We’ve been telling you a great deal about how to link social media with surveys; combining the 2 tools really ramps up the power of both.

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review shows how powerful–and simple-it can be and how surveys can not only increase the power of social media but also answer the all-important question, “Is social media getting me anywhere?”

And here’s the best news: The survey reported on in the Harvard Business Review article used the EXACT model of one of the templates we’re providing in “Turn Surveys Into Cash.”

Two researchers sent out a survey to customers of a Houston bakery. They then set up a Facebook fan page and invited everyone on the bakery’s list to become a fan. The bakery began updating the page with pictures of its tasty goods, intros to their employees, positive reviews of the bakery, and updates of contests and promotions.

After 3 months, they sent out another survey and this time, they received many more responses than on the initial mailing. They compared several groups of customers, including those who became fans, Facebook users who did not fan the page, and customers who weren’t on Facebook.

What did they find? Well, in a nutshell, the fan page had a positive effect on customers who became fans: Customers who replied to both surveys and became fans turned out to be the best customers, according to the survey. Fans were the most likely to say that they’d choose this particular bakery over others, whenever possible.

This simple model is one of the ones we’re teaching folks to use in the MySurveyExpert community–it’s a “before and after” design in which you measure where your customers or prospects are before you give them something–a fan page, Ecourse, coaching program, or whatever–and then measure the attitudes or behavior again, after they’ve used your stuff.

It’s a super simple but incredibly powerful way to find out what’s working and what isn’t!

Many of you have asked us,

How do I make sure respondents are giving me accurate information?

Getting accurate information is critical.  The truth is that most of the time, unless you’re asking about really sensitive topics, customers won’t lie.   So for most of the topics we’re likely to cover in business surveys, we really don’t have to worry a lot about them deliberately deceiving us, except when it comes to questions such as income.

But there’s a lot more to it than just whether our customers are consciously lying in surveys.

• We have to worry about whether their responses have a “positive skew” or “negative skew:”  In other words, whether customers are saying they like a product more than they really do or dislike it more than they really do.
• We have to worry about whether they really READ the question and THOUGHT about an answer, as opposed to just “flying through” the survey and randomly marking things.
• We have to worry about whether they had “response set,” where they keep marking “agree/strongly agree” through a whole run of questions.

The list of ways  that inaccuracies creep in goes on and on.  And we need to worry about this, because if we don’t get accurate information, we have “bias” in our data.  And that can lead to bad decisions that cost us money.

How do we combat these problems?  How do we really “get inside our customers’ heads” so we can create and sell the products they want and get the proof we need to convert prospects?

Well, there are LOTS of ways to do that.  The best way, bottom line, is to write a good survey.

Here are some more specific tips:

• I think that the absolutely most important thing here is to write good, clear questions and tell them how you’re going to use the data to give them more value.

• Be respectful of their time:  One reason people “fly through” a survey without reading it carefully is because it’s too long, too disorganized, or poorly written.  Show them you’ve taken the time to write good questions, organize them well, and walk them through it with transitions.

• To avoid “response set,” in which people just keep checking the same answers, vary the way you ask questions.  In other words, if you have a series of statements and you’re asking to choose options from strongly agree to strongly disagree, word some of the statements “positively” (“I liked the ___) and some negatively (“I thought the ___ was too long).

• Explain to your customers WHY you need to know something, show them how you’ll put the information to work for THEM, and assure them that the information won’t just be turned into an immediate attempt to sell them something.  That will increase cooperation and accuracy dramatically.

• It’s also critical to ensure that their answers are completely confidential; customers are VERY concerned about data encryption in surveys, for good reason.

If you follow these guidelines, you’ll go a long way toward getting data you can use to take your business to the next level.

Many of you have asked us,

How do I use surveys to find out what my customers want to buy?  Can I really use surveys to CREATE a PRODUCT?

Absolutely!

Top marketers use product creation surveys all the time to get an absolute road map for creating products their customers will buy.  That’s their secret to hitting it out of the park with top-selling products, over and over again.

The problem is that lots of people don’t know how to write a survey that will give them that road map.

In our new product, “Turn Surveys Into Cash,” we’ve created a template that you can modify, quickly and easy, to create a product in your business.

Let me explain how the process works:

You describe the product in a survey question, in 2-3 sentences.

• Phrase it in terms of your trying to create value for the customer.

Then, say to the customer “If this [name of product or site] cost $x, how interested would you be?  Very interested, somewhat interested, or not interested at all?”

Everyone who says they’re “not interested at all” gets a second question, asking if they’re interested in the product at a LOWER price point:

• “OK, how about if the [name of product or site] cost [$lower price point].  How interested would you be?”  (same set of response options)

• To do that, you create a “skip pattern,” so that the folks who said they were “very interested” or “somewhat interested skip this question and go on to the next one.   (Skip patterns are easy to create–we teach you how to program them.)

It’s not a perfect science, but if you get 30-40% or so who say they’re at least somewhat interested in at least one price point, you should figure that it bodes well.

Why?  Because people tend to understate interest in thee sorts of surveys.

• Plus, you haven’t really had a chance to demonstrate the value of the product or site–so if you get decent interest without that, you’ve probably got pretty good support for the product or site.

In our new product, we give you even more information on how to find out what your customers want and how they want it delivered, so you can boost your profits by creating products your customers will buy, quickly and easily.