If you're in business, you already know how essential it
is to "listen" to your customers. What you may NOT have
realized, though, is that there is no better way to truly
understand your customers' deepest desires (the wants and
needs that guide and motivate each and every one of their
buying decisions) than by conducting a survey.
A carefully constructed survey can be a powerful tool for
striking up a personal conversation with your customers to
learn exactly how they feel about your company, products,
and services -- valuable insights that give you the
opportunity to TURBO-CHARGE YOUR PROFITS BY:
- Gaining a greater understanding of your potential buyers'
interests, challenges, values, and lifestyles and using
this information to make adjustments to your product or
service (or the way it's packaged) to INCREASE USABILITY
AND APPEAL.
- Re-writing the benefits emphasized in your salescopy to
focus closely on those that are of GREATEST INTEREST TO
YOUR TARGET MARKET.
- Discovering new or under-served micro-niches (those tiny
groups of customers who are typically ignored by large
corporations) and TAPPING INTO THESE ADDITIONAL PROFIT
CHANNELS.
- SPOTTING FADS AND MARKET TRENDS QUICKLY and capitalizing
on them before your competitors do.
... all without the typical costs associated with offline
surveys, all within a matter of a few days (or even a few
hours)!
Of course, writing and distributing surveys has become a bit
of a science. Questions need to be carefully worded to avoid
biasing the respondent.
Formatting issues need to be addressed before you can start
writing as this will affect the layout of your questions.
And questions of how you will distribute your survey need to
be carefully researched to avoid some dangerous (and
potentially costly) pitfalls.
Recently, when we put together our own Internet Marketing
Center survey (which you can view now by visiting
http://www.marketingtips.com/survey ) we did extensive
research into survey development and distribution.
And while we already had quite a bit of experience designing
surveys that get results, we were a bit shocked by some of
our findings regarding the latest survey distribution
solutions.
So we thought we'd pass this information along to you in the
form of five simple steps that will allow you to create and
distribute your own survey to generate the highest response
-- while avoiding the costs, pitfalls, and hassles that can
be associated with this process.
STEP #1 -- Defining Your Objective:
Before you start writing your survey questions, it's important
that you take time to CLEARLY MAP OUT YOUR OBJECTIVES:
what do you want to accomplish with your survey?
Do you want to:
- Learn what your existing customers think of your product
or service?
- Find out what your visitors think of your web site's
functionality?
- Discover whether or not your newsletter subscribers are
satisfied with the articles you've been giving them?
- Uncover the objections your potential customers have to
buying your product?
- Research market trends and find out whether or not the
product you've been thinking about developing is going
to be a big hit or a huge flop?
Whatever it is, it's extremely important that you CLEARLY
DEFINE YOUR OBJECTIVE RIGHT FROM THE START as this will
affect every step you take from that point forward, from
deciding who will receive your survey to writing your
questions to choosing a method of distribution.
In fact, once you've defined your goals, it should be
abundantly obvious who your survey will target, be it your
customers, your newsletter subscribers, your web site
visitors, visitors to another web site or newsgroup, etc...
And once you know WHO you're going to be surveying, deciding
HOW you're going to survey them becomes much easier:
- If you're targeting your web site visitors, your survey
could appear as a pop-up on your web site.
- If you're targeting your existing customers, you could
send your survey via e-mail.
- If you're researching market trends and don't have an
opt-in e-mail list of your own, you might purchase ad
space in an industry newsletter and include a link to
your survey.
Whatever it is you want to know, whoever you want to ask,
and however you want to collect the data, by defining your
objective and then building your survey with it in mind at
all times, you'll SAVE YOURSELF LOADS OF TIME AND MONEY.
Plus, you'll also ensure that the results you get provide
you with the strategic information you need to MAKE SMART
BUSINESS DECISIONS and increase your online income.
STEP #2 -- Writing Effective Questions:
The questions you write will ultimately determine the
usefulness of the answers you collect, so pay careful
attention not only to what you ask, but how you ask it.
Poorly worded questions can result in useless, biased
answers and can even cause participants to lose interest
and leave your survey incomplete.
Points to keep in mind when writing your questions
include:
- KEEP YOUR QUESTIONS SHORT AND TO THE POINT. By using
simple language and avoiding jargon and acronyms, you
make your questions easy to read and increase the
probability that your respondents will complete your
survey.
- AVOID WRITING QUESTIONS THAT MAKE ASSUMPTIONS. For
example, you shouldn't ask "Is your dog male or female?"
without leaving room for the possibility that respondents
may not own a dog.
- AVOID ASKING LEADING QUESTIONS such as:"Through phone
conversations with my customers, I've learned that most
people prefer to receive their newsletter in text format
as opposed to HTML. How do you prefer to receive your
newsletter?" The stated preference will bias the results.
- AVOID QUESTIONS THAT ASK RESPONDENTS TO REVEAL SENSITIVE
OR EMBARRASSING INFORMATION (or if you must ask the
question, place it towards the end of your survey, after
a few non-threatening but related questions).
- LIMIT THE NUMBER OF OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS YOU ASK (i.e.
questions that require a written response) as these are
less likely to be answered. Well-written multiple choice
and scaled questions (i.e., questions that ask the
respondent to rate something) are generally preferred
because they're faster to answer.
Most important, be careful that you don't succumb to the
temptation to ask every question you can think of, regardless
of whether or not it contributes to your objectives. Do you
REALLY need to know the middle name of their grandmother's
first cousin? Probably not...
The fewer questions you ask, the more responses you'll
receive. And more responses equals more accurate, more
useful data!
STEP #3 -- Formatting Your Survey:
The way you design your overall survey and lay out each
question is going to have a huge impact on how your questions
are interpreted and whether or not your survey is completed.
DESIGNING YOUR QUESTIONS:
Obviously, how you design and format your questions is going
to be affected by how you choose to distribute your survey.
If you're e-mailing the survey to your customers in a plain
text format, you're going to be more restricted in the types
of questions you can ask because there are only a handful of
ways you can format the answers.
On the other hand, if your survey will be Web based, you have
the option of using bolding, color, and graphics to enhance
readability.
Of course, limitations aside, you have quite a few formatting
options to choose from when designing your survey questions,
including:
- Multiple choice questions
- Open-ended questions (e.g."What do you think about...?"
Answer:______)
- Rating scales (e.g. "On a scale of 1 to 10 -- 1 being
Strongly Agree and 10 being Strongly Disagree -- do you
think...")
- Agreement scales (e.g. "The sky is blue." Do you: Strongly
Agree / Agree / Not Sure / Disagree / Strongly Disagree)
- Check boxes (e.g. "Check the statement that most closely
describes how...")
As I've already mentioned, you'll want to limit the number of
open-ended questions you ask, as respondents typically prefer
multiple choice style questions.
However, when presenting possible answers to multiple choice
questions, it's usually a good idea to include an "Other"
option; this leaves room for answers and possibilities that
you may not have thought of.
ORDERING YOUR QUESTIONS:
While you shouldn't immediately bombard your respondents
with your toughest questions, you should try to place the
questions you most want answered closer to the beginning
of your survey as opposed to the end.
That way, if respondents decide not to complete the entire
survey, at least you'll have answers to your most important
questions.
Of course, with that said, you should be sure to start your
survey with a few easy questions that get the respondent
comfortable answering your questions and DEVELOP A RAPPORT
with them. This will help to ensure that when you ask the
tough questions, respondents won't shy away and you'll get
more accurate, honest answers.
Also, be careful to ASK QUESTIONS IN A LOGICAL ORDER. Just
like good writing is structured to guide the reader through
the text, a well-designed survey flows naturally through a
logical sequence of questions that keeps respondents
answering. By jumping around, asking unrelated questions,
you'll confuse people and drive them away.
STEP #4 -- Deciding How You'll Distribute It:
You basically have three choices for distributing your
survey. You can:
- SEND THE SURVEY DIRECTLY IN AN E-MAIL.
Obviously, the biggest advantage of doing your survey by
e-mail is that it's FREE (assuming you have your own opt-in
e-mail list). You can design your survey in just a few short
hours, e-mail it to your customers and subscribers, and
START RECEIVING RESULTS WITHIN HOURS.
The drawbacks are that:
- You're limited in the questions you can ask by the plain
text format;
- You must enter the results you generate by hand into a
database or spreadsheet, which can be very time-consuming;
- And compiling and analyzing the results can be confusing
(especially if you're not very good at math).
If you have a few hundred customers or subscribers, and you
have only 10 to 15 questions you'd like to ask, an e-mail
survey might be the most cost-effective choice for you.
However, if you want to survey a larger group, or if you'd
like to include more customization, a web-based survey may
better suit your needs.
- HOST THE SURVEY ON YOUR WEB SITE.
The beauty of designing a web-based survey is that you can
not only include HTML enhancements like color and graphics,
you also have the option of making it "dynamic," which means
you can CUSTOMIZE THE QUESTIONS EACH PERSON WILL ANSWER
based on their responses to a few key questions.
For example, if you sold three products on your web site, you
might want to ask different questions about each. Rather
than forcing all of your survey respondents to wade through
questions about products they don't own, you could design a
dynamic survey that asks:
Which of the following products do you own?
Check all that apply:
[] Product #1
[] Product #2
[] Product #3
Based on the respondent's answer, the dynamic survey would
automatically customize the questions that follow.
Unfortunately, the do-it-yourself web-based survey can be
really difficult to implement unless you're prepared to hire
a programmer or you have advanced programming skills yourself
because:
- Building your own survey to customize the questions to
individual respondents, track the results, store the
results, and then manipulate them into useful reports is
a huge undertaking.
- The survey software that's available (ranging in
price from $299 to $799+) typically needs to be customized,
which once again means you need advanced programming skills.
... Quite frankly, unless money isn't an object and you have
a skilled programmer at your disposal, hosting your survey
directly on your site really isn't worth the time and
expense given the third-party solutions that are now
available.
- USE A THIRD-PARTY SURVEY PROVIDER WHO WILL HOST THE
SURVEY ON THEIR SITE.
If you are planning to survey more than a couple of hundred
people, a third-party survey provider is the route I'd
personally recommend you go (in fact, this is how we
recently implemented our own survey).
You'll get all the benefits of a FULLY-CUSTOMIZED, DYNAMIC
SURVEY WITH REAL-TIME TRACKING and analysis of your results
without the programming headaches and expense.
Depending on the survey provider you choose, you'll either
be asked to fill out your questions in a special template
they'll give you OR you'll be asked to send them your
questions in a simple Word document.
Either way, the survey provider will look after all of the
technical "behind-the-scenes" programming issues.
If you have a large number of opt-in e-mail subscribers
that you plan to survey, another big benefit of third-party
survey hosting is that YOU DON'T GET STUCK WITH THE INCREASED
BANDWIDTH CHARGES that come with hosting the survey on your
own site.
Plus, even though your survey is hosted on their web site,
your survey respondents will never know they've left YOUR
web site.
Most survey providers offer FULL CUSTOMIZATION OF YOUR SURVEY
with your logo, your graphics, and your web site colors, all
of which appears in a frame set on your site (your survey is
still hosted on the survey provider's site, but the survey
pages are "called" from their site into a frame set on your
site).
Of course, with all of that said, when we were preparing to
choose a third-party provider for our most recent survey, we
spent a lot of time carefully researching all of the options
available, and based on what we learned, I WOULD LIKE TO
OFFER YOU A COUPLE OF WORDS OF CAUTION:
- YOU SHOULD ALWAYS REMAIN 100% IN CONTROL OF YOUR OPT-IN
E-MAIL LIST. To distribute your survey to your customers
and subscribers, some third-party providers will insist
that you give them your opt-in e-mail list. (This is
especially common among "free" and "low cost" providers.)
Don't do it! This is your private property and you have
a responsibility to your customers and subscribers to
protect their personal information. Don't hand this over
to anyone, ever!
- BE WARY OF THOSE SURVEY PROVIDERS WHO OFFER "FREE" OR
"LOW COST" SERVICES. There are frequently hidden costs
that can snowball very quickly.
For example, some survey providers will quote you a price
for 300 or 500 or 1,000 responses, but then charge you a
fee of as much as $1.60 (or more) per response over your
quota.
Deals that sound too good to be true usually are.
The reality is, if you have more than a few hundred subscribers
and you plan to ask more than 10 basic questions, you need a
professional survey provider, not some $20 deal that requires
you hand over your entire opt-in e-mail list to strangers,
and not some service that charges you "per response" over
a set quota.
The third-party provider we finally settled on to host our
survey had none of those "surprise charges" and we
maintained full control of our customer and subscriber list.
We just sent them a Word document with all of our questions,
and they put together a very professional-looking, dynamic
survey using the logos, colors, and design we wanted. They
even double-check and test the logic of your survey
questions to make sure everything flows and makes sense.
I think what really impressed us most about this company
is that they're not intent on two-bitting you to death with
"extra" charges for the essential services you need.
In fact, we found them to be priced 30-50% lower than their
closest competitors. Plus, they're really dedicated to ensuring
you get the best results from your survey and their customer
service far exceeded our expectations.
If you'd like to check them out for yourself, you can visit
http://www.marketingtips.com/livesurveys. Right now, they're
offering a $100 gift certificate to anyone who tries out
their demo, to be used towards your first market research
project with them.
Honestly, after the endless hours of extensive research we put
into this, I really can't recommend anyone higher.
STEP #5 -- Persuading Them To Participate:
Once you're ready to launch your survey, you'll need to turn
your attention to persuading your customers and subscribers
to actually fill it out. Here are a few suggestions for
maximizing your response rate:
- Offer an incentive like a free gift or enter respondents
into a special prize draw (this will increase the response
you receive by as much as 17%).
- Let respondents know that their answers will be kept in
the strictest of confidence.
- Tell them you want their honest opinions, good and bad.
- Provide your contact information for those people who want
to verify where the survey is coming from.
- End your survey with a nice thank you that lets respondents
know you've received their answers and when they'll receive
their gift, or that you've entered them in your special prize
draw.
These simple but effective little steps can have a dramatic
impact on the overall response you receive to your survey.
Remember, offer a benefit to your customers and subscribers
that rewards them for participating and lets them know that
you'll be using the results to improve your product,
service, or newsletter to benefit them!
Final Thoughts:
Before you launch your survey on a wide scale, do a small
test to a handful of participants to make sure all your
questions are understandable and not offensive in any way.
If the wording or layout of any questions need to be tweaked,
it's better to find this out before you send your survey to
your entire opt-in list.
Then, once the results are in, don't let this valuable
information sit idly, gathering dust on your desk. Use it as
a guide for improving the vitality of your business.
Now is not the time to be sensitive or offended if some
of the answers appear overly critical or unreasonable. Take
deep breaths and make objective decisions about whether or
not there are areas of your business that could be improved.
Even small changes to your sales copy, your packaging, your
web site design, etc... can make a BIG difference in the
sales you close. Use this competitive intelligence to stay
on top of how your customers and subscribers are feeling
about your offer and your business. And then USE THIS
INFORMATION TO PROSPER AND GROW!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Corey Rudl is the owner of four highly
successful online businesses that attract more than 6
million visitors and generate over $5.2 million each year.
He is also the author of the #1 best-selling Internet
Marketing course online.
To check out his site that's JAM-PACKED WITH THE EXACT
INFORMATION YOU NEED to start, build, and grow your very
own profitable Internet business, I highly recommend
visiting the Internet Marketing Center.
This guy really knows what he's talking about! |
