Being a business owner, it’s important to reach out to the hearts and minds of your target audience. And the only way to achieve that is through targeted surveys! Targeted surveys will help tailor your products to your target customers. And it can also help market them in an efficient way. The end result is you generate more leads and more sales down the line.
It doesn’t matter if you are a small start-up venture with a limited email list. You can still leverage this approach to grow your list. The greatest advantage of this activity is that you can customize your email marketing. This will help create relevant and useful marketing emails to your targeted audiences.
Keep your surveys unique
Always keep in mind that every product or service needs a unique set of questionnaires. If you have more than one product or service offerings, create a feedback form for each one of them. For instance, if you are selling a wide range of razor blades, create a separate inquiry form for each type. You can create separate targeted surveys based on price point and gender.
But, in certain cases, a single product will cater to different customer groups. Then the same product must have two different marketing strategies. For example, an event venue will have different purposes for different events. In this case, each customer niche must get unique queries for the same event venue.
Keep your questions focused
While designing targeted surveys, try to keep the queries relevant and focused. It must help you extract valuable information about your target market. So design them that way! Try avoiding irrelevant questions like age, gender, and other personal details. But include them if such details are relevant. Be crystal clear about what information you need about your target market. Well, no one would want to answer a long-drawn and boring opinion poll.
Gather specific details about your target market with regard to your products or services. Ask your audience what product they are using right now and whether it serves their needs. Try to know if they have any specific needs that you can fulfill with your product. It’s also good to know a bit about the basic personalities of your audiences and their life goals. So including such queries is always useful in developing an effective marketing strategy.
Keep your targeted surveys engaging
It’s vital to make your targeted surveys as appealing as possible. You must give your audience a compelling reason to take part in it. Offering an incentive or gift is definitely a good idea to attract the target audience to your survey. But it’s much more effective to keep your survey simple and hassle-free to your audience!
Unlike popular belief, your targeted surveys need not be monotonous and uninteresting. You can develop an inquiry form that is quick and enjoyable. And also instills enthusiasm around your forthcoming product. Make your queries interactive and fun! Think that you are addressing a customer complaint or briefing about a product. Offer your audience a fantastic experience while they are answering your survey.
Here’s how you can make your surveys interesting:
Give it a personal feel: You can give a personal touch to your targeted surveys. Use the same approach as you would draft your blog posts, emails, or any other personal notes. This can increase the completion rate of your queries.
Make it user-friendly and easy: Make use of a platform that’s robust and reliable. My personal favorites are Pop Survey and Survey Monkey. Also, ensure that your target audience can complete the surveys on their mobile devices. This will enable them to take your poll even while they are not in front of their PCs or just waiting to board a plane.
Cut to the chase: There’s no need for a long and boring intro for your questionnaire! Chances are that your target audiences are well aware of your business and know who you are. They may be already following you on social media and are on your email list. So all you need to do is convey the purpose of the survey in the subject line (like “Provide Your Valuable Feedback To Improve my Product” or “What are your Financial Goals?”).
Avoid unwanted queries: The queries that you ask must fetch you tangible answers. Avoid asking such questions that wouldn’t bring out useful responses from the audience. Every question must bring in actionable answers. Never waste your time (or your audiences’ time) by creating queries with no purpose.
Here’s a good video on target research for you.
Promoting your targeted surveys
Email list: Send your online survey to your email list, if you have one. Studies have revealed that the best days to send emails to your list are Mondays, Fridays, and Sundays. The open and click-through rates of emails are highest on these days.
Online promotion: Many survey programs like Survey Monkey and Poll Daddy let you do this. They provide you with an option to share your surveys online. You can also embed in your blog posts on your website or on your guest posts.
Social media: You can link to your surveys from your social media accounts. A few of the survey programs provide you with an embed code that you can post in your Facebook account. Clicking the “Like” button of the post will help it is going viral faster.
LinkedIn: LinkedIn is another powerful platform where you can post your surveys.
YouTube: You must never discount the power of videos when it comes to promoting your surveys. Post a short video of you illustrating the goals of your survey on YouTube. In the video, you can request your target audience to take some time to complete your survey. Provide the link to your poll in the video. You can also paste the survey link in the description of the YouTube video.
Facebook Ads: If you can afford paid ads, you must definitely make use of Facebook ads. Facebook ads should give you immense exposure to your surveys.
Surveys as opt-ins: If you are planning to launch a new blog, it is a great idea to make your inquiry form the opt-ins.
Offer incentives: Make your polls enticing to your audience by offering incentives. It can be given access to your product for a limited period, a free eBook, or something alluring.
Don’t worry about the size of your email list
Never bother about how big your email list is to run an effective targeted survey campaign. Even a few subscribers can make your poll successful. Well, if you don’t have a list at all, approach ten or more of your friends or colleagues. Select those people that you think are your prospective customers. Request them to complete the questionnaire and share it with one acquaintance like themselves. You will come to know your target audience once a few people have completed your survey.
Here are some vital points to note to help fine-tune your surveys. These tips can help know your target audience better and improve your marketing methodologies.
Find out the actions taken by your target audience: Are they buying your product, or just trying it out? Or are they interested in just donating a small amount? You must find all these out through your queries. These queries will help better pitch your product and improve your tactics.
Find out the demographics: Try to find out the demographics of your target audience. This will help develop a more targeted marketing approach. Take these following factors into account while querying the demographics.
- Age group
- Gender (M/F or both)
- Location (regional, rural, national, urban, suburban)
- Marital and Family Status
- Income
- Education
- Profession
Find out their thought process: Ask questions to find out how your target audiences think. The points to consider while creating this query are.
- Personality types
- Attitudes
- Lifestyles
- Behaviors
- Values
- Hobbies and Interests
Find out their needs and challenges: Your survey must try to find out the needs of your target audiences. You must also try to discover what’s annoying or challenging them. Once you know this, it’s easy to tailor your product or service to your customer. This approach will help you get a much-improved response to your surveys. The more completed surveys you have, the more targeted will be your sales strategy. You must develop a subtle way to request your audience to visit your website or store in the surveys. Questionnaires with direct and blunt requests will usually get a poorer response.
Does your product or service solve a problem? This is a critical question that you must ask your target audience. Consider this aspect while creating a targeted poll. You must try to determine whether your product or idea can make their lives better. If their responses are affirmative, your product or service should click!
Find out what motivates a buying decision: Try to find out what drives your audience to take that crucial step. Unearth the obstacles that are stopping them from making that final move. If your polls can extract these critical facts then it can help fine-tune your sales funnel. The end result? More quality leads and revenue!
Find out if they are already using a product like yours: If it’s a ‘Yes’, then try to find out if they are happy with it. If not, then what needs are unfulfilled? These are critical facts that’ll help improve your product and make it more targeted. Incorporate these vital points in your poll.
Uncover their favorite media: Find out the periodicals and newspapers they read through your inquiry form. Also find out their favorite movies, TV programs, websites, social media sites, and so on. Ask them at what times are they usually active on social media sites. And also the type of content that they click, comment, read, and share on such sites. These are vital indicators that you can consider while developing or marketing a product.
Find out how you can stay in touch: Include questions on how to reach your target audience. Is it through emails, phones, or through any other communication channel?
Strike the right balance
Creating a powerful targeted survey is all about maintaining the perfect balance. If you try to appease everyone, you will end up appealing to no one. And at the same time, if it only appeals to a niche audience, then you have whittled things down too far.
It’s also good to examine your theories. Can your product solve the problem of your target audience? If so, will they be ready to spend money or time on it? Are you aware of the factors that motivate your target audience to take the buying decision? Or were you just assuming things? Last but not least. Have you taken practical and effective steps in conveying your message to your audience?
Bottom Line
It’s not easy to unearth the target market for your product or service. But now as you know how to target your audience, it won’t be hard to develop an effective targeted survey. Moreover, it will be much easier for you to select the best media to communicate with your audience.
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