Know Thy Audience: The Marketing Survey
June 21st, 2007 Dina at Wordfeeder.comBefore you can even think about crafting the ad copy, you’ve got to know your audience. I mean “know” in an intimate, psychological way.
Think about it, it’s all riding on the “attitude” you adopt in your marketing communication. Their desire to become a customer of yours is directly related to whether they can identify with what you’re saying (content) and how you say it (tone, style). You want them to feel like you understand their issues and urges - that you’re on the level.
Once that connection has been established, you want to be certain there’s a need for what you offer and a willingness to purchase. Most business owners don’t take the time to find this out, either because they don’t know how, or or they can’t be bothered. But I assure you, it’s worth “discussing” with your audience.
Buying habits, attitudes, and product preferences of your ideal customer can ALL be established by putting out a marketing survey.
Right now you may be asking - okay, even if I did have a survey, where would I find “targeted” people to send it to? This is the great thing about the web - the thing that blows my mind actually.
If you’re playing the website game correctly, then the people who visit your website should already fit your target customer profile. Why? Industry terms. Word matches. If you’re publishing these, and people out there are searching for what you’re publishing, you’re going to be found.
All you have to do to attract “your ideal buyer” is publish niche-relevant, intelligent and informative articles, tips, offers and advice EVERY single month while capturing leads via a permission-based sign-up form.
Now, if you DON’T have a website, then there are other ways to find people who may be willing to take your marketing survey.
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1. Buy a list from a list broker.
2. Tap into your network of business contacts.
3. The Yellow Pages.
4. Reach out to the Blogosphere.
5. Put out a classified ad.
6. Notify the public via a press release.
Ideally, you want as many qualified leads as possible to take your survey… but even a small sampling of less than 50 people is better than nothing. Later, when you use that data to refine your product, service, or business model, you can then conduct a focus group to get feedback on your marketing approach.
What Types of Questions Should You Include in Your Marketing Survey?
I was involved in compiling the results of a recent survey on podcasting that was distributed by Caprica Marketing and their partner, Sequentia. Unfortunately, it appears that they have removed the survey link from their website, but for me it was a great marketing survey refresher course. Some ideas based on what they covered (and what you can use in your own marketing survey):
- The ratio of males vs. females who are familiar with and/or use the product in question.
- Total yearly income of people who were interested in and took your survey.
- Familiarity with the product or various aspects of the product.
- Frequency of use and subsequent reasoning behind.
- Comparison between your product and competing products in the same industry - for example, motivation for choosing one over the other.
- Importance - how much of a priority does your target customer consider your product to be?
- Preference for various aspects of the product, i.e. what features do they want?
- How much are people willing to pay for X amount of features, or what do they pay already for comparable products?
You want to be as specific as possible when crafting your marketing survey questions. For an example of exactly how to do this, please review the Article Marketing Survey I published in 2006.
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