Learning more about your customer base may be the number one way to grow your presence in the market and zoom ahead of your competition. However, those same tired customer surveys from years ago are simply not getting the job done anymore. We’ve put together five tips to help you supercharge your surveys and “make them great again!” What could be better than that?
- Do Your “Pre-Search” – Instead of asking your customers for all the information, dig into that information you already have on file (big data, anyone?) and utilize it. When you already know the basics about your customers, you have a better idea about the right questions to ask and you’ll get better, more useful responses.
- Avoid the Yes or No – Yes and no questions are no fun to answer and really don’t give you a lot of insight. Ask questions that give your customers a chance to share their feelings and beliefs. You’ll get deeper insight and avoid boredom.
- Offer an Incentive – While you can’t always give a big reward for completing a simple survey, sometimes a small incentive is all it takes to make your customers feel good about participating in your research project. One bonus is that if you offer a discount code, for example, is that you may gain some extra business from your survey too, so it becomes a win-win scenario.
- Make the Survey Easy to Access – Don’t choose a survey program that requires the user to download an app or a specific web browser. Instead choose something that is easy to access from phone, tablet or computer. When you do this, it is much more likely that your user will follow through and complete the survey while it is on the brain.
- Make Things Light Hearted – While you want to take things seriously, don’t be afraid to be a little light-hearted too. Don’t take things too seriously and your customers will respond with their willingness to participate.
Surveys may not be anyone’s favorite thing, but they are a very important part of the marketing cycle. By utilizing them carefully, and only as needed, you can get that much-needed data and build your future marketing campaigns in a way that allows you succeed—even in a highly competitive marketplace.
