Optimizing Marketing Programs Through Customer Feedback

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Optimizing Marketing Programs Through Customer Feedback

By Meg Walker
2006-04-26

How Do I Start?

The first step in launching a successful web-based market research survey is to decide who you want to study and why. Of the many uses for surveys, I’ve given three scenarios where this tool provides important, actionable data. Putting together a clear statement of purpose first will become invaluable as you write and order your questions. Your statement should include who you are surveying, why you are surveying, what data you hope to accumulate and what business decisions the data will help you to make.

Next, how do you want to present the data? Are there concepts or ideas that you want to compare? Do you want to compare data from two different demographic groups? If you plan to present the data, choose formats and software that make graphing the data easier (or graph the data automatically).

Write your questions. Keep the questionnaire short and on topic or you will lose your audience. Longer, more complex surveys do not necessarily give you enough incremental data to justify potential frustration of tabulating responses – or decreased response rates. Avoid adding questions that don’t have particular bearing on your business decisions. For instance, if your product or content is not gender-specific, you don’t need to ask the respondents’ gender.

Decide how you want your respondents to answer. Choose single-choice, multiple-choice, agree-disagree or sliding-scale reply formats. Do you need more information? Add a block for a verbose response to an open-ended question. Thinking through response mechanisms clearly will facilitate tabulating your data. Remember, you can always launch a follow-up survey, if necessary.

Publicize your survey. Decide whether you want to have the survey appear as a pop-up window or if you want to send out e-mail notifications. If you send e-mail invitations, you can also send follow up reminders to encourage responses. If you send out e-mail invitations, make certain to use the BCC (blind copy) field in your e-mail for all of the addresses. You can reinforce confidentiality by keeping all of your audience from knowing who else has received the invitation.

Receive and analyze your results. Unless you have chosen a user-friendly program, this may be the most complex and frustrating aspect of your research program. As mentioned earlier, graphing the results will be very useful in analyzing and presenting them.

Article Pages:
» Optimizing Marketing Programs through Customer Feedback
» Who is visiting your website?
» Are your services meeting customer needs?
» Are your advertising campaigns driving traffic?
» How Do I Start?
» Conclusion

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