Think free templates are a good idea? Think again:

I just received the second email in as many months, from a MAJOR internet marketer, addressing me as “dude.”

Can I tell you how much I DON’T like this?

If you send out messages like this to your list, obviously oblivious to who the folks on the other end ARE, you’re not going to succeed in selling to them.  In fact, you’re going to succeed in alienating them, fast.

What’s the answer?

Simple:  Know your customers.  Do yourself a favor and do a customer profile survey, to find out who your customers are and what they want.

Use the information to segment your list, so that you “target” messages and offers separately to men and women, frequent buyers vs. those who don’t buy as often, “newbies” as opposed to more experienced marketers, and so fort.

Then, when you send out your message, your customers will feel that you’re talking to them PERSONALLY, rather than blindly blasting out a message without thinking about who they are, what they want, or what they need.

It’s EASY to do.  And segmenting by gender is one of the MOST basic ways to segment a list.

So you can STILL send out a message addressed to “DUDE,” but you send it ONLY to the dudes on your list.

It’s not rocket science.  We have a questionnaire template that makes doing this dead simple.

And best of all, it works!

We all know that the ROI on surveys is HUGE.  They can double, triple, or even quadruple your profits in no time flat, by

• generating hundreds of testimonials,
• producing statistical proof that your products work and your services change lives,
• showing what your customers like about your products–and
• helping you fix the flaws before they drag down your bottom line.

Although that ROI is super easy to get, it’s not guaranteed:  To get those awesome results, you’ve got to do GOOD surveys.

But let’s face it:  Nobody has the time to sit down and become a survey expert.  You’ve got a business to run and surveys are just one of the many tools you’re using.

That’s where good questionnaire templates become critically important, because they give you a quick and easy way to get a survey out the door in a hurry.

Here’s the problem:  Many of the questionnaire templates out there are really BAD.  In fact, I’ve looked at hundreds that are downright terrible.

I’m not just being a picky PhD here.  The problems in these questionnaire templates range from poorly constructed questions that respondents can’t understand to “double-barreled” questions that will confuse and frustrate your customers to “command and control” structures that essentially tell your customers to “give me the information I want so I can make more money.”

And these questionnaire templates are all over the place-in well-known business sites, in popular online survey software programs, on major business sites.

These questionnaire templates won’t just fail to get the information you need, they can alienate your customers in a hurry, destroying the relationships you’ve worked so hard to build and maintain.

That’s something NO business owner wants to see happen.

I was really tired of seeing clients come in with surveys they’d sent to their customers that were based on these horrible templates, so I worked with Mike to create a set of templates that would solve some of these problems.

I probably got a little carried away, because we ended up making more than we’d planned.  But I think these things are really cool, because they give you a quick, easy, reliable way to produce all the major surveys that any business needs–you just modify and customize them to fit your business and your needs.

The templates we’re providing include:

• Product creation survey,
• Customer satisfaction survey,
• Testimonial generator,
• Case Study template,
• “Before and after” surveys (to measure customers’ progress in a coaching program or from using a product or service),
• Customer profile survey (great for segmenting your list),
• Seminar evaluation survey,
• Blog survey template,
• Referral request model.

We’ve included all these in our new product, Turn Surveys Into Cash.  And as great as these things are, they’re really just “add-ons” in the product, because the core of the product shows you how to design a survey system for your business, quickly and easily, teaches you a foolproof process for creating surveys, and shows you how to use these templates in that process to start ramping up profits, right away.

Want to know more?  Check it out!

You probably knew that surveys are an awesome way to create a product, but did you know they can also create your autoresponder series or e-course for you?

Absolutely!

One of our big goals at MySurveyExpert is to help members who are just starting out with online marketing “get off the starting block.”  So here’s an example of what we’re doing:

One of our newest MySurveyExpert members was having trouble getting an autoresponder series created, so I decided to help him out by showing him how to make it super simple.

You can take the quick and easy Product Creation Survey that we include in our new product, “Turn Surveys Into Cash,” and create not only your new product but also an autoresponder series that will help sell it.

Here’s how:

With a product creation survey, you can find out

• EXACTLY what your customers want in a product,
• how they want it delivered,
• what they’ll pay for it.

It’s the quickest, easiest, most profitable way I know to create a product.

But don’t stop there–use that same survey to create your autoresponder series or an e-course that you deliver through your autoresponder.  Here’s how:

Take that same idea or topic and just boil it down to 8 key points.

So, if you’ve found out that your customers want to know how to use clicker training teach a dog basic commands, then you want to write out an e-course (autoresponder series) that teaches  your customers how to do ONE PIECE of that.

In this case, we could write out 8 short lessons on how to use clicker training to teach a dog to sit.

Then write an introductory lesson at the front and a “summing it up” lesson at the end, and voila–you have your autoresponder series or e-course.

• One important point:  In that “sum it up” lesson, make SURE you include information that tells them EXACTLY where and how to get more information on using clicker training to teach the dog to stay, come, etc.–that’s how you lead them to the product or service you’re selling.

So you see how EASILY you can get multiple uses out of that product creation survey AND help increase sales of your new product or service.

And remember, we’ve made it SUPER easy to do these surveys with our Product Creation Survey template–one of 10 templates in our new product.

To find out more, go here.

And remember, if you have a question about how to use surveys in your business, we’d love to hear it!

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.