4 Tips to Do Online Surveys

Today I received a call that inspired me to write this article, although I already had the idea of writing on this topic, it was this anecdote that "spilled the last drop."

The home phone rings as usual, I answer and a female voice says: «Hello, we are from consultancy X, if you are over 18 years old, press 1»

My first reflection is the same as everyone else's ... Hang up the phone and say some insults because they made me get up from the chair for no reason, hardly anyone presses 1.

I know that I am exaggerating, since these surveys would not continue to be done if nobody answered them, what I question is the reliability of the information obtained through them, perhaps that explains why many times companies make decisions that they seem not to have no sense or like anyone.

What is a survey?

Basically it is an information exchange, where data is obtained directly from our market that helps us define decisions, new projects, improve our products / services and measure which of our strategies are working best for us ... or at least that should be .

From the beginning, the respondent must be made aware that the survey is being carried out to improve the services that they currently consume, which is a win-win situation.

The call I received could be interpreted as real life spam, since he did not say anything to me, the greeting was very kind (even though it was an automated call) but they did not tell me how the call benefits me or about what product / service were they going to ask me.

Nobody wants to waste time and everything that fails the "Who cares?" it is automatically rejected.

So here are 4 tips when doing an online survey:

1) Ask our audience: The quality of the information is obviously much better if we ask those who are really interested in our products / services.

If they surveyed me about baseball bats, I could not contribute anything, however if they survey me about characteristics that I like in an electric guitar, my opinion would really be valid for that company since if they do something that I like, it is very possible that I will buy it.

On the Internet it is much easier to ask directly to our real market since social media and search engine advertising allow us to "catch red-handed" our audiences.

2) Let it be known that "we all win": We have to let those who respond to our survey know how to answer it benefits them, for example if I did a survey on what are the topics of interest to my audience, I would let them know that this is to determine the direction of my articles in 2010 .

We all win, I will write articles that really interest my readers and they will receive useful information for their needs ... where can they find a better deal than this?

3) Give rewards: All the information we collect will be used to improve or create new products / services, that is, to generate more money for us ... so why not encourage the participation of our public with a reward?

A reward relevant to the market we want to survey increases its response and also serves as a filter.

I recently completed a survey on what kind of content I would like to see in an Online Marketing magazine and they raffled a 3-month subscription to it among all respondents ... someone who is not interested in Online Marketing would hardly bother to complete such a survey.

We can even offer an ebook, plugin or other type of non-physical product as a reward to all respondents, incidentally it is a good (and legal) opportunity to ask for their email address to carry out Email Marketing campaigns 😉

4) One goal per survey: We should not think about what to ask, but about what information we want to obtain to meet a defined objective.

We must define the objective of our survey well and guide all the questions to fulfill it, avoiding asking questions that do not give us information relevant to our objective ... the better the fewer questions we ask to get the information we need.

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