Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to fine tune your product or service towards the target market.

Know your target market – Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? Does your service or product appeal to specific age groups? Do you know who your potential customers are and where they live?

Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?

Products and services – Do you have the products or services that people want? Are your products and services value for money? How do your company’s products and services compare to those of your competitors? If you have a product can you deliver, do you deliver, should you deliver?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand? Do you make it easy for people to buy from you? Are your employees properly trained, knowledgeable, helpful and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which are the least effective marketing channels?

Do the right people understand your marketing message? Does your marketing material properly represent your brand? Do you advertise through the right channels? Are you reaching the right people?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.

• Market research will help you better communicate – Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By consulting with the customer you not only show them that you care you also take the guesswork out of customer services.
• Market research helps you identify opportunities – If you are planning to operate a new service and want to know the preconceived attitudes people have then market research can help, not only in evaluating the potential for a new idea, but also by identify the areas where a marketing message needs to be honed.
• Market research will minimise risk – Market research can help shape a new product or service, identifying what is needed and ensure that the development of a product is highly focused towards demand.
• Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress – By establishing a benchmark you then have a useful reference to allow you to measure your progress – If you do not measure you will not be able to properly gauge how well your business is performing. Preliminary research may be able to identify problems in the service you intend to offer or in your product, regular market research will show if progress is being made and, if positive, will help motivate a team.

Market research brings considerable benefits and it is perhaps surprising how few businesses invest sufficient resources to gather good intelligence that will help them improve business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.

1. It’s cheap and cheerful
Select the right survey website and creating surveys can be free of any charge and the cost to publish excellent value for money.
Useful information derived from survey analysis can be reused and repackaged in other marketing and PR for use in press outlets making it a very efficient form of information gathering.

2. It’s extremely easy
Anyone can create, design and publish an online survey. Create professional looking online surveys in a matter of minutes, no programming skills are required and when published the surveys are simple to complete.

3. Multiple deployment options
Once the survey is online it’s a simple step to promote it, either through email (with a link enclosed), via a link from a website or referenced by other forms of advertising. Once advised of the survey’s URL anyone can link can to the survey at a time that is convenient to them, 24×7.

4. We’ve all got an opinion – and we like to give it
The majority of customers do not view surveys as spam and will in fact welcome the opportunity to voice their opinion and have the chance to make an impact on a brand. Online survey’s are an ideal way for broaching sensitive subjects with concerned employees; a survey asking a workforce on their opinion of change allows the key issues to be raised in a positive manner and encourages employee participation. Online surveys allow the message to reach each individual and invite feedback in a manageable form.

5. Get inside their heads
A customer may see an advertisement but you can’t be sure they have read it. Surveys engage the respondent, who think about the question before giving their response.

6. Build a relationship
It needn’t all end at the end of the survey – while you have the respondent’s attention and they are in the mood you can ask if they want to sign up for more information or a regular newsletter – making the most of the window of opportunity where you have their interest.

7. If you like this, you’ll love…
Take the opportunity to maximise the interest of those responding to your survey by referencing related information. By embedding links within the survey you are able to reinforce the marketing message.

8. Subtly does it
Surveys can help associate, in the mind of the respondents, a product with a number of positive attributes. By listing the features of a product and asking the respondent to say how important they are to them, regardless of their response, the respondent will associate the product with the features.

9. Market, educate and gather market research
A survey is an effective, quick and easy method to help promote and gain acceptance for a difficult proposal; such as a public body trying to gain acceptance and support for a particular scheme.
For example take a city trying to gain support from the general public for their bid to host a future Olympic Games. A survey can explain each benefit putting the respondent in a much better position to appreciate what the real advantages are that might just combat any negative headlines. As well as promoting the cause, useful feedback is gained that can be used to fine tune the overall marketing strategy.

10. Fresh topics engage interest
By thinking laterally a lively and imaginative approach to surveys could provide a ‘hook’ to engage respondents. The survey subject can be focused towards a particular group on a subject close to theirs hearts. A survey’s marketing message can take the form of a simple brand awareness message by stating that the survey is being sponsored by brand name, or by finding a link from the subject matter to the product – something that is surprisingly easy and highly effective.

Attract traffic by providing a Public Survey section as many people who enjoy completing crosswords and doing word puzzles enjoy completing surveys. Low cost and automated, having a public survey notice board as part of a website will help increase traffic and establish a loyal and returning following. Unlike discussion boards there is no opportunity for people to disrupt the site by inappropriate remarks as the survey results are displayed in summary form enabling them to dispense with moderators and maintenance.

Customers do not often view surveys as spam and the majority welcome the opportunity to make their voice heard and a chance to have an impact on a brand.

Many of the techniques and a few more are contained in the following Sample Marketing Survey.

Before an advertiser spends those millions of dollars promoting a product, he wants to have some idea of the odds of his product being successful in the marketplace. Online surveys are one way to determine that. And more advertisers every day are taking advantage of this relatively low cost of doing market research that can prevent them making huge marketing and production mistakes.

Online surveys give companies immediate feedback on their ideas, products, and services. paid survey sites help them to answer the question regarding the level of demand for their idea or product. Surveys also enable them to tweak their offer many times if necessary until they are either comfortable that their idea is worth going forward with or is one that should be dropped. And, often times, it lets them do this at a fraction of the cost it would have taken to produce the product and market it.

Online surveys give companies one other advantage. Surveys help companies to build up an email list of potential customers who have expressed an interest in what they have to offer.

The situation is a win for the potential customer also. It gives them a chance to make or save a few dollars. For example, if they are at all interested in the product, they may be able to get the product free or at a drastic discount n return for giving their opinion of the product.

Typically, a marketing survey form will ask a potential buyer questions about the product or service. What is it they dislike about it? What do they like about it? How much would they be willing to pay for it and so on. This gives the company a chance to modify the product, if necessary, before the intended product launch date.

As a buyer, you may also be asked about your buying patterns. For example, how often do you buy a new car, upgrade your software, or buy pasta? This helps the company gauge the size of their potential market. A company may have a product that they believe only appeals to men. If their survey reveals that it has an equal appeal to women as well, they have potentially doubled their market size. And, of course, it works in reverse as well. They may think they have a product that both men and women will enjoy, and sadly find that only men are interested in it.

With paid online surveys, both the company and the user win.  If you’re a user, the key thing is to get on the right notification lists so you’ll be aware of the online surveys that are available.