One of the most important factors in improving marketing and sales performance is understanding the needs, wants, perception and motivations of your target audience. And in order to improve, you need to ask, gather, analyze, modify and test – so here’s a few hints that will help you ask the right questions…
1. Clearly define the purpose of your survey
Clarity is key. Good surveys have focused objectives that are easily understood. Spend time up front to identify, in writing:
- What is the goal of this survey?
- Why are you creating this survey?
- What do you hope to accomplish with this survey?
- How will you use the data you are collecting?
- What decisions do you hope to impact with the results of this survey? (This will later help you identify what data you need to collect in order to make these decisions.)
Though these questions may seem rather obvious, you should go through the process Sounds obvious, but we have seen plenty of surveys where a few minutes of planning could have made the difference between receiving quality responses (responses that are useful as inputs to decisions) or un–interpretable data.
Imagine your goal is to identify ways to improve your product in order to deliver greater value to your customers. If you were to ask ‘How can we improve our product?’, you would most likely get answers like ‘Make it easier’ . But you can’t really act on that statement with confidence – you would need an answer like ‘Color code cable and plus for easier assembly’.
Spending time identifying the objective might have helped the survey creators determine:
- Are we trying to understand our customers’ perception of our products in order to identify areas of improvement (e.g. hard to use, time consuming, unreliable)?
- Are we trying to understand the value of specific enhancements? They would have been better off asking customers to please rank from 1 – 5 the importance of adding X new functionality.
Your success will come from advanced planning and stepping back from your survey and looking at it as if you were the respondent. (Ask what type of information you need, then look at the question and give some thought to whether or not the question will get you what you need.)
2. Respect the Respondent’s Time
Keep your survey short – under 10 minutes is a good rule of thumb for a as typical survey of customers, shorter for those that don’t have a relationship established with your business. Fail to follow this hint and watch people abandon the survey before completion – leaving you without the quantity of information you need.
3. Focus on a single issue – don’t over do it.
Focus on a single objective and don’t fall try to accomplish too much. Make sure each of your questions is focused on helping to meet your stated objective. Don’t toss in ‘nice to have’ questions that don’t directly provide data to help you meet your objectives.
4. Follow the KISS Principle
Try to make your questions as specific and direct as possible. As mentioned earlier, ask the respondent to rank the importance of “Color coded cables and sockets for faster, easier assembly” rather than “How can we improve the assembly process?”
4. Use closed ended rather than open ended questions whenever possible.
Closed ended questions give respondents specific choices (e.g. Yes or No), making it easier to analyze results. Examples include yes/no, multiple choice or rating scale. Open–ended questions allow people to answer a question in their own words.
Open–ended questions are great supplemental questions and may provide useful qualitative information and insights. However, for collating and analysis purposes, close–ended questions are preferable.
5. Be consistent
Rating scales are a great way to measure and compare sets of variables. If you elect to use rating scales (e.g. from 1 – 5) keep it consistent throughout the survey. Use the same number of points on the scale and make sure meanings of high and low stay consistent throughout the survey. Switching your rating scales around will confuse survey takers, which will lead to untrustworthy responses.
6. Be logical
Explain your reason for requesting their input, then start with broader questions and become more specific over time. You will want to request demographic data and ask any sensitive questions at the end (unless you are using this information to screen out survey participants).
7. Pre–test your survey
This is often times overlooked or ignored – but it can save you a great deal of time, money, energy and sanity. Invite a small group of people to take the survey in order to see if they have any problems or issues. Use their feedback to modify the survey and, if necessary, test again. Otherwise, once is enough and you can launch your survey to the larger audience.
8. Invite and remind
When launching an on-line survey, remember to invite respondents and then, if possible, remind those that haven’t responded after an appropriate period of time.
9. Consider your audience
If your audience is business buyers, you might want to limit your invitation and survey to weekdays – but consumers may be more receptive to weekend surveys.
10. Incentives can increase response rates
Depending upon the type of survey and survey audience, offering an incentive is usually very effective at improving response rates. People like the idea of getting something for their time. Research has shown that incentives typically boost response rates by 50% on average.
Just remember to keep the incentive appropriate – overly large incentives can lead to undesirable behavior such as misrepresenting themselves.
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