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.

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.

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.

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.

Some of the heaviest hitters in the advertising world are predicting surprisingly large, and larger-than-expected, declines in ad spending. GroupM predicted a 4.4% decline, worldwide, in 2009; Carat Insight forecasts a 5.8% drop, and Zenith Optimedia revised its previous prediction of a .2% in ad spending to forecast that ad spending will plummet by 7%. These predictions represent declines in spending on ads for print media, TV, and radio ads.

The bright spot? Spending on Internet ads is projected to rise by 8.6% this year. If that estimate proves accurate, then Internet advertising will make up more than 12% of global ad spending.

This means that it’s more important than ever to understand your market. Because, while these numbers mean that the market for Internet products will likely remain strong, the competition to get your message heard and to convert prospects will be increasingly fierce.

Your most potent weapon in that competition is information. Now more than ever, knowing how to do a good market research questionnaire, customer satisfaction questionnaire, and how to go about interpreting survey data are absolutely critical.