The news was big enough to make NYT and WSJ alert status:  After much sturm, drang, and hoopla, Microsoft and Yahoo finally struck a deal to challenge Google on search.

Will they successfully challenge Google?  Is the Microsoft/Yahoo deal game-changing?

I suggest that, if you’re an online marketer, you shouldn’t be wasting time worrying about those questions.  The most important question you should have been asking yourself when you heard the news was, “how can I use this new development effectively in my business?”

Lots of marketers understood that and quickly put up blog posts to start a conversation with their customers about the news.

And you can bet your bottom dollar they did more than that:  They got busy figuring out how to profit from this news.

Whether they’re figuring how to make more money from their PPC campaigns or how they might roll out products that teach others to do so, smart marketers weren’t reacting, they were taking action.

Because that’s what smart marketers do:  That’s how they make money.

And you know what?  The smart marketers weren’t sitting there wondering whether this news was relevant for their customers or what  to buy, they knew.

Because smart marketers have that information in their hands, constantly.  They’re getting an oingoing stream of information about who their customers are, what those customers are buying, and how they like.

So when big news breaks, they don’t have to waste time–and competitive advantage–trying to figure those things out.  They’re armed and ready with the information they need to take action and make money, right away.

Bottom line, that’s why you need a survey system in your business:  So when news breaks, you know exactly how to take action to profit from it.

Traffic is pretty much the “Holy Grail” of online marketing.  But traffic is useless if you can’t CONVERT it into SALES.

To do that, you not only need to know “who they are,” you need to know why they came.  Because if you give them what they came for, you increase dramatically the chances that they’ll buy.

Enter the “intent index,” which measures EXACTLY why people go online and gives us an awesome opportunity.

Here are some of the things the “intent index” tells us and what they mean for us, as online marketers:

• People are more than twice as likely to go online to be entertained (82%) and to learn (88%) than to do business (39%) or to shop (31%).   Which means that if we entertain them, we increases the chances they’ll buy.  So try putting a quiz on your site–they’re fun and highly entertaining AND they educate people, which is why they can up conversions by as much as 80%!
• At least 72% go online to find a community.  So give them one!  Give folks a chance to connect on your blog or in forums.  Better yet, create a special community for them by starting a membership site!  We have a survey template for creating a membership site to order, in our new product.
• Seniors are a HUGE group that is increasingly going online.   Like younger visitors, they come online to have fun (82%) and to socialize (80%).    So you can expand your market by targeting quizzes SPECIFICALLY at senior prospects.

Increasingly, then, intent is a “new demographic.”

Do these statistics apply to YOUR customers and prospects? Do you know WHY people come to your site?

Find out!  Do surveys to find out why people are coming so you’ll know how to keep them coming back!

We all know that the ROI on surveys is HUGE.  They can double, triple, or even quadruple your profits in no time flat, by

• generating hundreds of testimonials,
• producing statistical proof that your products work and your services change lives,
• showing what your customers like about your products–and
• helping you fix the flaws before they drag down your bottom line.

Although that ROI is super easy to get, it’s not guaranteed:  To get those awesome results, you’ve got to do GOOD surveys.

But let’s face it:  Nobody has the time to sit down and become a survey expert.  You’ve got a business to run and surveys are just one of the many tools you’re using.

That’s where good questionnaire templates become critically important, because they give you a quick and easy way to get a survey out the door in a hurry.

Here’s the problem:  Many of the questionnaire templates out there are really BAD.  In fact, I’ve looked at hundreds that are downright terrible.

I’m not just being a picky PhD here.  The problems in these questionnaire templates range from poorly constructed questions that respondents can’t understand to “double-barreled” questions that will confuse and frustrate your customers to “command and control” structures that essentially tell your customers to “give me the information I want so I can make more money.”

And these questionnaire templates are all over the place-in well-known business sites, in popular online survey software programs, on major business sites.

These questionnaire templates won’t just fail to get the information you need, they can alienate your customers in a hurry, destroying the relationships you’ve worked so hard to build and maintain.

That’s something NO business owner wants to see happen.

I was really tired of seeing clients come in with surveys they’d sent to their customers that were based on these horrible templates, so I worked with Mike to create a set of templates that would solve some of these problems.

I probably got a little carried away, because we ended up making more than we’d planned.  But I think these things are really cool, because they give you a quick, easy, reliable way to produce all the major surveys that any business needs–you just modify and customize them to fit your business and your needs.

The templates we’re providing include:

• Product creation survey,
• Customer satisfaction survey,
• Testimonial generator,
• Case Study template,
• “Before and after” surveys (to measure customers’ progress in a coaching program or from using a product or service),
• Customer profile survey (great for segmenting your list),
• Seminar evaluation survey,
• Blog survey template,
• Referral request model.

We’ve included all these in our new product, Turn Surveys Into Cash.  And as great as these things are, they’re really just “add-ons” in the product, because the core of the product shows you how to design a survey system for your business, quickly and easily, teaches you a foolproof process for creating surveys, and shows you how to use these templates in that process to start ramping up profits, right away.

Want to know more?  Check it out!