The speed of business decision-making is dramatically outpacing the speed of traditional market research. This means companies must explore new digital communication methods that can help market researchers target specific audiences more quickly, gather and analyze data and trends with new vivacity, and iterate more frequently if they are to keep pace with their markets and buyers.

This is now an imperative as the way respondents engage with market research has shifted. One study found that, by the 20-minute mark, the attention span of survey respondents was greatly diminished. Another report found that 52 percent said they would not spend more than three minutes filling out a survey.

In this high-speed, mobile world, market research activities need to reach respondents where they are —and bring back fast, high-quality insights in order to identify threats and opportunities, make informed decisions, and reduce risks as they go about mission-critical activities.

So what is a market researcher to do?

A new technology-enabled paradigm for high-quality market research is emerging that allows modern day market researchers to be more responsive and act in real time to meet today’s rapidly changing and competitive market landscape.

Three benefits of real time market research are:

1. Speed: Respondents can be targeted instantly and provide results within minutes. This allows an immediate read on what your unique audience is thinking and enables strategic decisions to be made quickly with reliable, accurate insights.
2. Flexibility: A digital survey application that uses a powerful algorithm to find the right audiences and field questions, allowing market researchers to easily follow-up on unanticipated answers or ask key questions that were left out.
3. Mobile Engagement: 27 percent of respondents in 2015 said they completed their last survey on a smartphone, according to the Pew Research Center. Real-time market research applications allow companies to reach this on-the-move audience where they are and turn sporadic, project-based research into a continuous dialogue and feedback loop.

Digital communication enables nearly every other aspect of life today. Catching up with this trend can only help market researchers deeply enrich and inform the dialogue they want to have with customers.