We will talk about what to investigate, how to select the audience, how to structure the questionnaire and what are the 8 most common mistakes to avoid.
An effective and flexible tool
Surveys are a much more flexible tool than what is generally thought: for example, they can also be administered to internal company staff, or to existing customers ( we talked about it here ), as well as obviously to a general sample of the target audience.
They can therefore be an important complement to the information that the company already has or that it can obtain from other types of analysis. Whether we are talking about the market situation, the business model, the way in which the company relates to its customers, a well-structured survey can provide precise and reliable information, also investigating very specific aspects of the business.
Finally, the marketing survey is the best way to segment your customers: even the information already present in the database, in fact, could be difficult to interpret or analyze. In many cases, the simplest thing is to ask: a good survey can actually provide an additional key to understanding that increases the value of the information already in the company's possession.
Given the wide range of uses, it is surprising that entrepreneurs do not use it more often. So, let's try to summarize the main aspects to take into consideration when structuring a survey:
Defining objectives
The selection of the public
The structure of the questionnaire – and in particular the most common errors that should absolutely be avoided.
1. Define the objectives of the survey
A survey is an extremely effective tool to better understand how the market moves, what it requires, what the strengths and weaknesses of our product are and much more: all fundamental information for building a good marketing plan.
However, it is not possible to investigate everything at once; it is necessary to be very clear, from the beginning, what you want to obtain from the investigation. It is from this initial fixed point, in fact, that all subsequent choices will depend: to whom to propose the questionnaire, how to set it up, which questions to include.
You may want to understand, for example, the price level that we can offer for a certain service, or investigate the level of satisfaction with the after-sales service.
Then there are very specific applications, which are rarely thought of when we talk about marketing surveys: for example, a survey to support the naming process.
About Naming Surveys
Choosing a brand or product name will have long-term consequences and is difficult to change. So why not test it out in the marketplace before making it final?
We can create different proposals and submit them to a statistical sample representative of the target audience.
The result thus obtained could be much more significant than, for example, a simple appreciation by the management (given that the company managers could also be very far from the product target, due to socio-economic or cultural factors).
Of course, it's not just the brand name that we can investigate. We could use the same principle for colors, logos, and much more.
It is not so rare, in fact, that large companies turn to their public for some aspects concerning the image of the brand: even certain competitions, for example, sometimes reveal a desire to take the pulse of their reference market.
2. Define the survey audience
Who is my survey aimed at? The definition of the audience depends strictly on the choice of objectives and opens up many more possibilities than you might think. In fact, a survey can be submitted:
to internal employees, to corporate customers, to an external target;
to a B2B audience or a B2C audience;
to a specific segment of the market / our customers, or to the general target (perhaps with the aim of better segmenting).
A. Internal / External Survey
