So you’ve gone and done it–you sent out a market research questionnaire, a customer satisfaction questionnaire, or some other sort of survey.  Now you have these Survey Monkey data staring at you and you have NO earthly idea what to do with them.

Don’t despair, there IS a way to make sense of all this.

And if you do your job well, the results will be amazing.  One of my clients said recently that interpreting survey data on her customers was like focusing a camera lens, so that she now had a crystal-clear image.

How do YOU get that crystal-clear image?

The simple fact is that the better job you did of WRITING the survey and planning the analysis, the easier the job of INTERPRETING the survey data will be. More about that later.

But for the moment, let’s assume you wrote a stellar survey and let’s think about how best to make the most of the results.

Let’s break it down into five simple steps:

First, look at the overall data and response.

Here are some of the questions you should ask in this step:

• How many people completed the survey?
• How does that compare to the target group–the number of people on your e-mail list, for example?
• What was the response rate?  (To figure this out, just take the number of people who completed the survey and divide that by the number who opened the survey invitation).
• What was the average amount of time that people spent taking the survey (in other words, did people take it seriously or did they seem to fly through the questions)?
• Who responded–what does the breakdown look like, in terms of age, gender, type of business, etc?  How well does it represent your target group (for example, your customer base or e-mail list)?

Second, look at the answers to your key questions or “outcomes” in the survey.

If this is a product creation survey, for example, what % of the respondents said they’re very interested or somewhat interested in the product–and what % said they’re not interested AT ALL?  Of those who are interested in the product, what kinds of things do they want to see in the product?  How would they like the product delivered?  What are they willing to pay for it?

Third, see how those things “break” by demographic characteristics.

Are men more interested in the product than women?  Are “newbies” more or less interested than people who’ve been in business longer?  This starts to give you a good sense of who’s most likely to buy the product and at whom you need to target it.

Fourth, what do the open-ended questions tell you?

Ideally, your survey should rely mostly on closed-ended questions, because these are the easiest for your customers to answer and also the easiest to analyze.  But it’s good to include a few open-ended questions–to pick up on the nuances and meaning that closed-ended questions miss, to get the “language” your customers are using, and to pick up some things you might not have captured with your closed-ended categories.  Read through those comments, first looking for themes in the comments, then looking for how widespread those themes are, and finally summarizing what you’ve learned from these questions.

Fifth, draw up your “action items.”

Based on the results, compile your “to do” list.

• If it seems clear that there’s strong interest in the product you’re creating, that’s great.  Draw together everything you can to draw your “road map” for creating the product–and then follow that map.
• Chances are you also learned some things about your customers you didn’t know.  Make a list of those things and particularly note things you want to explore further in future surveys.
• Note the things that don’t seem to make sense, any things in the results that have you “scratching your head.”  These are things you might want to explore on your blog or even in conversations with some of the survey respondents (you can also select respondents with the “interesting” or “unexpected” answers and offer them a free report or a discount coupon in exchange for talking with you).

After you’ve gone through these steps, you should have good information that you can put to work in your business.  You’ll be amazed at the wealth of data that even a short survey can provide and the many ways in which you can use them.

In addition to interpreting the survey data, you should also note things you learned from doing the survey:  things you learned about writing the survey, lessons from the process of administering it, things you’d do differently next time.

And don’t forget to look carefully at your customers’ comments and feedback about the survey.  It’s always a good idea to include an open-ended question, at the end, that lets customers tell you what they liked and what they didn’t.

You can expect that a few customers will always say that the survey is too long or they disliked something about it.  But if you find large numbers of people saying those things, or complaining about a particular question, you should certainly consider that when you design your NEXT survey.

Follow these steps to interpreting survey data and you’ll begin to get inside your customers’ heads in a way you never imagined possible.  And once you do that, your profits will explode.

Here’s a news flash: Men and women are different.

And although that seems incredibly obvious, many online marketers ignore that fact, missing a HUGE opportunity to ramp up their marketing results.

If you don’t think it’s important to target your messages differently to men and women, then think about some of the differences between men’s and women’s Internet use that have cropped up in recent surveys.

Men represent about 48% of Internet users, according to marketing estimates. And according to eMarketer, there is a “gender gap” not only in use but also in patterns of behavior.

Lisa E. Phillips, a senior analyst at eMarketer, says that “Men spend more time online, conduct more searches on a daily basis and do not mind seeing ads . . . They are as engaged in social media as women are, and are not put off by the companies and brands they find there.”

Gallup data support her claim that men use the Internet more frequently: They estimate that a majority (53%) of men spend more than an hour on the Internet each day, whereas only 42% of women do so.

But data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggest that the gender differences in search behavior may be bigger and more complex than Phillips recognizes: Men search more than women for SOME kinds of things, but not others.

The Pew data show that men who use the Internet are more likely than women to get many forms of information online, including weather, news, do-it-yourself, sports, political, and financial information. They search for jobs online at higher rates than women do; download software and music more frequently; use webcams more often; are more likely to rate products, services, and people; and take classes more often.

What do “wired women” do more frequently than their male counterparts? Send and get e-mail, seek out medical and health information (not surprising, given that women are likely to be the health care “point people” in their families), get religious information, and get support to deal with health or personal issues.

And, consistent with the old stereotype that men “won’t ask for directions,” women are more likely than men to get maps and directions online.

But we may see changes in these patterns soon, because the growth rate for women’s use of government websites, watching video or listening to audio clips, and researching products are higher than the growth rates for men.

Think for a minute about how many differences we just identified in what men and women do online.

And these data are in the aggregate; we know that the patterns differ by race and ethnicity, for example, and also by age.

What does this mean for you and your business?

You’ve got to know what % of your target market, your prospects, and your customer base are men vs. women.

You need to segment your list by gender, in almost any niche, so that you can target your messages differently to men and women.

Just another example of why you need to have a segmentation strategy in place and why any type of niche marketing needs to target men and women differently.

If you don’t even know what that IS, don’t worry–you’re not alone! LOTS of online marketers become confused when they start hearing terms like “segmentation strategy,” “niche marketing,” “demographic research,” and “psychographic research.”

Before you go into a keyword coma, though, recognize that you’ve simply GOT to know what this is all about and how to put it to work for your business, if you’re going to survive in this economy.

A new survey shows that marketers and small businesses increasingly “get it” about how important these things are and they’re changing their ways, rapidly and radically.

This survey, which asked 50 “leading marketers” and 741 small businesses about their marketing and research plans for 2009, showed several interesting things:

First, marketers are rapidly moving their efforts online, indicating that they would increase efforts in EVERY online tactic mentioned in the survey–including social networking and webinars.

Second, small businesses are doing more segmentation research so they can better target their customers.

Third, small businesses will be doing more surveys–which is what will give them the information they need to segment their lists so they can reach out to their customers in a meaningful way.

And here’s what’s really important: Online surveys and focus groups are ONLY types of research that small business marketers plan to INCREASE in 2009.

What does this mean for YOU?

Bottom line: If you aren’t doing surveys in your business, you need to start now–because your competition IS doing surveys.

The simple fact is, niche marketing is absolutely critical in this economy. And to do niche marketing effectively, to reach out to your customers in a more personal–and more effective–way, you have to know who your customers are, so that you can personalize your messages to them.

If you don’t know what % of your customer base is women, if you don’t know what % holds a college degree, if you can’t say how many make more than $75,000 per year, then you don’t have the information you need to come up with a segmentation strategy for your business.

Want proof of how important a segmentation strategy is? Here you go:

• In the first 30 days of an e-mail campaign, open rates for e-mails sent to lists that are targeted or “segmented” like this are as much as 20% higher, on average (Marketing Sherpa, 2008).
• In the first 30 days of a campaign, click rates for a campaign that uses segmented lists are double those for non-segmented lists (Marketing Sherpa, 2008).
• Segmenting your list can quadruple conversion rates (Jupiter Research, 2006)

This means that you need to do demographic research–which is just another term for answering all those questions I just mentioned.

You need to do psychographic research–marketing jargon for understanding the values, attitudes, and lifestyles of your customers.

You need to do customer loyalty research–so you understand how to keep customers buying, over and over again, once you’ve converted them.

And here’s the good news: You can do all of this, quickly and easily.

Put a customer profile survey in place and you can answer all those pesky questions about demographics and psychographics, so that you can connect with your customers and prospects in a completely new way.

It’s quick, it’s easy, and at MySurveyExpert, we’ve developed templates that will get you up and running, right away.

You don’t have to be left in the dust. We’re about to put a survey product on the market that will let you get a customer profile survey up and running in less than a week.

What’s more, you’ll have a survey system in place that will give you ALL the information you need, in all phases of your business.

You’ll generate testimonials and referrals, produce case studies, measure customer satisfaction–the list goes on and on.

If you’re ready to get started, if you understand that surveys are THE hottest marketing tool among small businesses right now, then sign up for our free e-course today to get started.

And if you want more information about what we’re up to with our new survey system, just leave a comment for us!

The new Kauffman Entrepreneurship Survey results show just how strongly Americans support entrepreneurship and view it as the backbone of our economy.

And a blog survey on the same topic is a great way to “piggyback” the popularity of those data.

Not only will your blog survey get people coming to your blog to take it, the blog survey results will give you something to use to generate buzz about your blog.

Anytime you can link survey results like these to original data you collect from YOUR peeps–like what you get from a blog survey–that’s great fodder for social media and even the press.  It can REALLY help you generate traffic.

You can do this 2 ways.

Here’s an example of the first way:  One of my clients just finished a survey of her list that included some questions on attitudes about the economy.  Lucky for her:  She can take these Kauffman results, link them to her results, and she’s got a gold mine.

By showing how the national data connect with what HER list members think,

• She’s got something awesome to talk about in her blog and newsletter, something that will interest people and generate comments;
• She’s got something to talk about in Twitter, on Facebook, and in other social networking sites;
• She can write lenses for Squidoo and articles for HubPages and Ezine Articles;
• She can bookmark all that in social bookmarking sites;
• Because her survey was sound and done scientifically, she can even write a press release describing how her results relate to the findings from a national survey.

That’s a LOT of return from 1 little block of questions in a survey.

But you can profit from this too, right now, by using the second way of connecting with national survey data:

Do a blog survey, asking what YOUR peeps think about entrepreneurship and the economy.  Here are some examples of questions you can use for your blog survey, taken right from the Kauffman survey:

Even though Wall Street has collapsed, I still believe in capitalism centered around entrepreneurs.  Response options:  Strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree.

How important are entrepreneurs for the health of the US economy?  Response options:  Very important, somewhat important, not very important.

How important are entrepreneurs for creating jobs in the United States?  Response options: Very important, somewhat important, not very important.

And you can do this easily.  Although I don’t like Poll Daddy for doing big surveys (because last time I checked, they weren’t encrypting their data), you can get a free account at Poll Daddy to put a blog survey on your website.

A blog survey like this is a great way to get the conversation going and generate comments.

You can also do a quick poll at LinkedIn or Facebook.

So do a blog survey today–start asking your peeps what they think and reporting the results!