What does your prospect or customer think?
Customer surveys can help you uncover traits about who your prospects are and/or what customers think. By asking them questions about who they are, their purchasing habits and product preferences, you can gain an understanding of what messages might appeal to them as you continue to refine your customer profile and look for ways to entice them with your offering.
There are several online survey tools to help you get started. Once your survey is prepared, an email is sent to the prospect with an embedded link directing them to your online survey to complete. You could also announce the link via social media sites to increase response. If you want to ensure customer satisfaction, a customer survey is a great way to find out what customers think, which can help you improve your offering.
Developing your survey…
Keep questions short and easy to understand so that they are not open to interpretation.1 Confusing questions will lead to unreliable results as will biased questions or having questions ordered in such a way that they lead to certain conclusions.
Keep your survey length as short as possible. Short surveys have a higher probability of being completed than longer ones. Ideally, survey response time should be under 12 minutes; some would say 8 minutes.2
Depending upon where you’re at with defining your target customer, either focus on 2 or 3 primary issues or cover a breadth of topics at a high level to gain direction on what needs more definition.
Discover who your customers are
Ultimately, you’ll need to understand who your best customers are likely to be so you will need to understand key purchasing habits (where, when, how and related motivators); pricing; pain point; socio-economic factors; expectations or needs; education level required; political disposition; interests; plus more factors. With this knowledge, you can improve your messaging to attract larger target audiences.
Don’t forget
Be sure to test your sample survey on a small size to ensure it works properly.3 You don’t want potential prospects to be frustrated in responding to your survey or find you’re not getting results properly from the tool you selected.
Also, include a sense of urgency to inspire timely completion.
Provide an incentive…
Encourage people to complete the survey by offering them something in return – like a future discount or winning some item.4 Remember, you are asking them to give up their free time to help you.
Tips!
Some online survey resources* offer free plans…
* Links direct to third party sites where they are responsible for content. See our Terms of Use policy for more information.
Discover More…
- “Designing a Survey.” Science Buddies. Accessed January 4, 2024. http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Soc_survey.shtml.
- Marrs, Megan. “7 Best Survey Tools: Create Awesome Surveys for Free!” WordStream (blog). Last modified November 4, 2014. http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/11/10/best-online-survey-tools.
- Peters, Christopher. “How to Design and Analyze a Survey.” Zapier. Accessed January 4, 2024. https://zapier.com/learn/forms-surveys/design-analyze-survey/.
- Pickavance, Mike. “Best Survey Tools of 2018.” Future plc. Last modified July 5, 2018. https://www.techradar.com/news/best-survey-tool.
- Smith Ph.D., Scott. “Create A Survey With These 4 Common Sense Tips.” Qualtrics (blog). Last modified February 27, 2018. https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/creating-surveys/.
- Stec, Carly. “How to Create Online Surveys People Will Actual Take [Infographic].” HubSpot, Inc. (blog). Last modified February 24, 2016. http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/online-survey-tips#sm.0000140ibqol22dijv07cihhjv0yi.
- “Surveys 101 – Design Surveys, Collect Responses, and Analyze the Data Like a Pro.” SurveyMonkey. Accessed January 4, 2024. https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/survey-guidelines/.
- Vannette, Dave. “10 Tips for Building Effective Surveys.” Qualtrics (blog). Last modified August 10, 2015. https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/10-tips-for-building-effective-surveys/.
- Wexler, Keren. “10 Questions to Ask Before Launching Mobile App Surveys.” MarketingProfs LLC. Last modified May 6, 2015. http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2016/29873/10-questions-to-ask-before-launching-mobile-app-surveys.
