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!

How long can a survey be?  How long SHOULD it be?

Usually we gauge this by how long the survey takes.

Most of the research shows that the absolute MAXIMUM you can push people is 15 minutes.

But that’s actually a pretty long survey.    It can be done, but you’d better offer a KILLER incentive.

• I recently did a survey for a client that averaged about 20 minutes.
• We got 800 responses (from a big list), which was good.
• Here’s how we got such a good response:  She offered a $40 coupon for a product or service from her cart AND a chance to win a Kindle.

In general, shorter is better.

But the critical issue in getting people to do ANY survey is to show them “what’s in it for them.”

I’ve refused to answer 5-question surveys because it was “all about the marketer:”

• the survey didn’t offer any incentive for me to take it,
• it wasn’t conversational,
• the questions were clearly designed to get information the marketer could use to make money.

It’s OK to ask questions that will help you make money. After all, that’s the reason for doing the survey.

But if you do that in a way that shows the customer how you will use the results to provide VALUE to him or her, and if you make sure there are LOTS of questions about the CUSTOMER and what he or she wants (always lead with those), you’ll get a much better response.

So length is definitely one of the things that can make people angry, but so can bad questions, poor design, and lots of other things.

Here’s the bottom line:  If you do good surveys and keep the length reasonable (within 15 minutes), you should be able to get good results.

To make sure you can do good surveys, go here to get our survey system.

Several of you asked,

How can I get people to respond  to my survey?

That’s a REALLY important question, because it’s ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL to get as many responses as possible to a  survey.

Why?  Because it increases the chances that your sample–the group of people who respond–will be representative.

In other words, you want the people who respond to look as much as possible like your customer base as a whole.  The more responses you get, the better the chance that you represent your customer base well.

So how do you do that?

Some of the videos we’ve put up will give you some useful information about this, but here are some of the key things.

To get response:

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 just some of the techniques we’re teaching.  To get the whole system, go here.

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.

And although that seems incredibly obvious, many online marketers ignore that fact, missing a HUGE opportunity to ramp up their marketing results.

If you don’t think it’s important to target your messages differently to men and women, then think about some of the differences between men’s and women’s Internet use that have cropped up in recent surveys.

Men represent about 48% of Internet users, according to marketing estimates. And according to eMarketer, there is a “gender gap” not only in use but also in patterns of behavior.

Lisa E. Phillips, a senior analyst at eMarketer, says that “Men spend more time online, conduct more searches on a daily basis and do not mind seeing ads . . . They are as engaged in social media as women are, and are not put off by the companies and brands they find there.”

Gallup data support her claim that men use the Internet more frequently: They estimate that a majority (53%) of men spend more than an hour on the Internet each day, whereas only 42% of women do so.

But data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggest that the gender differences in search behavior may be bigger and more complex than Phillips recognizes: Men search more than women for SOME kinds of things, but not others.

The Pew data show that men who use the Internet are more likely than women to get many forms of information online, including weather, news, do-it-yourself, sports, political, and financial information. They search for jobs online at higher rates than women do; download software and music more frequently; use webcams more often; are more likely to rate products, services, and people; and take classes more often.

What do “wired women” do more frequently than their male counterparts? Send and get e-mail, seek out medical and health information (not surprising, given that women are likely to be the health care “point people” in their families), get religious information, and get support to deal with health or personal issues.

And, consistent with the old stereotype that men “won’t ask for directions,” women are more likely than men to get maps and directions online.

But we may see changes in these patterns soon, because the growth rate for women’s use of government websites, watching video or listening to audio clips, and researching products are higher than the growth rates for men.

Think for a minute about how many differences we just identified in what men and women do online.

And these data are in the aggregate; we know that the patterns differ by race and ethnicity, for example, and also by age.

What does this mean for you and your business?

You’ve got to know what % of your target market, your prospects, and your customer base are men vs. women.

You need to segment your list by gender, in almost any niche, so that you can target your messages differently to men and women.

Just another example of why you need to have a segmentation strategy in place and why any type of niche marketing needs to target men and women differently.

Before you go into a keyword coma, though, recognize that you’ve simply GOT to know what this is all about and how to put it to work for your business, if you’re going to survive in this economy.

A new survey shows that marketers and small businesses increasingly “get it” about how important these things are and they’re changing their ways, rapidly and radically.

This survey, which asked 50 “leading marketers” and 741 small businesses about their marketing and research plans for 2009, showed several interesting things:

First, marketers are rapidly moving their efforts online, indicating that they would increase efforts in EVERY online tactic mentioned in the survey–including social networking and webinars.

Second, small businesses are doing more segmentation research so they can better target their customers.

Third, small businesses will be doing more surveys–which is what will give them the information they need to segment their lists so they can reach out to their customers in a meaningful way.

And here’s what’s really important: Online surveys and focus groups are ONLY types of research that small business marketers plan to INCREASE in 2009.

What does this mean for YOU?

Bottom line: If you aren’t doing surveys in your business, you need to start now–because your competition IS doing surveys.

The simple fact is, niche marketing is absolutely critical in this economy. And to do niche marketing effectively, to reach out to your customers in a more personal–and more effective–way, you have to know who your customers are, so that you can personalize your messages to them.

If you don’t know what % of your customer base is women, if you don’t know what % holds a college degree, if you can’t say how many make more than $75,000 per year, then you don’t have the information you need to come up with a segmentation strategy for your business.

Want proof of how important a segmentation strategy is? Here you go:

• In the first 30 days of an e-mail campaign, open rates for e-mails sent to lists that are targeted or “segmented” like this are as much as 20% higher, on average (Marketing Sherpa, 2008).
• In the first 30 days of a campaign, click rates for a campaign that uses segmented lists are double those for non-segmented lists (Marketing Sherpa, 2008).
• Segmenting your list can quadruple conversion rates (Jupiter Research, 2006)

This means that you need to do demographic research–which is just another term for answering all those questions I just mentioned.

You need to do psychographic research–marketing jargon for understanding the values, attitudes, and lifestyles of your customers.

You need to do customer loyalty research–so you understand how to keep customers buying, over and over again, once you’ve converted them.

And here’s the good news: You can do all of this, quickly and easily.

Put a customer profile survey in place and you can answer all those pesky questions about demographics and psychographics, so that you can connect with your customers and prospects in a completely new way.

It’s quick, it’s easy, and at MySurveyExpert, we’ve developed templates that will get you up and running, right away.

You don’t have to be left in the dust. We’re about to put a survey product on the market that will let you get a customer profile survey up and running in less than a week.

What’s more, you’ll have a survey system in place that will give you ALL the information you need, in all phases of your business.

You’ll generate testimonials and referrals, produce case studies, measure customer satisfaction–the list goes on and on.

If you’re ready to get started, if you understand that surveys are THE hottest marketing tool among small businesses right now, then sign up for our free e-course today to get started.

And if you want more information about what we’re up to with our new survey system, just leave a comment for us!