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Everything you need to know about building marketing surveys for free
The immense potential of marketing surveys
There is so much to learn in the world of surveys. They have immeasuarble potential but are often overlooked by entrepreneurs and small business owners. We will start this blog by first discussing the definition of a survey.
A marketing survey is a process that business owners and entrepreneurs use to collect data about their product or service from their target market. This data can be used to create strategic marketing campaigns, innovate new products, and make better business decisions. Simply put, surveys help you gather feedback which can be used to improve your buisness.
Types of Surveys
There are several different kinds of surveys that small business owners can create and use to gather insights from their target audience. The key categories of surveys widely used in marketing are:
Product research surveys
These surveys are usually used to gather feedback from customers before the introduction of new products or services and is considered a very key step in market research of the product. Ensuring your survey is reaching and gathering data from the right audience is a crucial consideration when designing your survey. The feedback obtained from the surveys can be used as input to create your product design, improve the user interface, make enhancements by identifying new features, and determining the pricing of products.
Customer satisfaction surveys
Often termed as CSAT surveys, these are used to collect feedback from customers about their experiences with a company’s products and /or services and /or their overall experience working with the company. These surveys can be used to gather any kind of data such as:
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Asking feedback on sales process
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Post sale experience
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Product or service related feedback
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Warranty support feedback
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Customer support feedback
Collecting this information regularly will allow you to see trends in your data and identify areas of opportunities that you can address with your teams.
Market research surveys
These surveys are used to understand a business’ target audience and get more information on them. They are used to collect data about a particular market, such as the size of the audience, the demographics of the target audience, and the competitive landscape. This information can be used to develop new marketing strategies and enhance existing campaigns.
Competitive analysis surveys
These surveys are used to collect data about a company’s competitors, to get more information on their products & services, their business and marketing strategies, and pricing. This information can be used to identify strengths and weaknesses of competitors and to develop strategies to compete more effectively.
Design of a survey:
Surveys can be a gold mine of information if they are done right. When designing a marketing survey, it is important to consider the following aspects and components:
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The goal or purpose of the survey: Be very clear about what you hope to achieve by conducting the survey.
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The target audience: Who are you targeting with the survey? The survey should be targeted to the people who can provide the most useful information related to your product or service
- The questions: What questions do you need to ask in order to achieve your goals?
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The distribution method: How will you share the survey with this target audience?
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The analysis: How will you analyze the data collected from the survey
Each of the above requires careful planning to ensure you are approaching the process the right way. The target audience could be current customers, potential customers, or industry experts. The distribution method is another aspect that requires some planning as you could potentially reach your audience via several channels and you have to determine which one is most efficient.
Types of questions on survey
The questions form the meat of the survey. It is essential you are crafting the questions in such a way so you get maximum information from your target audience. Surveys have to be an optimal length (cannot be too long or too short) and so every question that takes up space on your survey should be a critical one otherwise it shouldn’t be part of your survey.
When writing the questions, remember the following:
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Use clear and concise language: The questions should be clear, easy to understand and not cause any ambiguity in the minds of the people taking the survey. Avoid using jargon or technical terms.
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Use a variety of question types: There are many different types of questions that you can use in a survey. Some common types include:
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Screening questions: These questions help you weed out respondents that does not totally meet the requirements of your target audience.
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Closed-ended questions: These questions have a limited number of possible answers, such as multiple choice or checkbox questions. Be careful not to ask double-barreled questions which are questions that ask two things at once. For example, a double-barreled question might be “Do you like our restaurant’s ambience and food”.
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Open-ended questions: These questions allow respondents to provide their own answers, in their own words.
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Scaled questions: These questions ask respondents to rate something on a scale such as a 1-to-10 scale.
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Carefully determine which questions should be mandatory and which ones should be optional.
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Surveys can be built with advanced logic where answers to one question leads a certain set of questions such as branching logic or conditional logic. This can be helpful when you want a certain set of questions to be answered by the audience only if they meet a certain criteria or answer.
Target audience for your surveys
While surveys are powerful tools for providing insights for your marketing and research, they are only helpful when you get feedback from the desired target audience. Let’s say you have a survey regarding diapers, your target audience could be pregnant women, new parents, labor & delivery nurses or midwives. It wouldn’t really help your target audience comprised of parents with grown-up kids or empty nesters.
You might be wondering how to do you find your target audience and how can you make them participate in your survey? There are several ways you can do this.
Email Marketing list
If you have an email subscriber list, you could request your subscribers to participate in your surveys. This is a highly recommended approach because your email subscriber list comprises of people who have engaged with you at some level for your product or service and have expressed interest. They are likely to provide relevant and valuable feedback.
Social media advertising
You can use social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter to publish your survey to target audience comprising of specific demographics or interests. While this can be a cost-effective approach to reach a large audience, it’s essential to ensure that your survey is reaching the appropriate target audience.
Survey Panels
If you are starting a new business or do not have an email list yet or are hesitant to go the social media survey route, you could explore another option to get to your target audience, which is via survey panels.
You must be wondering where to find these survey panels. There are market research companies that maintain a database of survey participants who have agreed to participate in surveys. You can purchase access to this database and target your survey to specific demographics or interests. These market research companies usually charge you based on number of responses. The price or quote is also highly dependent on how targeted or niched your respondents need to be. So for example, the quote for 200 responses for a survey with target audience comprising of women in the age group of 25 to 50 will be significantly lower than the quote where the target audience comprises of women of the age group 25 to 50 who are also architects or interior designers by profession.
Here are two additional things to remember when purchasing an audience for market research surveys:
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Most importantly – be very clear about what you hope to achieve from the survey. This will help you determine the right target audience, the questions and also the right type of survey.
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Do ample research – Be sure to do your research and compare different companies and their offerings. Understand how they recruit and source their respondents. This will help you ensure that the data collected by the survey is accurate, reliable and meets your needs. Also, get familiar with their FAQs to understand their process and their refund policy if they are not successful in providing the agreed number of survey responses.
Best free tools to build surveys
Google Forms
Google Forms is a great option if you’re looking for a simple and easy-to-use tool. It’s 100% free, and you can create unlimited surveys with up to 100 responses each. They have several themes to choose from, different question types including quiz options and it’s summary view allows you to get real time results. Note that Google forms allow you to create and distribute surveys, but it does not provide access to a panel of respondents.
Typeform
Typeform is an excellent tool known for its beautiful and user-friendly interface. It’s a great option if you want to create surveys that are visually appealing and easy to take. Their free version allows you to create unlimited surveys but limits to 10 responses per month. Typeform allows you to create and distribute surveys. Additionally, it integrates with another company called Eureka surveys which allows your Typeform surveys to get responses from survey panels.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is another popular survey tool that offers a free plan where you are limited to 40 responses per survey. You could upgrade to their advanced paid versions for additional features. SurveyMonkey allows you to create longer surveys with more questions, and you also have access to some basic analytics tools. It not only allows you to create and distribute surveys, but you can also purchase a target audience. Their Target Audience page has a handy tool which lets you to get an estimate on the price for your target audience based on the criteria you specify.
Jotform
Jotform is an advanced tool which allows you to build forms of different kinds, including the ability to embed surveys on your website, create surveys with nesting or branching logic, and export your results to a variety of formats. Like Google forms though, this tool allows you to create and distribute surveys but does not have the capability of buying survey panel or respondents. Free users have access to all of the same features as paid users, but with lower limits on form counts, form submissions, form views, upload space and submission storage. The free version of the tool allows up to 5 forms with a limit of 100 monthly submissions.
Jotform is very powerful and delivers several additional capabilities aside from surveys.
SoGoSurvey / Sogolytics
Sogolytics tool is a good option if you need to create large-scale surveys. It offers unlimited surveys and responses, as well as very advanced analytics tools. Their Basic account is free and allows you to create unlimited surveys. It lets you send out 100 email invitations inviting your respondents to participate in survey and 100 responses per survey but limits at total of 200 email invitations and responses. Sogolytics provides the capability to purchase to survey panel or targeted audience. The quote or pricing for this can be obtained by filling their online form and getting in touch with their sales staff.
SurveyPlanet
SurveyPlanet is a great survey tool that offers a free plan which includes unlimited surveys, questions, and responses. It also has a variety of features, such as branching logic and conditional logic in upgraded or paid versions. Survey Planet allows you to create and share surveys but not have the capability to buy paid survey panel or respondents.
Qualtrics
Qualtrics tool is used by larger businesses and corporations for doing large scale and more complex market research surveys. It offers advanced features such as A/B testing and survey analytics. Their free plan offers single user license for 3 active surveys with 30 questions per survey and allows 500 responses. With their respondents on demand feature you can specify your target audience and receive a quote for your desired survey panel.
Here’s a handy table that lists all the marketing survey tools and their key features. You can also access download same from our Resources tab.
Once you’ve chosen a free online survey tool, you can start creating your marketing survey. Be sure to plan your survey carefully and ask the right questions. If you are not purchasing survey panel or respondents, then consider offering an incentive to your target audience for completing the survey. This could be a discount, a free gift, or even just a thank-you note.
And once you’ve collected your responses, be sure to analyze them and use them to make informed decisions for your marketing, product design and operations! All the best!
