How To Use A Market Research Survey

Let Customers Tell You Where Profits Lie

Market research surveys are instrumental in discovery and they are very helpful when it comes time to create your product. Your marketplace tells you what they want, and how much they’re willing to pay for it. Most importantly, you get to decide if your previous research has not shown you how much profit potential your niche really holds.

What types of questions should you ask? Basically, ask every question you can think of to help you know the interest level in your product idea. Do not make your survey too lengthy if you have not earned the trust of your prospect yet. Let’s take a look at a sample question list.

We’ll approach this one as if we were writing an e-book on ”Snoring”. This information will offer you direct access to your customers’ minds so you can discover exactly how they feel about your niche product ideas and other similar products and services being offered to them.

Sample Survey

1. What is your age?
2. Do you snore while sleeping?
3. Please list your number one question or concern about snoring.
4. Is your snoring so bad it interferes with your sleep or the sleep of someone else?
5. Are you willing to try “Nase Master” to cure your snoring?
6. How if at all have you tried to cure your snoring in the past?
7. How successful was it?

This is a fictional questionnaire, but just look at all the useful data you can gain from this:

• The intensity of the marketplace’s desire for a solution
• The willingness of the niche to try out yet another solution
• The niche’s hidden, core concerns about the problem

You will need to use a different style to find out what they would be willing to pay. You never know what you might find out there could be many prospects who comment and tell you they have tried Nase Master and it doesn’t work and they are looking for something better. We don’t know what Nase Master is here mind you as we just made up that name and maybe they tell you they’ve tried them all and would rather learn how to minimize symptoms.

You could choose to switch your focus and create a product about snoring symptom management, or you could factor in this skepticism as an obstacle you need to overcome in your sales copy. If you can’t get anyone to respond to your survey even by offering something free to them in exchange it’s a good sign that your niche or perhaps the product you have for that niche will not make a profit.

How Surveys Help You

Market Research
Do you actually know who’s buying your products? (How old they are, where they live, what their income and education levels are, etc.) Surveys are a great way to find out! Once you know who you’re selling to, you’ll find it far easier to create a sales message that really speaks to their needs. The great news is, there are lots of different free software programs available on line you can use to create a question list in a few minutes.

My favorites are:

• Freedback (www.freedback.com)
• Survey Methods (www.surveymethods.com)

Freedback is a monthly fee and is hosted, but gives you unlimited survey capability and allows you to track many things. Survey Methods is a great one time use service and perfect if you aren’t doing repetitive surveying. They are both great and you will need to decide on them based on your business model.

Product Development
If you have a product, you can discover exactly what your customers like about it, and how they’d like to see it improved. If you don’t have a product you can discover what your customers think about the products currently available what’s good about them and where they’re not meeting their customers’ needs. Then you can come up with new products that target needs that aren’t being met by existing products, and virtually guarantee your success before you even get started.

Sales Copy
You can discover which features and benefits are most important to your customers, and feature them more prominently in your sales copy. You can also discover more about the language people use when describing these features and benefits, so you can make sure your sales message speaks to people in their own words.

Price Testing
You can discover how much people are willing to pay for different products and services. Just be aware that what people say and do are often different things. You’ll need to do some actual price testing to confirm whether the price people say they’re willing to pay is what they’re actually willing to pay.

I will discuss the best way to create the four different types of surveys above that do the work you need to uncover these areas soon.

A Market Research Survey Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog