Are Marketing Research Surveys Bunk? 3

Technically Set Up A Client Survey

Recommended Survey Tools

There are a lot of market research survey tools available. Some are exceptionally good and feature rich. For example “Survey Methods” has a lot of features and is good to conduct surveys of any type and size. Flexibility and pricing for what it does makes it best in class. Which tool is suitable for you? All you need is a form asking three questions to begin with, but you will be using a more involved online survey later. I recommend you use Survey Methods because it has features which will improve your ability to build many aspects of your survey foundations.

It was created with beginner and advanced methods both in mind and is a tool you can grow into. This tool can add forms quickly and easily to your websites. You don’t need to have any knowledge of HTML or Programming. This tool works perfectly for our objective of creating a “three question” customer survey and expanding on that later. You will be able to create a new  online survey in a few minutes. You can get a free version of this tool at Survey Methods.

Make Your First Customer Survey

You will see that creating an online survey is pretty easy by using the tool we mentioned above. Go check out the demo on their site to find out how it works and how to easily create a super professional looking questionnaire in no time flat at Survey Methods. This type of tool was not in existence up until a few years ago.

Sample Survey Page

I have also made a research questionnaire template for you which you can grab at this link Survey Template. You are free to edit this template to your needs. To edit this template you will need a WYSIWYG or a “what you see is what you get” html editor. I recommend a free html editor for this. It is free yet does everything you need for the purpose of the survey template and is called Trellian Webpage.

You can get a free copy at Trellian and use my template as an example for your questions and redesign it with Trellian using their manual located on the same site or just use these questions inside of Survey Methods service. The more important thing to learn over the mechanics of creating a survey is the strategy behind the survey and the way you ask your questions and the message you send with the survey page.

What They Say vs What They Do

The truth of what someone says they are going to do and what someone really does are usually two different things. An example question is: “How much should my product cost?” If you were the prospect for my product, and you thought that ultimately we were going to try to sell you this product you would probably try to say something low price wise knowing it would help you. You might say $20 even though you knew it was worth $100.

Think about a sales landing page such as a landing page with long sales copy. Most people will say they don’t like that style of marketing, but usually these sites out-perform traditional multi-page and corporate type websites. Once more people’s opinions vary greatly from their usual actions. Many survey questions don’t have this problem, but too many do. If you are going to use a survey how do you solve this problem? The answer is by properly wording the survey question you can get very close to what the prospect will actually do.

Ingredients of the Survey

You can see in the sample template the three main parts of your survey:

1. Headline
2. Page Text
3. The Survey Form

Survey Headline

A headline is simply the reflection or summary of your question. Try to make your headline so a visitor doesn’t lose interest in your page. It should be something that advances the reader to the next line. In our example survey the headline is “What is your biggest problem in training your dog”?

Survey Page Text

The page text should explain what you are up to and why you need the opinion of your prospect. This is where you will make a first impression of your product so this part is important. In this step you want to give details about what you want to do and how a prospect can help you improve the quality of your product. Let’s see how we present our product and ask for the input from the visitor for our example of creating an e-book on dog training.

I am writing a new e-book covering different methods on how to train your dog. This will cover many different aspects of dog training. I want to make sure that I don’t leave any important issue or problem unanswered regarding dog training. Will you help me? I respect your time and input. Let me know the most important questions or problems you have in training your dog and i will try to answer them in my list of potential topics in the e-book. To say thank you for your precious time I will send a free copy of this e-book to you which I expect to sell at a decent price”.

There are a few points to notice.:

• It shows you have done your home work
• It shows your seriousness about the quality of the product
• It gives a hint about the product
• It asks for help in a respectable manner
• It gives importance to the visitor’s feedback
• It acknowledges the importance of the visitor’s time
• It offers an ethical bribe

On the other hand if you phrase your page text like this:

I want to make a product and i want you to give me your opinions on what I should add in this product. So please let me know what topics I should cover in this e-book”.

Now phrasing like this shows that you have no knowledge of the market and you are looking to your visitors to do your work. This will not only make you look bad but also ruin your credibility as the expert in the field. As we earlier mentioned bad phrasing can backfire on you and rather than benefiting from this awesome method you will lose your current standing with prospects.

If you want to learn as much about creating the absolute best market surveys possible and doubling your websites profits then I cannot recommend anyone or product more strongly than Dr. Glen Livingston’s “ How To Double Your Business”. His course can help you save your business in these rough economic times.

Marketing Research Surveys Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog