Randy Dickinson, of ImpactThinking.com, interviewed me yesterday about how surveys can help businesses create products and services that keep customers buying, get proof to convert prospects, and target messages to customers so that they feel you know them personally.

This is “as recorded,” unedited, but I thought you’d enjoy it, because it has some really great content about how to use surveys to power your business.

To hear it, just go here.

Wondering whether those Facebook ads have any effect?  Facebook and Nielsen have teamed to give SOME users a way to measure the ROI.

With more than 300 million users, Facebook has provided an attractive advertising venue for quite a while.  The ability to “slice and the dice” the demographics to secure targeted, affordable ads has proved particularly attractive for many users.

As with many other aspects of social media, the tantalizing question remined: “Is it paying off?”

Now Facebook and Nielsen (yes, that’s the polling organization that tracks TV viewing habits) have collaborated to answer that question.

Their new project, dubbed “Brand Lift,” will poll Facebook users to measure recall of the ads, brand awareness, and considerations regarding purchase.

Sounds great?  Here’s the catch:  The new product will reportedly be offered only to Nielsen customers.

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.

Here’s the “Quick Start Guide” that we’re including with our new product. It will give you a great overview of the awesome system that will let you put surveys to work making money for your business, with a minimal investment of time and money.  To get the system, go here.

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.