Doing survey marketing is a very good method for a business to learn about customer expectations, positive or negative comments and to improve themselves and solve existing problems according to the situation. Surveys can be made for many different purposes, there are various types of surveys marketing developed according to their purpose. We can list some of them as follows:
- Market research survey
- Lead generation survey
- Brand awareness survey
- Customer satisfaction survey
- Event evaluation survey
- Employee satisfaction survey
- Job satisfaction survey
- Education evaluation survey
- Interview survey
You can choose various types of surveys for your business or brand according to your purposes, at this point, you should make sure that you choose the right survey for your purpose. In this article, detailed information about surveys conducted for various purposes (developing a marketing strategy in the light of the data obtained from the survey results) and survey types has been compiled.
Regardless of the type of industry, a business uses a variety of tools and implements strategies to improve operations, increase sales, reduce costs, and uncover product improvement opportunities. At this point, surveys are one of the best methods that can be preferred to understand the customer movement correctly and understand how to meet their demands and expectations. Thanks to the surveys, various improvements and developments are also found by collecting data not only from its customers but also from its employees.
Why Is It Important?
Survey marketing can be thought of as a kind of communication channel between a business and a customer. It is only with the help of surveys that a business can efficiently collect honest feedback, opinions, and responses from customers. This information obtained as a result of the survey allows the business to use it to improve different areas. Survey marketing responses from employees or customers can confirm or provoke discussion about strategic business decisions or provide unbiased data to guide decision-making.
For example, before the company introduces a new product or service or a new feature to an existing product, it can implement this innovation with more confident steps thanks to the feedback it receives from its employees and customers. Thanks to the feedback collected from the surveys, your product and service portfolio becomes user-oriented. In addition, survey results can tell you what your customers think about your brand and products and can provide a basis for comparison over time.
Survey Marketing Benefits
Studies have shown that companies that conduct surveys at certain periods achieve 7% efficiency in their sales and marketing. Survey marketing is an important channel that allows a business to best understand its customers and target audience. Thanks to the data obtained from these, customer expectations, requests, and feedback are evaluated. Based on these assessments, the business and the brand make various improvements and improvements.
A business that regularly does surveys shows how its products and services rank in the eyes of customers. As a result, no matter how high quality and functional the product or service of the business is, it does not differ from other normal products as long as the customer does not experience it in this way and does not give feedback. Therefore, surveys with the right questions always take the business one step further.
Survey Marketing Types
Basically, survey marketing can be grouped under two main headings. These can be listed as follows:
- Question-answer surveys: these surveys consist of a variety of questions that participants can answer.
- Multiple-choice surveys: In this type of survey, a series of questions are asked to the participants, and a series of questions are asked again according to the answers of the participant. Depending on the answers given by the participants, the next questions may change.
Depending on these types of surveys, the types of surveys developed and frequently used for businesses are as follows:
1. Market research survey
Although it is not a matter of great importance, it is actually very important to know where and how your customers reach your products or services. This is where the market research survey gives the answer. With this survey, you can learn how and where your customers buy your products. With the information you get here, you can easily identify the needs of your customers, while also allowing you to gather information about your market, such as your competitive positioning in the industry and your customer demographics. You can use this type of survey to research a specific target market and identify product and pricing opportunities.
You can conduct a market research survey to gather information about data you don’t have, such as assessing the emotions of the target audience about a product you are about to launch. In addition, it is a very useful survey for making target audience analysis about any product. You can make a comparison by making this survey again about a new product or service you have launched on the data you have already collected and make improvements according to your customer behavior.
A market research survey gives you and your business the following benefits:
- You can collect instant data about what your customers and target audience think about your products or services, whether they are spouses or new.
- You base the steps you want to take in your business on certain data, and you will get the results you expect instead of encountering a surprise result. It also allows you to collect data in a structured way so that it can develop strategies based on informed decisions.
- Revealing the strengths and weaknesses of your products or services
2. Lead generation survey
The lead generation survey, which is mostly preferred by businesses and brands that want to expand their customer portfolio, allows you to collect contact information and some preferences from your target audience. Survey data allows you to create a list of potential customers who might be interested in purchasing the product or service you provide, so you can focus directly on the customer.
In the potential customer creation survey, short, concise, and explanatory questions are included in the survey in order not to ask too many questions to the participants and not to change the perspective of the people toward the business. The main focus here is on generating leads. However, the survey includes a minimum number of form fields to collect contact data (e.g. name, email address), a checkbox that allows you to contact respondents via email, and a question about their preferences for your product or service.
Lead generation surveys can help you grow your business by:
- Providing leads that are interested in your product or service
- Allows you to qualify these leads by asking questions about their preferences and allowing you to identify their interests and willingness to buy
- Obtain permission to communicate with potential customers as they will choose to fill out the survey
3. Brand awareness survey
The type of survey in which the bond between the business and the customer is best understood is undoubtedly the brand awareness survey. Together with this survey, it allows you to determine how well your customers know your brand, the meaning of your name and logo, and what your brand stands for. You should make sure that your brand is memorable. This way, customers think of your brand whenever they want to buy a product that you sell. The metric value that businesses pay attention to in the brand awareness survey is as follows:
Brand loyalty: Loyal customer is very important for businesses. Whether it is the same product or not, your customers will choose your brand again in their next shopping, which shows that they are loyal customers. The data you get from here gives you a clue about what you should do to keep your customer or for new loyal customers.
Brand identity: Your target audience’s views on your logo and brand elements reveal your brand prestige. It allows you to easily identify a product that belongs to you anywhere.
Brand image: What does your audience associates with your brand
Brand recognition: The brand should be in a holistic structure with its products or services. Even if you think you are, your customers may see different things. Therefore, what your target audience thinks when they see your brand is an extremely important value.
Brand recall: How well your target audience remembers your brand
Building brand awareness is extremely important for expanding your client portfolio and building an audience.
Brand trust: Trust is the most important factor everywhere. Do your customers buy your products out of necessity, or do they buy them because they trust you? It is important to question yourself if the customers trust the brand or if they are just buying your product out of their needs.
You can use market research data alongside a brand awareness survey to create marketing that communicates your brand name and related products or services.
Brand awareness surveys can help you grow your business by:
- measuring the effectiveness and performance of marketing strategies and investments
- allowing you to identify respondents’ relationships with your brand to uncover new career-focused job opportunities
- confirming that your brand fits the position you want it to be
- demonstrating that there is room for improvement
4. Customer satisfaction survey
As the name suggests, a customer satisfaction survey is a type of survey that allows you to measure your customers’ satisfaction with your company and your products or services and helps you increase sales. Positive feedback from surveys can also provide new business opportunities for the business. However, you shouldn’t force some customers to fill out a satisfaction survey, as some businesses do.
As a matter of fact, the result of the survey you take in a good or bad way will provide you with many benefits and allow you to improve yourself and your business. To get the healthiest survey results at this point, ask the right questions and make it fun and inviting for customers to fill out. You can get more efficient and healthy results about your business when you do your customer satisfaction surveys as follows:
- Asking if customers are loyal to your brand and are considering repurchasing your product should be the first question of your survey.
- Determine if customers are satisfied. This increases customer lifetime value and reduces customer churn
- Measuring customer satisfaction to address negative feedback, which will help reduce the amount of negative feedback posted on social media
- Acquiring new customers is much more costly than retaining an existing customer. Therefore, care about your customers’ feedback and give them various opportunities and campaigns.
- Identifying brand ambassadors. You can send products to them free of charge and let them know about the product in person.
5. Activity evaluation questionnaire
We can use the event evaluation survey to evaluate shows, events, or launches that the company does. This allows them to receive feedback or comments on the event. Based on the data obtained from the survey, you can measure the success of the event and determine whether it is worth improving or doing future events.
Activities related to any subject or field have different meanings for participants and businesses. At this point, the event evaluation survey allows you to better determine how the event is according to the attendees. What seems to be a big problem for you at the event may not be a problem for the participants in the same way, or on the contrary, something normal for you may disturb the participants.
Thanks to the event evaluation survey, you can get participant opinions about many parts of the event and make the necessary improvements. Although you need to cover every part of the event, you should take care to prepare the questionnaire as short and participant-oriented as possible. You should also deal with the event evaluation questionnaire in language that complements the event as much as possible.
Event evaluation surveys can help you grow your business by:
- Gathering participants’ honest opinions and snapshots of the event
- Offering your customers, the opportunity to interact with your brand
- Allowing you to collect data to improve future activities
Types Of Content That Will Help You to Benefit from Survey Marketing
Surveys reveal the current market position of a business’s products and services and their value in the eyes of customers. Therefore, businesses should design the survey content to support their purpose.
Whether online or face-to-face, people generally do not like to participate in surveys. Surveys can be boring and time-consuming however, they can provide valuable feedback. Ask clear, understandable, and purposeful questions in your surveys to ensure that participants do not get bored. Some of the content types you can use in your surveys and the survey marketing benefits they will provide are as follows:
Multiple-choice question contents
With multiple-choice question content, you give participants the chance to choose. Asking classic questions can take time and bore respondents resulting in them not finishing the survey. However, the content of multiple-choice questions keeps the participant connected to the survey.
Single-answer and multi-answer question content
single-answer content contains options that prompt the user to approve a topic. This type of content allows the participant to answer the question quickly and practically. You can use a multi-answer content type if you want to give respondents multiple options to choose from. In this way, you can easily determine which options for the participants to concentrate around on any subject.
Other content types
Use the “Other option” to include all other kinds of surveys that do not fit in the other category types. You can provide an open-ended option so respondents can write their opinion. Thanks to this content type, you can access the broadest thoughts of the user about a subject, product, or service.
Evaluation content
The evaluation content type allows you to learn what users think about your products or services in general.
Likert Content-Type
This is the best content option to find out if the user supports a topic. Along with the Likert content, you can ask your participants “Do you agree?” on a topic. “Don’t you agree?” You can evaluate by asking questions.
Matrix Questions
Matrix contents are an ideal option for survey questions where you want to ask questions with the same answers one after the other. Likert contents and evaluation questions are best for matrix content survey types.
Drop-down menu questions
Drop-down questions allow you to ask questions without boring attendees when you need to ask multiple-choice questions. In this way, participants fill out their questionnaires completely.
You can use social media to learn how users approach your products and services. At this point, you can create the right survey content by specifically analyzing the comments on your social media accounts. If you do not ask the right questions, you will not be able to get the results you want. You may also cause the participants to leave without completing the survey questions. To avoid such situations, you need to ask the right questions. At this point, you can use important social media analysis tools such as Socialays.
Socialays – A-I Social Media Assistant
Socialays is an artificial intelligence-supported tool that analyzes the comments made by your followers on your social media posts. With this tool, you can categorize your follower comments as positive, negative, and neutral. Considering how difficult it is to conduct a traditional survey today, many businesses do not like doing surveys. That said, doing surveys digitally can help you gather information faster and reach your intended market at the same time. You can categorize the answers given by these participants using the Socialays analysis tool and get efficient results. Conducting physical surveys is a very costly process. For this, Socialays is a very ideal alternative.