Bad marketing advice abounds. One of my Google alerts picked up an article on using Twitter to tap customer sentiment, which said things like the following:

One key way to get value out of Twitter in terms of a customer service tool is by listening. If
you’re able to track conversations related not only to your specific business, but also among potential clients discussing their needs, you will gain invaluable insight into what your clients really want from you.
This can play a huge role in your marketing and sales efforts because you can tailor your offerings to meet the individual needs you’ve witnessed discussion about on Twitter, and take time to focus on what current clients are saying outside of your own interactions.

Why is that such bad advice?  Because, almost without exception, social media CANNOT give you a systematic picture of what your customers want, think, or need, or when they’re satisfied.

How can I make such a bald statement?  Particularly since I’m a social media consultant and I’ve studied social networks for more than 20 years?

Because I HAVE studied social networks and because I’ve looked at the research.

That research shows clearly that you’re probably hearing from 1-5% of your customers on a site like Twitter.

To hear the whole story–and to find out how you can avoid this “social media trap” AND turn it into profits–check out the video we made for you:

http://www.siteproweb.com/launch-video-three

A new survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that 19%, or nearly 1 in 5, of Americans who use the Internet also use Twitter or some other type of social networking “status update” service.

Although these results are being widely touted as showing how widespread Twitter use is, that’s not necessarily true. Because the question included not only Twitter but also other status update services–such as Facebook–it’s impossible to tell how much of this activity is really on Twitter, as opposed to other social media sites.

The survey also reinforces just how important mobile phones have become for social networking. Only 10% of people who have only one Internet-connected device (such as a computer) report using status updating services, but nearly 40% of people who have 4 or more Internet-connected devices use these social media services.

The survey also shows that more than half (55%) of those who use status update services are under age 50.

“Lies, damn lies, and statistics.”  These kinds of phrases have been thrown around for years by people who weren’t really impressed by what survey researchers and statisticians had to offer.  But as our economy changes, the “data geeks” may well have the last laugh, because they’re about to become the new rock stars.

IBM, for example, is about to move from a staff of 200 data analysts to a staff of 4,000 analysts–no, it’s not a typo, they’re going to multiply the staff by 20.

As a recent post on Salon notes,   “the ability to extract stories from a world of increasing and abundant data will be increasingly critical to many industries. Indeed, the opening of U.S. federal government data at data.gov (and the appointment of Sir Tim Berners-Lee to similarly open the UK’s data archives) implies a new societal and cultural importance for data wranglers.”

So, does this mean you have to go out and take courses in statistics to keep making money?  Not at all.  But you DO need to get some basic skills and make sure that you’re staying abreast of current trends.  As we’ve told you before, now more than ever, you’ve got to have an ongoing stream of information about your customers and your market and you’ve got to know how to put that information to work for your business.

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.

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.