership transitions, unexpected surges in demand, shifting priorities, and the ever-present pressure to do more with less. One consistent theme has emerged: fractional insights talent can be a game-changer.  

Not because it replaces full-time researchers. But because it complements them.

We’ve seen fractional researchers step into high-impact roles with speed, empathy, and precision. Whether they are brought in to lead key innovation or brand strategy initiatives, provide Insights leadership or optimize DIY platforms, they can play a key role in helping teams maintain momentum during critical transitions. And they’ve done it all while working alongside internal teams, to stretch their influence and impact.
 

So, what is fractional talent?

Fractional insights professionals are seasoned researchers who embed into teams on a flexible, project-based basis. They’re not just temporary workers but strategic partners, who understand the demands of the business. Often former heads of insights or highly experienced research consultants, they bring deep research expertise across methodologies, industries and tools. They work part-time or on-demand, but their contributions are anything but temporary.

"Fractional leadership is the next evolution of the independent contractor economy"

– Sara Daw, Fast Company, July 11, 2025

Why it matters now

Marketing research teams are under pressure, with tighter budgets and timelines often competing with higher expectations. It can be hard to anticipate what the next year may bring, and sometimes you just need support now.  Fractional talent helps bridge the gap by offering:

• • Speed to impact: Pre-vetted professionals can start contributing within days. They quickly grasp business needs and drive results from day one

• • Scalability: Whether covering a leave, leading a strategic initiative, or managing a surge in workload, fractional talent flexes with your needs

• • Cost efficiency: You pay only for the time and expertise you need - no long-term commitment or lengthy hiring processes

• • Strategic enablement: With fractional experts familiar with your methods and tools, they can focus more of their time on helping instill insights and action across your teams to move the business forward
    

They’re especially valuable when your team is trying to scale insights without compromising depth or rigor. We’ve seen them turn raw data into executive-ready outputs, design unbiased surveys, and bring fresh thinking from outside your category, all while working within your existing tools and workflows.

How to prepare your team  

If you’re considering fractional support, here are a few things we’ve learned that help set the stage for success:

1. 1. Define the role clearly: Log unmet needs over a week to identify where support is needed. Use this to scope the role and match the right skillset

2. 2. Establish communication protocols: Set expectations for check-ins, updates, and feedback. Use collaboration tools to maintain alignment 

3. 3. Integrate cross-functionally: Ensure fractional professionals are looped into the appropriate teams (marketing, product, customer experience, etc.)

4. 4. Interview for fit: Even for short-term roles, cultural fit matters. Look for adaptability and alignment with your team’s style

5. 5. Provide access and context: Share tools, background materials, and stakeholder introductions to help them hit the ground running

6. 6. Leverage for capability building: Fractional staff can train internal teams, create research playbooks, and establish governance for DIY platforms
      

Fractional insights talent might be the answer

Fractional talent isn’t a work-around, it’s a strategic lever. It allows research teams to stay agile, deepen their insights, and build internal capabilities without overextending resources.

Full-time researchers are the backbone of any insights team. Fractional talent simply helps them go further, faster.  If your team is thinking about how to balance speed and depth, fractional talent might be the answer.

For further insight into the value of fractional talent and how it could support your team, please reach out. We're always happy to share what we’ve learned, explore your team’s needs, or just talk shop about the future of insights!    

contact@SIVOInsights.com

By Ashton Walz

Are you new to Market Research? Or do you know someone who is new to market research? Many of us came out of business school with no more than one market research class under our belts so that means we had to learn the art and science of market research while on the job. But learning our craft while doing the job can be tricky because you're often "trying to safely fly the airplane while building it."  With this in mind, the SIVO team thought it would be great to share the basics of quantitative online survey design with the next generation of market researchers out there.  To our experienced clients and friends, please feel free to pass these nuggets on to someone new to our industry!

The Art of the Market Research Survey

An online survey for quantitative market research can be the key to gaining critical insight into your market, consumer, brand, product, or competition. Collecting this valuable data will lead to a better understanding of the market you operate in and your consumers’ preferences, opinions, behaviors, and needs. Leveraging the data and insights gathered from surveys, business teams can make informed decisions, shape their strategies, and refine their products or services. 

But collecting this data can be tricky.  If the survey is not designed well, organizations can be misled by inaccurate data.  Market researchers have a phrase for this…“Garbage in, garbage out.” No one wants to make bad decisions from bad information so here are 10 tips for writing a great market research survey. 

10 Tips for Great Online Surveys

Survey development requires both rigor and creativity. It takes experience and practice to get it right but there are some basic rules that will help you garner more accurate results:

1. Define Your Objectives

Clearly establish the purpose and objectives of your survey. Identify the specific information you want to gather and the decisions or actions that will be influenced by the survey results. This should be done first to give your survey questions purpose and direction. A best practice is to categorize your survey questions under each business objective so that when the data is collected, you know that you’ll have the answers you need.

2. Include an Introduction and Instructions

Provide a clear introduction at the beginning of the survey, explaining the purpose, importance, and estimated time for completion. Include instructions for navigating the survey and answering the questions.

3. Ensure Anonymity and Confidentiality

Assure respondents that their answers will remain confidential and anonymous. Avoid collecting personally identifiable information unless necessary for specific research purposes. Be transparent about how you will handle, store and share out the data. This allows the respondent to be comfortable and candid in their responses, which improves accuracy and depth of insight.

4. Avoid Leading or Biased Questions

Frame questions in a neutral manner to avoid biasing the respondents' answers. Use balanced language and avoid leading statements that could influence the respondents' opinions. A survey created with biased questions will ultimately be thrown out as the respondent’s answers are not representative of how they actually feel. An example of a leading question is, “Which product features do you find most useful?” This question assumes that consumers find the product useful when they might not find it useful at all.

5. Provide Response Options

Offer a variety of response options that cover the range of possible answers. Include options like "don't know" or "prefer not to answer" to account for respondents who may not have a specific answer or may be uncomfortable sharing certain information. In doing so, it becomes a lot easier to avoid bad data and get an accurate look at your consumer target’s preferences. 

6. Use Logical Flow and Organization

Organize your survey in a logical and coherent order. Start with easy, less intimidating questions to engage respondents and progressively move towards more specific or sensitive topics. By using this ‘funnel’ technique it helps prime the respondent to think more critically when the in-depth questions come up. This organization can also help the researcher to weed out any respondents that would not provide accurate or helpful information for the study. (e.g., if someone doesn’t buy carbonated water, don’t ask them what their favorite flavor is.)

7. Avoid Double-barreled questions

To ensure that your data is clear and insightful, be sure to avoid asking about two topics in a single question as it creates ambiguity in the data and leaves the analyst wondering how to interpret it. For instance, the question, “Please rate how well you like the lighting and atmosphere of this store?” leaves the analyst wondering if the respondent considered the lighting, the atmosphere or both when providing a rating.

8. Make it Interesting

A well-designed market research survey aims to uncover crucial information while simultaneously engaging with the target audience, to cultivate a sense of involvement. A mix of closed and open-ended question types can create a more interactive and enjoyable survey. Not only does it provide for an immersive experience but generally leaves the respondent feeling like they are being heard as they can freely express themselves through various types of questions.

9. Keep Survey Length under 15 minutes

In the same vein as making the survey interesting, survey length should be no longer than 15 minutes and ideally, 12 minutes or less. When respondents get fatigued, it can negatively impact their attention and diligence which impacts data accuracy. Long lengths also lead to incomplete surveys as respondents drop off.

10. Test Your Survey

Before launching the survey, conduct a pilot test with a small group of respondents to identify any confusing or problematic questions. Adjust based on their feedback to ensure clarity and relevance. This can prove to be extremely useful as there could be some things the survey designer didn’t catch that a respondent will.

Your Source for Expert Consumer Insights 

At SIVO, Inc., we dedicate ourselves to creating engaging and accurate quantitative market research surveys that help you better understand your market and consumers. We are experts in developing the appropriate questions and applying the right analytic techniques to deliver insights that meet your business objectives.  

Contact us via our website form or email us at Contact@SIVOInsights.com today to schedule a discovery call!  

Bringing you innovative performance marketing and
real-time digital shopper insights.

SIVO strives to be on the forefront of new technology and innovations in the insights industry. That is how we discovered Pear Commerce, a brilliant technology company that is on-pace to be the largest provider of shoppable media by the end of 2022! 

In 2018, Pear Commerce was founded by two talented serial tech entrepreneurs, Eric Martell and Alex Wyler, bringing their tech expertise to the world of retail.   

What is Shoppable Media? 

Shoppable media in retail means connecting any media (e.g. free and paid social, digital display, content, influencer, email, owned webpages, etc) to retailers with add-to-cart (ATC) functionality that is just “a click away”.

What are the benefits to Consumers?

Pear provides an industry-leading technology making shoppers online path to purchase frictionless which has been a leading reservation for consumers to shop online. Whether through a digital ad or your brand’s website, Pear uniquely gives consumers a “where to buy” choice, based on real time stock inventory checks and connects them to over 2,000 retail chains across the U.S. That is a clear point of difference.

What are the benefits to Marketing Teams?

A unique way-in to performance marketing. This revolution of advanced technology provides more data and less work for brand teams with real results. At the foundation, Pear provides full funnel click-to-conversion data which improves digital marketing performance while campaigns are in-market. They help marketers with: 

• Real-Time dashboard access for in-flight media optimizations 
• Retargeting & lookalike audiences built and pushed to ad networks; made from each step of the conversion funnel (page loads, add-to-cart, purchase) 
• Solving for distribution issues: Covid shifts, inventory/supply chain, availability, etc. by optimizing for retailer out-of-stocks across retailer locations 

What are the benefits to Insights Teams?

At this point you might be thinking, “That’s great, but isn’t SIVO an insights company?”  The answer is, “Yes!”  SIVO is all about understanding people and in this case, Pear’s technology helps SIVO and our clients better understand consumer preferences and consumers’ digital shopping behavior through real-time, in-market experimentation, such as: 

• Digital ad effectiveness via A/B testing of multiple campaign variables  
• Early new product post-launch feedback 
• Product attribute preferences, such as, flavors, pack sizes, package forms  
• Retailer and regional product sales strengths and gaps 
• Digital shopper path to purchase mapping, from ad engagement to add-to-cart, to sale 

As an example, Pear was able to help a CPG client create a data-driven approach to managing their digital marketing campaigns while also helping them to understand and optimize the plan based on shopper and retailer behavior.

The results were fantastic!  Pear created custom audiences for the brand using the client’s own 1^st party conversion data and saw 5x add-to-cart (ATC) rates compared to 3^rd party audiences and 20x ATC rates compared to the client’s website visitor audience. During the process, Pear scanned over 2,000 retailer’s digital shelves for real-time inventory to help shoppers purchase at their retailer of choice while also helping them avoid hitting out-of-stocks. The client also received valuable digital path to purchase insights and A/B testing results on different creative options to help optimize their digital campaign along the way. 

Through our partnership with Pear Commerce, SIVO can now help you achieve strong digital marketing results and new insights via performance marketing and real-time digital experimentation. To learn more about Pear Commerce and SIVO Market Intelligence solutions, please contact our SIVO team at Contact@SIVOInsights.com.