Posts Tagged market research
The Benefits of Good Market Research
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 17th, 2009
What will conducting effective market research teach you?
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? What age group does your product or service appeal to? 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? Do you represent value for money? How do your services and products compare to those of your competitors? Can you, do you, should you deliver directly to your customer?
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 be it in the form of notices, leaflets or human assistance? Do you make it easy for people to buy from you? Are all your employees properly trained, helpful, knowledgeable and available?
Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which marketing channels are effective and which ones are ineffective?
Do the right people understand your marketing message? Does your marketing properly embody your brand? Do you use the right promotion 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.
Understanding Why Market Research is Important
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 14th, 2009
Market research is an essential element of any organization that wants to offer products or services that are focused and well targeted. Business decisions that are based on good intelligence and good market research can minimise risk and pay dividends. By making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the life cycle of a product or service market research will bring the following benefits:-
- 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 a new service is planned and you want to know the attitudes people have then market research can help, not only by evaluating the potential for the new idea, but also by identify the areas where a marketing message needs to be fine tuned.
- Market research will minimise risk – Market research can identifying what is needed for a new service and product and ensure that the development of a product matches 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.
Considering the benefits that market research will bring to any organization 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.
Promotion Doesn’t Need to End After the Performance
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 12th, 2009
Many promoters starting out have to work hard and on a shoestring to get an audience of a few hundred people to fill a venue. Flyers, word-of-mouth and social networks are some of the methods promoters can use to try and encourage people to venues or club nights. Building up a loyal following from scratch is no easy task. For an up and coming band a lot of effort can go into attracting enough people to fill even the smallest of venues and those promoting the event need to take every opportunity to establish a relationship with the audience that will continue beyond the end of the performance.
For a small outlay online surveys can be set up to provide the promoter with feedback and the opportunity to maintain an on going relationship with their audience. Using online Survey Software a promoter can now quickly and easily create an online survey.
With an online survey a promoter can find out exactly:-
- who attended;
- what persuaded them;
- what they thought of the event;
- would they expect to attend again;
- would they recommend future events to their friends.
One way to ensure a good response is to have a supply of business sized cards that are marked clearly with a slogan like “Feedback”, “Everyone’s a critic”, “What do you think”. On each card a web address will point either directly to the survey or to a website where a link to the survey can be placed. Cards can be issued at the door with the tickets, or handed out among the crowd and if they are made the size of business cards they will be small enough to be slipped into a pocket, purse or wallet. Small incentives such as a chance to win a free guest pass for a future event, a signed CD or T shirt would help towards improving the response rate.
Using the results from online surveys the promoter is able to:
- Obtain a profile of the audience
- Gauge the overall success of the event;
- Measure the effectiveness of different promotion;
- Receive feedback on the venue and facilities;
- Receive feedback on the act;
- Promote on a one on one basis;
- Build a targeted database for future events;
- Build a loyal audience;
- Link to merchandise and other promotions.
It takes considering effort to promote an event and only a little extra effort to use online surveys to encourage further contact and reap a number of short and long term benefits that contact will bring.
The following example shows the feedback that could be used for a breaking band. It not only gathers valuable feedback, but continues to promote the band, their CD and gives the opportunity to encourage further contact.
Sample Feedback Survey
To view the summary results of the survey: Sample Survey Results
Simple and Effective – Website Surveys
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 10th, 2009
There are many tools available to a webmaster to analyse website traffic, some free like Google’s Analytics that will allow them to monitor the number of visitors, see what pages have been accessed and the length of time visitors have spent accessing the website and a whole lot more.
However, despite the vast amount of detailed information that can be collected what will always be missing is information that will tell the webmaster what the visitor was thinking. Did they dislike the site? Was the layout easy to understand or just plain confusing? Was it easy to navigate the website and were they able to find the information they wanted?
A website may be generating sales but why are some people that visit the website not buying anything? Was it because they didn’t like what was being offered or they couldn’t find what they wanted?
Using online surveys webmasters have a simple and accurate method of answering these types of questions. Direct feedback from the website visitors means that there is no longer the need to guess, just ask the visitors how they found the site and if they found what they were looking for.
With an online survey webmasters can find out:-
- How often do people visit the website?
- How did they find the website?
- Is their interest in the website for reasons of business or pleasure?
- Was the information they were looking for found on the website?
- How easy did they find navigating the website?
- Would they be willing to recommend the website to others?
A good website survey will be concise and will collate information that once analyzed will provide valuable information to help improve the website.
An alternative to a traditional survey would be to embed one or two survey questions within the website after specific procedures. One example would be to ask visitors at the end of the registration process if they found the procedure quick and easy; another example would be after ordering an item the customer could be asked if they found the ordering procedure and payment methods to their liking. To make sure that the questions do not become repetitive to regular visitors the website can be programmed so that the questions are only asked once per registered user.
Website surveys take the mystery out of working out what visitors think of a website and using Online Survey Software they are quick and easy to design and once implemented will really become the webmaster’s assistant.
To see a sample website survey please follow the link: Sample Website Survey
Encouraging Contact
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on June 9th, 2009
The small time promoter has to work hard and on a shoestring to get an audience of a few hundred people to fill a venue. Flyers, word-of-mouth and media name checks are some of the tools promoters use to fill small venues or club nights. Building a loyal following from grassroots is no easy task. For an up and coming band a lot of effort can go into attracting enough people to fill even the smallest of venues and those promoting the event need to take every opportunity to establish a relationship with the audience that will continue beyond the end of the performance.
For a small outlay online surveys can be set up to provide the promoter with feedback and the opportunity to maintain an on going relationship with their audience. Using online Survey Software a promoter can now quickly and easily create an online survey.
With an online survey a promoter can find out exactly:-
- who attended;
- what persuaded them;
- what they thought of the event;
- would they expect to attend again;
- would they recommend future events to their friends.
A way to ensure a good response is to have a number of business sized cards that are marked clearly with words like “Feedback”, “Your opinion counts”, “Tell us what you thought”. On each card a web address will point either directly to the survey or to a website where a link to the survey can be placed. The cards can be issued at the door with the tickets, or handed out among the audience and being the size of business cards they are small enough to be stuck in a pocket, purse or wallet. Small incentives such as a chance to win a free guest pass for a future event, a signed CD or T shirt would help towards improving the response rate.
Using the results from online surveys the promoter is able to:
- Obtain a profile of the audience
- Gauge the overall success of the event;
- Measure the effectiveness of different promotion;
- Receive feedback on the venue and facilities;
- Receive feedback on the act;
- Promote on a one on one basis;
- Build a targeted database for future events;
- Build a loyal audience;
- Link to merchandise and other promotions.
Considering the effort that it takes to promote an event and the little extra effort required in using online surveys to encourage further contact and all the immediate and long term benefits that will bring – it really couldn’t be any easier.
The following sample survey shows the feedback that could be used for a breaking band. It not only gathers valuable feedback, but continues to promote the band, their CD and gives the opportunity to encourage further contact.
Sample Feedback Survey
To view the summary results of the survey: Sample Survey Results
Marketing to the Online Generation Using Surveys and Questionnaires
Posted by Guest in Internet Marketing on May 29th, 2009
Customers are demanding. They are extremely media aware and increasingly cynical and it is a clever marketeer who can get under their skin. Online surveys modernizes the traditional format and offer a unique way of interaction – all the benefits of the Internet without the programming. Here are ten reasons why they may be the silver bullet marketeers’ need, complete with examples supplied by Martin Day, managing director of Survey Galaxy – one of a new breed of websites making online surveys quicker and cheaper
1. It’s cheap, it’s 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 surveys 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 and publish an online survey. Using an online survey website only basic browser skills is required to create professional looking surveys that when published ate simple to comcomplete.
3. Invite the world
Once the survey is online it is a simple step to promote it the most popular methods being either through email (with a link enclosed) or via a link from a website. Anyone who has the URL can be connected instantly to the survey, at a time that’s convenient to them, 24×7.
4. We have 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. They provide a good method 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. Deliver a message to individuals and then have the feedback collated in a manageable form.
5. Get inside your respondent’s head
With traditional advertising you can lead a customer to an advertisement but you can’t make them think. Surveys actively engage the respondent, who think about the question before giving their response.
6. Building relationships
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. Link your survey to other online information
Take the opportunity to maximise the interest of those responding to your survey by referencing related information. By including links within the survey to websites that offer detailed information you are able to maximise your marketing effort and reinforce the marketing message.
8. Subtly does it
In the mind of the respondent a surveys can help associate a product with a number of positive attributes. By listing the many features of a product and then asking the respondent to say how important the features are to them, regardless of their response, the respondent will associate the product with the features.
9. Not just selling
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.
Take the example of a city trying to gain support from the general public for their bid to host a future Olympic Games. With a survey you have the opportunity to explain each benefit putting the respondent in a much better frame of mind to appreciate an argument and be more positive in their response. As well as promoting the cause, useful feedback is gained that can be used to fine tune the overall marketing strategy.
10. Engage your target group
Thinking laterally a lively and imaginative approach to surveys can provide the ‘hook’ to engage respondents. The survey subject can be focused towards a particular group on a subject close to theirs hearts. The 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 to do and that is highly effective.
Attract traffic by providing a Public Survey section as many people who enjoy completing crosswords and doing word puzzles enjoy completing surveys. Having a public survey notice board as part of a website is a cost effective and automated method that 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 associate surveys as spam and most 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.