We’re getting ready to do a video on blog surveys and we want to make sure we’re giving you all the information you need.

So let’s hear it:  What are your questions about doing blog surveys?  Anything, from what software to use to what to ask to how to interpret blog surveys is fair game.

Post your questions here and I promise to answer them.  And, if you want to tell us about experiences you’ve had using blog surveys–successes, problems, funny stories, whatever–we’d love to hear them.

The video will be up on the blog soon, so stay tuned!

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New data support what we’ve told you before: Personalizing your messages to customers increases the chance those messages will actually get through.

A new survey shows that 41% of US Internet users pay more attention to personalized advertising, 39% say they’re more likely to click on personalized ads.

But here’s the kicker: Privacy concerns about online targeting are growing. A 2008 Harris poll showed that 45% of Internet users are nervous about website policies that provide the information for ad targeting, 57% of respondents in another survey said they’re concerned about advertisers using their browsing history to choose ads.

What’s the answer? Get the data a different way: Use surveys.

Bottom line, knowing who your customers are is as important as understanding where they came from and how they found your site.

And, as we’ve pointed out before, using survey data on your customers to segment your list can up your click-through and conversion rates by as much as 45%.

Last week, I wrote about the power of surveys to help you profit from the downturn.  Now we’re taking it a step farther and showing you some specific steps you can take to take control of your fate:

Find out who your customers are:  If you don’t know basic demographic information–such as age, gender, location, and they kind of business or employment your customers are in–you could be in deep trouble.  To market effectively, you simply must know who among your customers has been hard hit by the downturn.  Having that information will allow you to target your marketing effectively by segmenting your customer lists and offering discounts to individuals in hard-hit groups.  You can’t convince them that you “feel their pain” if you don’t know what kind of pain they’re in.

Remember, not EVERYONE has been hit hard.  Baton Rouge, the city in which I live, is still doing well economically.  It’s important, then, to target offers differently to people who live in areas such as this than you do to people in hard-hit geographic areas or demographic groups. If you can market heavily to areas that are stronger and offer special discounts or incentives to those who are harder hit, your click through and conversion rates will rise dramatically.

Find out what your customers want to buy:  Even people who haven’t lost their jobs or the value of their portfolios are changing their buying behavior.  Remember, Wal-Mart’s sales are up.  Companies that can offer the products and services to help people weather the economic storm will do well.  So think of some possible products and services your business could offer and find out how your customers are likely to react to them.  Get creative and create the products and services your market needs right now.

And remember that social media can’t give you what you need.  The problem is that you hear from only a PORTION of your customers in social media.  Often, it’s the people who either love your products or hate them!  You need systematic evidence from a broad cross-section of your customer base.  Get that evidence and you can create the products your customers want and sell them to those customers.

Find the weak spots and correct them:  Every business has some Achilles heels, things that need to be worked on–but far too many don’t know what those problems are until it’s too late.  Make sure you’re getting an ongoing stream of information about what customers like and DON’T like about your products, services, and particularly your customer service.  Find out what needs to be fixed and fix it, right away, to ensure that you keep your customer base strong.

Bring more people into the funnel:  Referrals are gold.  Why?  Because the people your customers and clients are connected to in their networks are generally like them in key characteristics, such as age, income, education, etc.  Because research has established clearly that the people we hang out with in our social networks are similar to us, referrals and “customer evangelists” are one of the most efficient, low-cost ways to expand your reach into your target market. 

Think about it:  You have a pool of people who are very much like your customers and your target market sitting right there, you just have to find a way to connect with those people.  And that’s what referrals do.  So put requests for referrals into every survey you do. 

And here’s a hot tip:  DON’T just ask people to think of “friends” who might want your products or services, ask them to think about people in particular places, such as civic associations, sports leagues, places of worship.  You’ll get MUCH better results.  (And in our new survey product, we’ve included a model for exactly how to do this.)

Convert those prospects with rock-solid proof:  Once you’re bringing those prospects into the funnel, you’ve got to find ways to convert them.  The best way is with systematic evidence that your products work and your services change lives. 

Case studies and testimonials are great, but they’re not enough.  It’s much more powerful if you can combine that “qualitative” evidence, the “stories that stick,” with hard data that say 86% of the people who bought this product were very satisfied, 90% of the people who came to the seminar took away useful information, etc.  Put that evidence together with the case studies and testimonials that you can also generate through surveys and you’ll increase your conversion rates dramatically.

Follow these steps to using surveys effectively and you’ll find yourself among the firms who conquer the economic downturn and actually profit from it.

It might surprise you to know what the hardest part of my job is when consulting with survey clients.  It isn’t convincing them to DO surveys, it isn’t convincing them to shorten their surveys, it isn’t even getting them to pay me when the job is done.

The toughest part of my job when working with clients is getting THEM to identify WHAT THEY WANT TO KNOW.

Clients have a very hard time REALLY understanding what they want to know, which is why I spend a lot of my time asking them questions, to help them clarify.

Why worry so much about this?  Because if you don’t specify the central question or goal of your survey clearly, nothing else will matter.

It’s critically important to be able to state the goal of your survey, the central question, in 1 clear, concise sentence.

Here are some examples of good survey questions:

• How interested are my customers in a new product that would help them ____?
• Among the customers who purchased Product X in the last 6 months, how satisfied are they with that product?
• What % of the people on my list have ever purchased a product or service from me?
• What % of the people on my list are women?

Notice that each of these questions is clear, simple, and specific.  It directs us toward the group of people we want to survey and it gives us a very clear idea of where we need to go.

So, before you begin writing questions, make sure you understand EXACTLY what you want to know.  It will make the job of creating a survey far easier.