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.

Online sales stood out as the most positive news in recently-released economic indicators–but the news wasn’t good for “web-only” marketers.   And it may well be that a customer satisfaction questionnaire, as part of a solid web site survey system, may be what they need to compete successfully.

The latest figures for the first three months of 2009 show that online retail sales climbed by an average of 11%, with more than half (58%) of the 80 firms surveyed reporting increased online sales, compared to the same period in 2008.

That’s great news, interpreted by some analysts as indicating increased consumer confidence.

But the picture for those of us who market only online isn’t nearly as rosy.  A whopping 60% of “Web-only merchants” reported declining sales.

What’s going on–why are the “Web-only” merchants losing out?

One explanation is that, as more merchants moved online in the economic downturn, some online marketers found themselves unprepared for the increased competition.  The things that worked in the past just weren’t working anymore.

This clearly suggests that many online marketers need to “step up their game.”  And one key way to do that is to make sure that you’re listening to your customers and your prospects.

The simple fact is that they have a lot to tell you.  They can tell you

• what products they want–and what they’ll pay for those products;
• how they like the products and services you’re selling now and what you need to do to improve them;
• how they like your customer service,
• what they want to hear from you in your newsletters and ezines, how they want the information delivered, and how often they want to hear it, and they’ll give you
• referrals, prospects who are “pre-qualified” because they’re like the customers who are already buying from you.

And that’s not all.  If you put a survey system in place and learn how to do a good job of interpreting survey data, you’ll get three forms of proof that will convert prospects and turn them into customers who will buy from you, over and over again.  If you start doing websurveys regularly in your business, you can produce

• hundreds of testimonials quickly, easily, and cheaply, stories that will show how your products and services work and why;
• case studies–stories that stick because they show your prospects exactly how your product or service solved their problems, eased their pain, and
• the gold standard–statistical PROOF that show your products work and your services change lives.  The proof that only comes from surveys.

And you think the successful online marketers, the ones whose sales are UP in the first quarter of 09, don’t know that, you’re wrong.  I just got 3 surveys last week for products and services I purchased from one of the top online marketers, a true “guru” that has continued to make millions, throughout the recession.

Clearly, HE knows the secret.  He’s getting Survey Monkey data on every single product and service he sells and even some of the things he gives away!  He has a survey system in place that includes a client satisfaction questionnaire or customer satisfaction questionnaire on everything that goes out his door, because he KNOWS it works.

And you want to know the best part?  It really isn’t that hard to do.  We’re about to launch a product that will give you a questionnaire template for every survey you need to do in your business.  And we’re going to show you exactly how to put those questionnaire templates together into a survey system that will let you blow your competition away.  So if you don’t know what a Likert survey is or you’re confused by any of the other buzzwords, no worries–we’ve done the work for you.

We’re going to show you how to go about interpreting survey data, too.  How to minimize measurement error in survey data.  How to put an intake questionnaire in place for your coaching programs–the list goes on and on.

The product will be released in just a few short weeks.  But if you want to get started right now, just sign up for our free e-course.  And check back at the blog for all the valuable free content we put out every week.

You CAN compete, you CAN be one of the marketers who succeeds wildly, even in the midst of this recession.  Don’t be left behind in the competition.

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.