What is Boomerang Ideas and how does it work?

Boomerang Ideas is a simple and quick way of doing a temperature check on any topic with your desired audience. It can be a simple poll on a very distinctive socio-demographic (for instance ask people from 25-34 if they’d pay for CO2 compensation on their next flight) or a global validation of a certain naming or feature (so that you don’t get lost in translation like the Mitsubishi Pajero debacle (link)).

In order to do this we have built a marketing automation that allows us to post on all major social media channels such as Facebook or Instagram. Micro-targeting technology, known from online ads and our intelligent algorithms help to make sure we get feedback from the right people. Our business intelligence consolidates all the data in order to help you quickly grasp the answers including individual comments.

A week later, you’ll have a full verdict on your question from the people you wanted to get feedback from. This will include a full break-down by location, age group or gender in order to see which demographics are likely be interested in your idea or see what opinion they have.

What are the advantages of using Boomerang Ideas over online panels?

1. More accurate as people are on their favorite channel. We rely solely on their curiosity as incentive (panels attract only a subset of the population and often have wrong incentives that lead to biases (source)
2. More affordable: Thanks to the accurate micro-targeting filters, the screening question might not be necessary anymore which will therefore save you money
3. Super simple data entry without the usual hassle

What are the advantages of using Boomerang Ideas over traditional phone or street surveys?

Our “dynamic social media panel” is less biased (as most people have never been polled before), faster (it only takes a week) and cheaper (no screening question necessary thanks to micro-targeting filters).

It’s the most effortless feedback-mechanism you can get. No need to get your feet wet. You just give us your question and answers and we’ll take it from there. The tests happen fully autonomous. Our marketing automation ensures to ask on all relevant social networks such as Facebook or Instagram.

What are the limitations of using social media to get feedback?

You can consider us a dynamic social media panel that always connects you with your desired audience. As this only happens on social media, there are a variety of biases or limitations to be considered:

1. All answers will – obviously – only come from people on social media channels. If your required age range is below 13 or way above 65, or you want to reach absolute non-tech people, social media is probably not the right channel to use. Social media surveys do not cover the entire population due to the nature of the channel but do provide a good sample.

2. A small fraction of responses (<5%) come in the form of comments as part of social media posts. It is the nature of posts that all past comments are visible if someone within the same micro-group wishes to see them, hence a potential bias might occur within this method. However, our PRO plans separate these posts into hundreds of posts specifically targeted at small micro-groups (e.g. same gender in same age group in same language and region), so it is less likely to happen.

3. The same method also can lead to a minority of responses coming from respondents outside of the targeted group. This happens when someone engages (share, like, comment) with this post.

4. Your poll cannot include content that is prohibited (illegal, discriminatory, weapons, tobacco, adult, fake-news) or restricted (political content, alcohol, dating services, gambling, crypto). This one’s out of our hands, as it’s the social networks that make these rules (for a reason). Check out the full list at our friends at Facebook. Other networks follow a similar approach.

5. Our PRO-plans allow representative weighting which weighs the results from all clusters based on actual socio-demographic attributes of a population (so that f.i. no age group is overrepresented). While this increases the accuracy of the poll substantially, there are other attributes such as education level or political opinion which we currently do not take into account when creating our sampling and therefore may be unequally represented in certain groups.

6. Currently our surveys only allow a maximum of 3 question.

What are PLAY and PRO and why should I choose PRO over PLAY?

Both PLAY and PRO give you access to our “dynamic social media panel” and an affordable and simple temperature check (convenience sample). With PRO however, you not only can create surveys with up to 3 questions but also get a higher accuracy thanks to more responses and powerful filters that get you to the right target group (age, region/location, gender). PRO also allows representative samples (weighed results by region, age-group and gender). Representative samples are currently available for polls in Switzerland only.

Difference poll vs. survey?

A poll is a 1 question survey with (currently) 2 possible options, while a survey can include several questions.

What is a convenience sample?

With our convenience sample or “temperature checks” you can collect basic data insights into a population at a very low cost and a high speed. It however offers no guarantee of representation of a population as they are random samples within the whole population and not separated or weighted by age groups, gender, location.

What is a representative sample?

In order to represent the target population as close as possible, we use a survey sampling method called stratified sampling. This method divides the population into several groups which are based on specific characteristics, which are defined by the following dimensions:

• geography (f.i. Greater regions within a country such as Lake Geneva region, Zurich region etc.)
• gender (f/m)
• age group (13-17, 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65+)

Then, within each group, respondents are randomly selected to participate in the poll (random sample) until we have enough responses. The groups verdicts are weighted according to official ground-truth data from each countries statistical office.

Currently Switzerland-only with latest official data (2019) from the BfS (Bundesamt für Statistik).

Remarks:

• When talking about representative data we recommend disclosing the following: Representative on 3 dimensions (geography, gender, age group), weighted by ground-truth data from the statistical office and conducted with respondents on the social media channels Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and Snapchat.
• Age group 65+ on social media: Micro-targeting does not allow a granular age targeting beyond 65+ (like 85-94 years olds) and therefore includes all persons above the age of 65. The group however is weighted according to the population of the age group 65-74.
• While 3 dimensions increase the accuracy of the poll substantially, there are other attributes such as education level or political opinion which we currently do not take into account when creating our sampling and therefore may be unequally represented in certain groups.

How can social media be representative of an entire population?

Short answer: It depends on the definition. We have to live with the sampling error, that we can only reach people who are online and on social media. The question is, what’s the alternative to get the opinion of a population?

1. Telephone surveys, in which most often the landline is called. But who picks up the phone these days? Also, mobile phones are mostly not integrated into the method, and even if they are, they are not the best alternative since some people have a personal and business phone which would overrepresent them. In addition, people with more time – the ones that do not hang up – are also overrepresented (source: http://theconversation.com/heres-how-to-make-opinion-polls-more-representative-and-honest-117405).
2. And then there are online panels* which are a fair way to compensate. However, wrong incentives (like money paid out for each survey) and also the uncommon interest in regularly participating in polls, lead to sampling bias that equally isn’t ideal.

Back to social media, in which all people that have Internet and a device (phone, computer) can participate on their favorite platform, just like that. In Switzerland, that’s about 70% of the population, which isn’t too bad. To make sure we capture all needed parts of a demographic, we are using stratified sampling (the gold standard for representative surveys) in combination with micro-targeting on a variety of dimensions like age, gender and region.

• Online Panels differ a lot in terms of quality and methodology. There are better ones like SurveyUSA or YouGov, average ones like Google Surveys or failed ones like SurveyMonkey according to FiveThirtyEight. If you’re into panels, we recommend visiting ProjectFiveThirtyEight or downloading their powerful comparison right away here

Which countries or regions do you support?

We currently allow polls in the following countries:

• Argentina
• Australia
• Austria
• Brazil
• Canada
• China
• Czech Republic
• Germany
• India
• Italy
• Mexico
• Poland
• Russia
• South Africa
• South Korea
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Thailand
• USA

Representative polls are available in the following countries:

• Switzerland

The country I need is not listed, who do I contact?

Please contact us at hello@boomerangideas.com to get your country listed on our next release.

Which countries are covered in the GLOBAL 10 Boomerangs?

Our curated Global 10 list includes responses from the following countries:

• Argentina
• Australia
• Germany
• India
• Mexico
• South Africa
• Spain
• Switzerland
• Sweden
• USA

We are planning to offer a feature where you can select your own 10 countries. If you’re interested, give us a shout at hello@boomerangideas.com.

My poll got declined! What happened and how can I fix this?

As all polls are done on social networks such as Facebook, we have to comply with their rules. Profane language, incorrect grammar or prohibited or restricted content (drugs, alcohol, weapons, adult content, gambling, some crypto, dating) is not allowed and will stop your poll within several hours.

In addition polls about social issues, elections or politics are also not allowed (except for Switzerland where we are allowed to do so). Social issues are defined as civil and social rights, economy, environmental politics, immigration, political values and governance, security and foreign policy.

However, you don’t need to worry too much about this, as we automatically refund your credit card if this happens.

You can find more about the review process at the Facebook policies.

Why do you bill in CHF only?

We are currently supporting payments from all major credit card issuers in CHF only (AMEX, Mastercard, Visa) as we are based in Switzerland. We are planning to accept more currencies soon.

How do the “Guaranteed Results” work?

Our polls are based on feedback from real people from all demographics on their favorite social media channels. While this makes it extremely valuable and accurate, it also exposes our method to human uniqueness and therefore unpredictability.

Based on our experience, the Boomerang engine is well oiled to reach 100% of the promised amount of responses (e.g. 500 answers for the PRO in 1 week) and this rarely is a problem.

If your poll doesn’t work (low engagement and therefore no poll results), we’ll stop the campaign after 24hrs and give you a full refund.