Toluna and similar DIY research platforms are rapidly transforming how businesses approach market research. No longer just tools for quick polling or last-minute testing, these platforms now have a critical role in shaping long-term strategy. Especially during annual or semi-annual planning cycles, the ability to quickly capture consumer input and test assumptions can make or break the strategic process.

Speed and Agility in an Uncertain Market

Traditional market research methods often take weeks – sometimes months – to deliver insights. But in a world where consumer preferences and market conditions shift quickly, companies need answers faster. That's where tools like Toluna stand out. They offer:

• Rapid turnaround times (often within days)
• Customizable surveys and sampling based on your target audience
• Integrated dashboards for real-time responses

This speed lets decision-makers respond to trends as they emerge rather than relying on outdated data.

Cost-Efficient Ways to Expand Research Capacity

DIY research platforms can also be more affordable than commissioning traditional agencies for every study, allowing insights teams to run multiple quick-turn projects throughout the year. This flexibility helps in maintaining a consumer-first approach across all stages of strategic planning – from early exploration to concept validation or category tracking.

An Ideal Fit for Continuous Strategy Refresh

Rather than relying on a massive annual survey, brands can now use Toluna data incrementally throughout the year. This builds a more complete picture of changing consumer preferences and market signals.

For example, imagine a CPG brand running quarterly consumer pulse surveys to track category attitudes. By the time they prepare for annual planning, they already have rolling insights that highlight emerging trends or concerns. That means less scrambling at the end of the year – and more thoughtful, evidence-based strategy shaping.

Why Tools Alone Aren’t Enough

While DIY research tools are powerful, they also require skill and strategy to use effectively. Creating clear hypotheses, asking the right questions, validating findings, and stitching together a compelling insight story – these are all tasks that go beyond tool features. That’s where SIVO’s On Demand Talent can make a difference. These are experienced consumer insights professionals who specialize in using platforms like Toluna not just to collect data, but to translate it into action.

For insights teams navigating tight deadlines or limited capacity, working with On Demand Talent brings immediate support while also building long-term capabilities. It’s an approach that helps businesses get more value out of their market research tools – and more alignment across strategy teams.

Running one Toluna survey gives you a helpful snapshot. But running multiple studies over time – and connecting those dots – provides the kind of strategic intelligence that fuels strong annual planning. Many businesses use Toluna to test concepts, track sentiment, explore new audiences, or validate market assumptions. The challenge? Distilling all of that into a unified story that supports decision-making.

Start with a Clear Planning Objective

Before diving into data, clarify what your business needs to learn in this planning cycle. Are you evaluating market fit for new products? Refreshing your brand strategy? Prioritizing investments?

Once the goal is clear, you can work backwards to know which parts of past research to revisit or combine. If you’ve run several Toluna surveys in the past year, it’s likely that the answers are there – they just need to be synthesized.

Map Your Research Portfolio

Think of the studies you’ve run as puzzle pieces. A mapping exercise can help you see how the different efforts connect. Consider tagging or categorizing your Toluna studies by topic, audience, or business objective.

Let’s say a retail brand has run three recent surveys through Toluna:

• One capturing shopper sentiment toward pricing changes
• Another testing messaging for a loyalty program
• And a third tracking awareness of competitors’ holiday promotions

While each survey had a different goal, viewed together, they provide clues about brand perception, competitive pressure, and messaging opportunities. The key is surfacing those connections and turning them into strategic insights.

Look for Themes and Market Signals

Combining multiple Toluna insights often highlights patterns that a single study might miss. Look for consistent themes across surveys, such as:

• Repeated concerns or barriers mentioned by consumers
• Changes in preference or brand loyalty
• Common associations with your product or category

These recurring ideas can serve as early warnings or competitive advantages – helping shape your planning priorities.

Synthesize, Don’t Just Summarize

Simply stringing data points together isn’t enough. Effective strategic planning requires synthesis – identifying what’s important, making sense of contradictions, and crafting a coherent narrative. That’s where many teams benefit from expert support.

SIVO’s On Demand Talent can step in as insight synthesizers – skilled at evaluating Toluna research, connecting dots, and shaping findings into a digestible and actionable story for business stakeholders. Unlike generic consultants or freelancers, these professionals become true partners in helping your team make the most of your research investments.

Build a Reusable Framework

Once you’ve done the work of combining and analyzing insights, build a lightweight framework to use in future planning cycles. This might include simple templates for mapping studies, identifying themes, and aligning findings with core business questions. That way, future waves of Toluna research build on past learning instead of starting from scratch each time.

When DIY research tools and seasoned insight professionals work together, the result is not just faster data collection – it’s smarter, more strategic planning decisions.

Strategic planning is rooted in the ability to recognize and act on emerging market signals. But when your data comes from multiple Toluna studies or is spread across different DIY research platforms, seeing these signals clearly can be a challenge. To move from data to direction, consumer insights teams need to know what to look for, and how to interpret it within the context of their industry and business goals.

What Are Market Signals?

Market signals are the patterns, trends, or shifts in behavior that indicate where things are headed. These can be subtle – a rising interest in sustainability across different surveys – or more pronounced, like a sharp drop in brand favorability within key demographics. DIY research tools like Toluna make it easier than ever to gather ongoing feedback, but interpreting signals still requires strategic thinking.

To identify key signals within Toluna data, consider the following filters:

• Consistency Across Studies: Is the same insight appearing across multiple surveys or time periods?
• Significance of Change: Is the change large enough to drive action, or within a normal fluctuation?
• Audience Segmentation: Are specific customer segments responding differently, and what might that mean for targeting or messaging?
• Behavior vs. Attitudes: Are shifts in what people do aligning with what they say?

For example, in a fictional case of a beverage company using Toluna over three quarterly pulses, leadership noticed a steady decline in purchase intent among Gen Z respondents. While other demo groups held steady, the dip among this key growth audience became a clear signal that the brand needed to revisit relevance and product marketing strategies.

Without zooming out to analyze trends across studies, this insight may have been overlooked. Strategically, it triggered a response to adapt communications and reinvest in flavor innovation aligned with younger consumers’ preferences.

Recognizing these shifts allows teams to anchor their strategy refresh in real-world feedback rather than assumptions. Toluna insights, when interpreted correctly, offer leading indicators of market dynamics – not just retrospective views.

With the explosion of DIY research platforms, consumer insights teams are running faster than ever – launching more surveys, testing more ideas, and collecting more data. But more data doesn’t automatically mean better strategy. That's where the value of expert insight synthesis comes in – and why tapping experienced On Demand Talent can make all the difference.

While DIY tools like Toluna offer flexibility and speed, many teams struggle to weave together findings into a cohesive, strategy-ready story. It’s easy to get stuck in the weeds, unsure how one study connects to the next. This is especially true when internal teams are overstretched or lack deep expertise in strategic storytelling.

SIVO’s On Demand Talent helps bridge that gap, offering experienced consumer insights professionals who know how to:

• Connect dots across multiple Toluna studies and other research sources
• Spot meaningful patterns that align with strategic priorities
• Structure insights in a way that builds consensus across stakeholders
• Ensure insights stay objective, actionable, and tied to business decisions

Unlike freelance platforms or traditional consultants, our professionals are already well-versed in leading market research tools, including Toluna. They’re operational partners – ready to jump in quickly, understand your business, and help drive planning outcomes forward.

For example, a fictional mid-size cosmetics brand brought in a SIVO On Demand expert during annual planning. The team had run multiple Toluna studies on sustainability, pricing sensitivity, and competitive perceptions – but was overwhelmed trying to pull them together. The On Demand Talent not only synthesized the findings, but facilitated workshops to align marketing and product teams around refreshed audience personas and a clarified brand voice rooted in real consumer signals.

Whether you’re short on time, resources, or simply need a fresh perspective, bringing in On Demand Talent during strategy season ensures your investment in tools like Toluna leads to more than just data – it leads to real impact.

Insight alone doesn’t drive business strategy – it’s the narrative built around that insight that moves organizations to act. A strategic narrative turns individual data points from your Toluna studies into a compelling story that aligns stakeholders, drives clarity, and informs decision-making. But crafting that narrative takes more than reporting results – it requires synthesis, storytelling, and a strong sense of business context.

After you’ve gathered feedback through Toluna panels and touchpoints, the next step is to connect the dots and guide leadership through the ‘so what?’ and ‘now what?’ moments. That’s where many strategy refresh efforts stall – drowning in decks filled with disconnected charts and findings, but lacking a clear message.

How to Build a Strategic Narrative with Toluna Data

Start by grouping your findings into themes tied to your core strategic pillars – customer needs, category dynamics, competitive differentiation, or brand positioning, for example. Then structure your narrative around business implications:

• What’s changing? Highlight shifts from the past year uncovered across your studies.
• Why does it matter? Explain why these changes are important – connect it to risks, opportunities, or audience movement.
• Where do we go next? Outline potential directions in response to the insights uncovered.

For instance, imagine a fictional home goods retailer using Toluna to explore evolving preferences around home office setups. Three separate studies touched on comfort, clutter, and consumer workflow frustrations. When synthesized, the strategic narrative pointed to an opportunity to reposition product lines around flexibility – ultimately guiding both merchandising and creative strategy for the next year.

The key isn’t just to inform, but to inspire action. By elevating your Toluna insights into a strategic narrative, you give teams a roadmap grounded in real consumer behavior – not just instinct or legacy goals.

Bringing in insight storytelling expertise through SIVO’s On Demand Talent can help sharpen the story, especially when communicating across departments or up to executive leadership. With support from professionals trained in both market research tools and strategic framing, your planning process becomes not only data-informed – but story-driven and business-ready.