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15 Ideas For Using Surveys In Your Online Marketing

November 15, 2007 on 10:06 am | In General, Internet Marketing, Lead Generation | 7 Comments

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I’m sure you’ve seen or at least heard of online survey tools that
allow you to capture and collate large volumes of information from
prospects or clients.

Finding the technology is simple (two popular providers are
Zoomerang.com and SurveyMonkey.com) but it’s how you USE surveys to
create value and enhance your marketing that really counts.

One Marketing Results client created a comprehensive Business
Audit, structured as a survey, that they went on to sell for $297 a
pop. Another colleague conducted a survey of IT professionals
that was picked up by influential media in the space as “latest
research”.

Here are 15 ideas on ways to use surveys in your online
business to create more value:

15 Ways To Leverage Surveys In Your Online Business

1. Conduct quarterly “client satisfaction” surveys.

2. Add relevant polls / surveys to your website or newsletters to
learn more about your market and start a 2-way conversation.

3. Set up a survey for clients to pass on THEIR clients i.e.
leverage.

4. Use surveys to pre-qualify or pre-frame potential clients.

5. Include a survey in an autoresponder series to automatically
capture testimonials.

6. Survey customers and clients on where THEY think you add value
(their perspective might be different from yours).

7. Use internal surveys to capture ideas to improve productivity or
team satisfaction.

8. Include feedback surveys with product literature – use them as
testimonial capture device AND to improve future versions of the
product.

9. Ask clients or prospects to tell you their biggest frustration
or problem relating to your area of expertise. Use this info to
develop a white paper based on the most common problems.

10. Use surveys to capture ideas and strategies from a large number
of people to collate into a “master” document.

11. Create a short 1 minute feedback survey and include the link in
your email signature.

12. Send an email to past clients and ask for testimonials and
feedback. Structure the survey so respondents provide information
on the topics you want.

13. Structure a product / service as a survey and give it away as a
“value add” or better yet, sell it.

14. Use surveys in your front-end marketing to identify customer
“hot buttons” so you can craft your sales message in the right way
for maximum impact.

15. Survey your market and use the results as the basis of a press
release and/or pre-eminence building tool.

7 Comments »

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I’m new to your blog and enjoyed this post. You had some really interesting ideas (namely #5 and #11).

Thanks,
Lara

Comment by Lara Wood — November 17, 2007 #
Useful post – thanks.

Another idea you may like to consider (we encourage our B2B clients to do this) is to collect ‘post service’ feedback and at the end of the survey, if they have given you a good score (say 7 out of 10 or better) branch them to a new page that asks whether they know of anyone your business may be able to help.

If your survey software is any good, it may be able to automatically send the referred party a personalised e-mail that invites them to take a look at your website or offers them an incentive to contact you.

It works very well as a business generation technique!

Hope that helps,
Des

PeoplePulse – Australia’s leading online survey software — http://www.peoplepulse.com.au

Comment by Des — November 17, 2007 #
Hi Will,

This is brilliant. You clearly have a keen insight into customer psyschology. The survey method can be leveraged based and the process can be varied based on the desired outcomes. Do you think rewarding people (like sharing the results or winning a book etc) may be a good idea to stimulate their interest?

Comment by Anup Batra — March 12, 2008 #
Hi Anup,

Thanks for stopping by. I think it is a great idea to share the results of surveys. In so doing, you can become a source of industry-specific information and build your pre-eminence in the process.

In my experience, the more specific the focus of the survey, the more likely the offer to disseminate the results will be taken up. If it’s an industry-specific survey, then if you can get some buy-in from an industry group that can also help.

Cheers, Will

Comment by Will — March 29, 2008 #
Glad I found your blog =) We include client surveys at the beginning and end of the lead generation campaigns we conduct and they are very useful resources for determining where and how we stand with our current clients. This gives us insight on areas of improvement as well as our strengths.

Comment by Zaza — August 12, 2008 #
The survey method can be applied in various ways.
One good method is to use SMS. Lot of times a simple survey can be answered faster and more conveniently using SMS. http://www.econfirm.com.au provides this service.

Comment by Trisha — October 23, 2008 #
@Trisha – I agree that SMS could be a good way to get quick responses to a survey. However, SMS is generally regarded as more intrusive than email, so you would want to make sure that you a) have a good relationship with your prospects and clients and b) don’t overdo the frequency.

Comment by Will — October 23, 2008 #