Many of you have asked us,

“how many people do you need for an accurate survey?”

The answer isn’t simple, but I can boil it down for you, with some basic principles that should meet the needs of most businesses.

First, what do you want to do with the data? What questions do you need to answer and how complex do you need to get?

• For certain kinds of data analysis—for example, if you want to do complex analysis and “cut” the data lots of different ways–you need at least several hundred respondents.

• If you just want to look at frequencies, though–in other words, if you just want to know how many people are interested in a particular product or service–100 or so might be enough.

Regardless of how many responses you get, the CRITICAL issue is representativeness.

• That means that you hope the characteristics of the people who respond, as a group, “look” as much as possible like the people in your customer base, as a whole.

• So you hope, for example, that you get roughly the same % of men or women that you have in the customer base, the same age distribution, and so on.

• One of the things we’re going to do in our new membership site is show you how to get this.

Sometimes, though, you don’t want to know about EVERYONE. Instead, you really want to know about a particular group, or segment of our customer base.

• Maybe you want to know if the frequent buyers are interested in a membership site.

• In that case, if you’ve already segmented your list (using surveys and data from your shopping cart) to segment your list properly, you can go in and select that group, then send the survey invitation JUST to that group.

• That’s just one of many reasons that segmentation is so powerful.

The bottom line? Anytime we do surveys, we want to get as high a percentage of customers as possible to respond.

And it comes back to the mantra we give you over and over: The best way to get good information from your customers is to show them “what’s in it for them.”

• You do that by giving them an incentive to take the survey (a free report and a chance to win something cool, such as an iPod, for example) and by
• showing them clearly, in the survey and the invitation, that we’ll use the information they give us to give them more value.

To get a quick, easy SYSTEM for doing surveys this way, go here.

We’ve had LOTS of people ask us,

How do I get people to respond to my survey?

They’re asking that question with good reason, because this is one of  THE MOST IMPORTANT issues:  Simply put, if you don’t get good response to your surveys, you can’t use them to make more money.

So how do you get the responses you need?

Here are some tips:

1.  First and foremost, you get response by showing your customers “what’s in it for them” in taking your survey.  It needs to be ALL about them, so that they see why they should spend time and effort to give you information.

2.  You do that in many ways, but 2 of the key ways are to (a) offer incentives for taking the survey (such as, everyone who takes it gets a free report AND a chance to win something cool, like an iPod) and (b) designing the survey so that it reads as if it’s about THEM, not about YOU and how YOU can make more money.  If you do that, you WILL make more money, because you’ll get the information you need.

3.  Write a good survey!  If you learn how to write clear, effective questions, to make your survey a conversation, and to report results to your customers and show them how you’re using the data, they’ll learn over time that your surveys are worthwhile. That takes some skill, but you’ll be surprised how fast you can learn to do good surveys, particularly with the simple recipe we’ve put together.

4.  Send multiple invitations to do the survey.

5.  Show your customers how you put the information they give to work to give THEM more value.

There are other techniques that we’re teaching, but this should give you some information you can use to get responses to surveys.  To get our other techniques AND our complete system for using surveys to ramp up profits, go here.

Try these tips to increase response to your survey.  And let us know how you’re doing!

We’ve been getting LOTS of great questions about how to use surveys to make money in this recession (and if you haven’t posted yours yet go here to post yours; you’ll get 20 free videos on using surveys in your business, plus a tour of our new product!)

Here’s one of the questions you asked:

What’s the most cost effective source of survey respondents if you don’t already have a list? What factors do you need to consider before doing a survey so that you know it’s going to be a worthwhile thing for you do do?

And here’s our answer:

Hi David,

Great question!

As for the Return on Investment (ROI) on surveys, as long as you do surveys well, it’s huge. To be honest, I’ve had people pay me $10,000 to conduct a survey and they were THRILLED with the results. Think about it:

• What’s it worth to create a product?
• To get 100 testimonials to put on your website?
• To produce statistical proof—hard data—that your products and services work?
• To generate referrals or produce original research you can use in press releases or to create buzz in social media? So is it worth it?
• I’d say I’ve never seen a case when it wasn’t.

But here’s the thing: You can do surveys REALLY inexpensively.

• We’re about to put out a product that will let you design a complete survey system for your business, create your customer profile surveys, with templates and step-by-step videos to do everything you need, for LESS than $600. That’s about what 2 hours of my time would cost for consulting!

For the second part of your question:

How to you get respondents if you don’t have a list?

Let’s make the question a little broader . . . How do you get information you can use to make money, if you don’t have a list?

The first step is to figure out exactly what you’re trying to do.

Do you have a clear picture of your target market? That’s always the first step, whether you’re doing a survey or not. If you don’t have that clarified, then your first step is to describe that market very clearly.

• Who are they?
• What are their characteristics—are they male or female?
• How old are they? What do they do for a living?
• How much money do they make?

Once you know who your target market is, then the next step is to look for some information that’s already out there—that’s free data.

• There are enormous sources of data out there, from the census bureau to the Pew Trust to data archives. One of the things we’re doing in MySurveyExpert is showing people where to find these sorts of data and how to use them.

• We’re also going to be collecting data IN the MySurveyExpert community, building aggregate data that online marketers in our community can use. That will be another source of what we call secondary data, or data someone else collected (which means you didn’t have to do the work and spend the $$ yourself). And these will be the first aggregate data of this sort collected inside the online marketing space.

If you want to collect data yourself and you don’t have a list, sources like these can help a lot. But you shouldn’t stop there. Look around in your niche—could you form a partnership with another marketer and collect data from his or her list?

If you’re putting together a product that isn’t a direct competitor of theirs and you can share the data, they might be willing. If you think this way, you can probably come up with lots of ways to get information.

Another way to start to get information is to do just what we did, put up a Traffic Geyser lead page (you can get an account here).

• You can use video and other forms of social media to drive traffic to that lead page; the answers to the questions will start to give you information about what your market wants to know.
• From that, you can build a list AND create your first product!

Hope this helps! Check out the rest of the blog for more info.

Online sales stood out as the most positive news in recently-released economic indicators–but the news wasn’t good for “web-only” marketers.   And it may well be that a customer satisfaction questionnaire, as part of a solid web site survey system, may be what they need to compete successfully.

The latest figures for the first three months of 2009 show that online retail sales climbed by an average of 11%, with more than half (58%) of the 80 firms surveyed reporting increased online sales, compared to the same period in 2008.

That’s great news, interpreted by some analysts as indicating increased consumer confidence.

But the picture for those of us who market only online isn’t nearly as rosy.  A whopping 60% of “Web-only merchants” reported declining sales.

What’s going on–why are the “Web-only” merchants losing out?

One explanation is that, as more merchants moved online in the economic downturn, some online marketers found themselves unprepared for the increased competition.  The things that worked in the past just weren’t working anymore.

This clearly suggests that many online marketers need to “step up their game.”  And one key way to do that is to make sure that you’re listening to your customers and your prospects.

The simple fact is that they have a lot to tell you.  They can tell you

• what products they want–and what they’ll pay for those products;
• how they like the products and services you’re selling now and what you need to do to improve them;
• how they like your customer service,
• what they want to hear from you in your newsletters and ezines, how they want the information delivered, and how often they want to hear it, and they’ll give you
• referrals, prospects who are “pre-qualified” because they’re like the customers who are already buying from you.

And that’s not all.  If you put a survey system in place and learn how to do a good job of interpreting survey data, you’ll get three forms of proof that will convert prospects and turn them into customers who will buy from you, over and over again.  If you start doing websurveys regularly in your business, you can produce

• hundreds of testimonials quickly, easily, and cheaply, stories that will show how your products and services work and why;
• case studies–stories that stick because they show your prospects exactly how your product or service solved their problems, eased their pain, and
• the gold standard–statistical PROOF that show your products work and your services change lives.  The proof that only comes from surveys.

And you think the successful online marketers, the ones whose sales are UP in the first quarter of 09, don’t know that, you’re wrong.  I just got 3 surveys last week for products and services I purchased from one of the top online marketers, a true “guru” that has continued to make millions, throughout the recession.

Clearly, HE knows the secret.  He’s getting Survey Monkey data on every single product and service he sells and even some of the things he gives away!  He has a survey system in place that includes a client satisfaction questionnaire or customer satisfaction questionnaire on everything that goes out his door, because he KNOWS it works.

And you want to know the best part?  It really isn’t that hard to do.  We’re about to launch a product that will give you a questionnaire template for every survey you need to do in your business.  And we’re going to show you exactly how to put those questionnaire templates together into a survey system that will let you blow your competition away.  So if you don’t know what a Likert survey is or you’re confused by any of the other buzzwords, no worries–we’ve done the work for you.

We’re going to show you how to go about interpreting survey data, too.  How to minimize measurement error in survey data.  How to put an intake questionnaire in place for your coaching programs–the list goes on and on.

The product will be released in just a few short weeks.  But if you want to get started right now, just sign up for our free e-course.  And check back at the blog for all the valuable free content we put out every week.

You CAN compete, you CAN be one of the marketers who succeeds wildly, even in the midst of this recession.  Don’t be left behind in the competition.