lorraine, Author at Pollfish Resources

Diving Into the Customer Feedback Survey to Target All Your Customers

Using the customer feedback survey is the quickest and most effective way to gain ceaselessly coveted customer feedback. This tool provides access to all the opinions and commentary that members of your target market have.

You can use these surveys to run a survey campaign into virtually any topic that you’d like insights on from your customers themselves. While this kind of Voice of the Customer tool may appear to be too general, it is a necessity for brands — and customers agree.

Filling in surveys may also seem to be a chore, but customers appreciate it when brands take their feedback into consideration, regardless. In fact, 77% of customers view brands more favorably if proactively if they invite and accept customer feedback.

It is evident that businesses must acquire as much customer feedback as possible to inform their actions and improvements.

This article provides an in-depth look into the customer feedback survey, its importance, when and how to use it and more.

Understanding the Customer Feedback Survey

As its name implies, this is a kind of survey for gathering customer feedback, which is an all-encompassing term describing all the information that customers provide about their experience with a business.

In this regard, customer feedback can include commentary and insights into a business’s products, services, and various kinds of experiences, including customers’ overall perceptions during their customer buying journey, known as customer experience (CX).

Through the customer feedback survey, businesses also gain insights into customer behavior and various customer consumer preferences. It can provide quantitative market research through various close-ended questions, including numerical ratings questions, such as the NPS survey (Net Promoter Score).

You can also probe deeply into the minds of your target market sample by forming your customer feedback survey as a means of conducting qualitative market research. You can do this by using advanced skip logic in your questionnaire.

This feature allows you to probe further into customer feedback by routing respondents to specific follow-up questions based on the answers to a previous question. You can also make your customer feedback survey take a qualitative approach by using open-ended questions so that customers can fully explain themselves.

You can gauge your customers on specific experiences and sentiments whenever you need to gather specific feedback, especially the kind that is tied to your various marketing/business campaigns.

The Importance of the Customer Feedback Survey

The importance of the customer feedback survey cannot be overstated. This single vessel of customer feedback provides brands insights into any and every concern their customers have. The key is to use it at appropriate times and to use the proper accompanying online survey platform.

Firstly, this survey provides insights into general customer feedback on a brand, which includes customers’ thoughts, ideas, musings and even insights into their customer buying behavior.

In the age of digital experience and CX in general, it is crucial for businesses to be well-acquainted with their customers’ likes, aversions, needs and more. It is equally important to get their feedback on other matters, as this kind of feedback may point out issues you didn't know your customers had with your business.

As such, conducting this survey will reveal many issues you didn't know your brand had, whether it is in the pre-sales stage, the buying stage or the post-sale stage where your customers may return to your brand or switch to a competitor. This kind of feedback allows you to prioritize your efforts on the most pressing matters to your customers.

By understanding your customers’ pet peeves, wants, needs and gathering other feedback, you will, in turn, avoid and lower your customer attrition. Losing customers is never a positive outcome for a business, even less so considering it is 5 times more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to retain existing ones.

The customers that you retain also have a higher probability of buying from your business, as they carry a 60-70% success rate of selling to them. As such, it is critical to avoid customer attrition and maintain a steady flow of existing customers. With the customer feedback survey, you can maintain and increase your customer retention rate, while keeping your customer attrition rate at bay.

Avoiding customer attrition and maintaining customer retention allows you to increase the customer lifetime value (CLV) of your target market. This metric measures the total monetary value a customer has for your business during their relationship with the business.

The longer you retain your customers, the higher their CLV is for your business, representing a constant provider of revenue for your company. As such, the customer feedback survey goes beyond allowing customers to air out their grievances, frustrations and feelings of satisfaction. By supporting customer retention and lowering customer attrition, it helps raise the total value your customers bring to your brand in their lifetime.

However, not all customers provide any feedback. This is problematic, especially when dealing with unsatisfied customers. Only 1 in 26 unhappy customers make their grievances known. Businesses are thus left to fend for themselves when it comes to understanding what makes their customers unhappy, if they can detect this feeling at all among their customers.

The customer feedback survey provides a practical remedy for this, giving businesses an easily accessible tool to extract and gauge customer feedback, whereas, without this tool, most customers would have kept their feedback to themselves.

When and How to Use the Customer Feedback Survey

You should create and deploy the survey whenever you seek customer feedback. There are specific times during the customer journey that are especially favorable for collecting feedback, as these are the times in which customers still have interactions and intentions fresh on their minds.

Surveying customers at these moments is conducive to their providing feedback that is honest and accurate to their situation and thoughts. The following lists specific times before, during and after the sales cycle in which you should use the customer feedback survey. It also provides examples of the specific kinds of customer feedback surveys to use:

Top of the funnel interactions and occurrences customers have:
1. When customers sign up for a newsletter, first webinar or subscription list.
2. When customers visit a company website for the first time without converting.
3. When customers enter a store for the first time and leaving an email address
4. When customers inquire about a business for the first time.
  1. Example: Calling a business for the first time to ask if it offers certain products or services.
5. Use a brand awareness survey after customers have first encountered an interaction with your company.
Middle of the funnel interactions and occurrences:
1. When customers watch a webinar for the first time after having had previous interactions with a company.
2. When customers watch a second, third or further webinar.
3. After a potential client or customer inquires about an upcoming event.
4. When customers visit a website and bounce or after having made several site visits without purchasing.
5. When customers speak with a sales representative early on in the middle of the funnel (especially useful for B2B businesses looking to secure a lead). Use B2B surveys when dealing with partners, vendors and business clients.
Middle of the Funnel interactions nearing conversions
1. After customers chatted with a sales representative via a website chatting system.
2. After customers exchanged emails with a company (especially in B2B settings).
3. After thoroughly discussing an integration, plan of action, offerings at length and contracts with an MQL (especially in B2B settings).
4. After site visitors browse a website and call/chat about specific products, services and promotions.
End of the Funnel: Beginning of Purchases
1. When customers abandon their shopping carts.
  1. Use a consumer survey to ask why they abandoned their shopping cart, if they intend to return and what would make them purchase.
  2. Use the CES (Customer Effort Score) survey to quiz the difficulty customers had with the checkout process or any other part of their CX.
2. When customers call in or chat before making their purchase.
  1. Use the customer experience survey to ask whether your staff answers all of the customers’ questions, if they were helpful and if they pushed them to finally purchase.
3. When customers pay for a paid service such as a subscription.
Post-Sales
1. After customers check out their purchase.
2. After customers canceled their orders.
3. After a certain period of time passes post-purchase as a means of checking up on the customers.
  1. Use a CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) survey to determine the levels of satisfaction customers have with your business throughout their CX and especially with the product.
  2. Use the product satisfaction survey to gauge how well your product is received and whether customers encounter any glitches/bugs.
  3. Use an NPS survey to determine how likely customers are to recommend your business to others.

How to Apply the Customer Feedback Survey

You should target specific customers based on their interactions with your business by emailing them your surveys. This can also be done via the following ways:

Asking customers to take your survey at different social media channels
Routing them to a customer satisfaction survey in-person (by soliciting their email in-store or at a place of sales.
Emailing customers your survey based on those in a CRM system or subscription list.
Deploying surveys to a vast publishing network during, before and after various campaigns, such as advertising, PR, branding and various marketing campaigns.
Targeting specific customers by emailing them a customer feedback survey.
- These can also be those who don’t know about your business but are part of your target market.

Gaining All the Customer Insights You Need

You should always aim to get as much customer feedback as possible, as it can be applied to numerous campaigns, as well as to simply get a better understanding of the state of your niche, customers and cultural trends.

To extract and elicit feedback from customers, you’ll need to use the customer feedback survey. In order to form and deploy such a survey, you’ll need to use an apt online survey platform, ideally, one that is easy to use, allowing you to make a survey in just three easy steps.

Additionally, a strong online survey platform operates via random device engagement (RDE) sampling, enabling you to reach respondents in their natural digital habitats, as opposed to pre-recruiting them.

You should also use a mobile-first platform, as mobile dominates the digital space, so you would need a survey tool built with the best mobile experience.

The platform you use should also offer artificial intelligence and machine learning to remove low-quality data, offer a broad range of survey question types and disqualify dodgy respondents.

Most importantly, it should allow you to survey anyone. As such, you’ll need a platform with a reach to millions of consumers, along with one that offers the Distribution Link feature.

This feature will allow you to send your survey to specific customers, alongside deploying them across a network.

When you use an online survey tool with all of these capabilities, you’ll be making the most out of your customer feedback survey.

by lorraine

Diving Into the Employee Retention Survey to Avoid Turnover

All businesses must conduct the employee retention survey periodically, should they seek to secure employee morale and minimize turnover.

Employee retention is an absolute necessity, as it is the employees that enable a company to operate smoothly, if not entirely. Businesses that fail to prioritize employee retention pay the steep price of high turnover and the ensuing poor reputation. This directly affects brand equity and the overall state of a business.

Despite the importance of employee retention, there are several concerning statistics when it comes to this business aspect. First off, although the average and ideal employee retention rate is 90%, almost 4 million American employees have quit their jobs in April 2021 alone.

More troubling is the fact that 31% of employees have quit their job within the first 6 months of starting with a company. Given these grim statistics, it is no wonder that almost 50% of HR leaders say employee turnover and retention is their top challenge.

Clearly, employee retention is a key challenge that many companies have not been able to properly work out and fully resolve.

This article explains the employee retention survey, its importance, when to use it, how to create it and more.

Understanding the Employee Retention Survey

As its name implies, this is a kind of employee feedback survey, designed specifically to help businesses retain their employees. This kind of survey is constructed so that business owners and HR workers can understand the ideal environments and needs of their employees, so that, in turn, the employees stay with the company.

This kind of survey examines employees on their needs, motivations, desires and current perception of their working environment, understanding of business expectations, along with those of their own position, their sense of belonging, comfort levels, rapport with other employees and more.

Employee retention refers to the number of employees a company manages to keep within a specific period of time. The higher your employee retention is, the longer your employees stay with your company.

Given that the employee retention survey is premised on keeping employees, this kind of survey can include elements from the following survey types:

The employee satisfaction survey
The employee burnout survey
The employee recognition survey
The eNPS survey, or Employee Net Promoter Score survey

Essentially, this survey can delve into any employee and work-related topic that can assess employee happiness. As such, you can use these kinds of survey types for brainstorming the questions and format of your employee retention survey.

You should also consider regularly running all of these surveys alongside one another, or at least elements of them in one survey, to stay attuned to how your employees are faring in their positions.

The Importance of the Employee Retention Survey

This survey is important on many fronts. It is chiefly important due to the idea of retention. Although employees come and leave organizations frequently, this is not something that businesses should accept.

Instead, businesses should attempt to retain their employees, as high turnover rates harm them. Having to replace employees can be a long and costly process. There is also no guarantee that replacements will perform as well as the employees who left.

However, as previously mentioned, retention statistics are bleak. As a matter of fact, the average employee turnover rate in 2021 in the US is almost 60%. This means that most companies retain less than half of their employees.

Low retention and high turnover rates reflect poorly on your company, damaging your reputation in their wake. Besides these issues, it will make future and current job seekers hesitant about joining your company.

High employee retention, on the other hand, is rightfully desired, a high employee retention rate maximizes profits. This is because employees who have been with a company longer are far more acclimated with the business than new employees, owing to better performance and knowledge of company processes.

Employees you retain for longer periods do not merely require less training than new employees but tend to be more loyal to the company. In turn, they boost morale and can act as employee advocates for your business. They would do so by recommending your company to others by leaving positive online reviews, through word of mouth and leaving high eNPS scores.

While high employee retention rates can raise profits by four times, high employee turnover is responsible for major US companies spending upwards of $1 trillion on finding and recruiting replacement workers annually.

High employee retention rates can be achieved with the employee retention survey, as businesses who craft it carefully with the proper online survey platform can gain valuable insights on their employees. They can then use these insights to transform and improve their work environments.

A whopping 90% of workers say they are more likely to stay at a company that takes and acts on feedback. Therefore, businesses can directly increase their employee retention by using the employee retention survey. The key is to know when to use them, how to craft them and using a trustworthy online survey platform.

When to Use the Employee Retention Survey

Deciding on the best time to send a survey can be difficult, as there are plenty of other critical business concerns and goings-on. Besides, you ideally would need your employees to dedicate their time to their work, as opposed to taking a seemingly non-essential task.

As such, you should know that there are several opportune times to create, send and analyze your employee retention survey. The list below features these times, along with periods of certain business intents, such as improving something in the employee experience.

Annually, biannually and quarterly to get a broad view of employee sentiment.
1. If you use surveys during all of these time frames, consider setting up different themes for each survey.
2. For example, some surveys should be on their own performance, while others can focus on their feelings and perceptions about your business.
During major times of change, such as a merger and/or acquisition.
1. You should wait about a month before implementing this survey, as your employees need to get used to the change, along with its effects on their own positions and new colleagues.
After a company event, such as a sales event, or a cultural event with your team.
After they take a training course on your company’s tools and protocols, along with one to enrich their knowledge, such as a course employees are assigned to get a certification after their completion.
After they’ve completed a major assignment, for example, one that completes their quarterly or other, non-time-based objectives.
During transitions to different teams or managers.
After objectives and goals have been communicated to and assigned to your employees.
1. These often occur at the end or start of a new quarter or bi-annually.
During times in which you feel your team needs to improve its productivity.
1. This often involves times where employees aren't hitting their goals, or are doing so with difficulty.
If you’ve noticed, or have been told by HR about moments of tension between employees or employees and their workload.
When you seek to improve company culture or are curious as to how your employees feel in regards to your business and their job as a whole.

How to Create the Employee Retention Survey

To create the employee retention survey, first decide on the larger purpose of the survey. Use the above section as a guide in terms of the theme and timeframe of the survey. Then, form a preliminary set of questions.

Use a variety of questions to keep your employees engaged and reap quality insights, the kind that won’t require you to elicit more insights/ survey studies. Start by learning about the 6 main types of survey questions. Apply the most relevant types of question types for your set of preliminary questions.

For example, some questions should use a scale, such as Likert scale questions or the aforementioned eNPS survey and its major question. Other questions will warrant using close-ended questions with multiple answers and so on.

You’ll also need to use open-ended questions if you seek to create a qualitative survey. In addition, many times, businesses use open-ended questions as follow-up questions.

For example, if your preliminary question was “which of the following projects did you like working on?,” the follow-up question ought to be “why?,” which requires a thoughtful, in-depth answer that multiple-choice answer questions cannot always provide (although in some cases, you can use multiple-choice questions as follow up questions.

When creating follow-up questions, use advanced skip logic, the online survey mechanism that routes respondents to particular follow-up questions. These questions must be relevant to their answer to a preliminary question.

After completing your questionnaire portion, find the most convenient time for you to send your employee retention survey to your team, along with the most fitting time to announce it and elicit their responses.

If you’d like to learn how to create employee retention survey questions, you can find them in the link provided, along with examples.

Don’t forget to create a “thank you” portion to the survey or a note in your post-survey email to show your team your appreciation and gratitude, along with the importance of their feedback. This provides common courtesy, along with making your employees feel seen and heard.

Use the Distribution Link feature to send the survey to your team. Then, parse the results by filtering data on the dashboard of your online survey platform. Analyze survey data and convene with the HR team to discuss your findings. Finally, take the necessary actions to make improvements for your employees.

Augmenting Your Workspace to Retain Talent

According to various employee retention statistics, including the ones in this article, companies can’t continue to afford to lose their people and to recruit new ones in their place. They should strive for high levels of employee retention and can achieve this through the employee retention survey.

In order to form and deploy such a survey, you’ll need to use a high-performing online survey platform, ideally, one that is easy to use, allowing you to make a survey in just three easy steps.

Additionally, you should also use a mobile-first platform, as mobile dominates the digital space, so you would need a survey tool built with the best mobile experience. This is especially important, as many employees will likely take your survey on their mobile devices.

Most importantly, the online survey platform you use should allow you to survey specific people. As such, you’ll need a platform with a reach to millions of consumers, along with one that offers the Distribution Link feature.

When you use an online survey tool with all of these capabilities and more, you can easily foster employee retention with a strong employee retention survey.

by lorraine

Diving Into the DIY Survey and How It Can Aid Your Organization

When it comes to primary market research and its chief method of survey research, the DIY survey reigns supreme. To some, this may appear to be subjective, but this kind of survey method sits at the forefront of market research innovation.

A DIY survey offers virtually everything that you would expect from the data you extract via syndicated research. The main difference is its benefit of saved time, as this method collects all that is necessary for completion, requiring very little from the researcher.

Depending on the online survey platform hosting this survey, it also applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to disqualify dodgy answers.

Given that market research is a gateway to customer data, a customer data platform is now more important than ever, as 60% of customers have higher expectations than they did before COVID-19. Crafting a DIY survey brings customer insights directly to businesses, so that they can fulfill all of their customers’ needs.

This article explores the DIY surveys, their importance, uses and how to conduct an insights-driven DIY survey study.

Understanding the DIY Survey

The DIY survey is a kind of survey that, as its name suggests, allows researchers to take a do-it-yourself approach to the survey. As such, a DIY survey is a tool that grants researchers ultimate control over their survey.

A DIY survey platform offers multiple capabilities that facilitate the survey creation process. With such a survey approach, the end-user is at the helm of the study; as such, you get to dictate its overall theme, objectives, target market, design, quotas and all else.

However, not all DIY survey platforms offer the same functionalities; as such, some will have more limitations than others, some will have completely different survey sampling methods and these platforms will also offer different levels of reach.

For example, such a platform may offer survey deployment to a wide network of websites and apps, but not offer the RDE (random device engagement sampling method), which captures respondents in their natural digital habitats.

The DIY survey provides agile market research, as researchers can quickly iterate their surveys and test different concepts. Some platforms even provide in-survey A/B testing so that you can test ads and virtually anything else.

The Importance of a DIY Survey

The DIY survey approach allows you to create effective surveys for market research campaigns. Given that surveys are the heart of a market research campaign, it is important to correctly carry them out correctly.

This includes properly creating, deploying and analyzing survey data. The proper DIY survey facilitates all of these aspects.

A DIY survey allows start-ups, early entrants and long-established businesses to evaluate their product, service, experience and brand without spending a large sum of money. They can apply a DIY survey to just about any market research campaign, to support marketing, advertising, branding and other campaign types.

For example, researchers can carry out brand tracking campaigns with the brand tracking survey. Using a DIY platform, they can keep continuous tabs on their business and how it’s perceived.

A DIY survey is especially important, as it offers three major capabilities: survey design, deployment and sampling and analysis. The following explains the importance of a DIY survey in regards to each capability.

Survey Design:

A DIY survey puts you in control of the survey design. A strong online survey platform allows you to make your own survey in just three steps. As such, it won’t take days or even hours to put together a well-designed survey.

This kind of survey allows you to add all the main types of survey questions. As such, you aren’t bound by one question type or format. Questions can be set up as scales, scores and even icons.

You can also create survey paths based on respondent answers via advanced skip logic, which routes respondents to different follow-up questions, based on how they answered a question. This way, respondents are only presented with relevant questions, the kinds that allow you to probe further on a subject.

When it comes to designing a DIY survey, you are also in control of the target market sample. A DIY survey platform should allow you to target your respondents as granularly as possible, setting qualifications on various categories, such as demographics, behaviors, psychographics, education and many more categories.

It should allow you to target your respondents via screening questions, which enables you to qualify or disqualify a respondent, based on their answers to questions. In these ways, you get to target your audience as precisely as possible.

Survey Deployment and Sampling

A DIY survey makes it easy to distribute your survey to the masses. As such, you don't need to wait for third-party results from a research firm. Instead, you’ll see your results arriving in real-time. A strong survey platform will automatically send your survey to the most highly trafficked websites and apps, exposing your survey to the masses and ensuring that someone from your target population sees it and partakes in it.

When it comes to sampling, an effective DIY survey will apply the aforementioned RDE (random device engagement) method, in which the survey platform gains respondents by extracting the responses of random people from their organic digital environment, as opposed to pre-recruiting them.

This weeds out the possibility of societal pressure to answer in a certain way, along with survey bias. This sampling method grants respondents complete anonymity. As such, they are more inclined to answer truthfully.

Survey Analysis

A powerful DIY survey grants you the ease of analyzing your raw survey data. In the correct platform, there ought to be several displays of your survey results. This includes results configured as questions and answers, charts, graphs, crosstabs and spreadsheets.

It should also include SaaS integrations for you to easily integrate your survey dashboard with other SaaS providers, such as BigQuery. This gives you a comprehensive survey research experience, as you can refer to more than one platform to analyze your results. By integrating them, it makes cross-referencing two sets of data that much more feasible.

A DIY survey platform should offer a robust filtering data capability, so that you do not merely have filtering options in the screening section of the survey, but in the post-survey results as well. You can filter this data in a variety of ways, which includes doing so based on respondent location, demographics, psychographics or answer type.

This grants you easy access to a variety of statistics, allowing you to easily maneuver with all the data you’ll need to power your study.

The Pros and Cons of a DIY Survey

A DIY survey is the foremost tool of modern-day market research, granting you all the insights you’ll need without relying on a third party. If the above section didn't fully convince you of the importance of the DIY survey, the following list of pros will support its prowess.

However, as with anything, this type of survey has a few disadvantages, which you should know about before you implement it for your next market research endeavor. The following lists provide highlights of the pros and cons of the DIY survey:

The Pros

Ensures complete control over a survey research campaign.
The main and usually only tool you’ll need to carry out primary market research.
Provides quick results, protecting researchers from waiting weeks for the survey to be complete.
Takes as little as a few days or hours to complete.
Gives you access to affordable research
Allows you to easily gain consumer, partner (via B2B surveys) and employee feedback.
Easy to set up and user-friendly.
Avoids having to rely on third-party results, which may be altered.
Enables you to set quotas, so you receive the exact amount of answers as you please, from specific groups of people.
Allows you to add multiple audiences in just one survey.
Grants you access across all geographies, which makes it possible to conduct global market research.
Supports data democratization so that all team members have easy access to data and all can contribute ideas on using it for critical business decisions.

The Cons

Since you’re fully in charge, you’re required to work on all aspects of the survey campaign and keep track of all its details.
To ensure an inaccurate campaign, you’ll need to measure and keep several variables to a minimum, such as the margin of error and the sampling error.
You’ll need to be aware of and attempt to reduce various kinds of survey bias.
You’ll need to be wary of the different kinds of survey respondents; some of them break rules and provide faulty information, such as flatlining or gibberish answers.
You’ll need to contend with survey attrition; as such, you’ll need to optimize your surveys.

How to Conduct A DIY Survey

To conduct a successful DIY survey, you’ll need to gather all of your requirements, so you’ll know the best appropriate type of survey to use, along with the best survey method.

The following explains how to conduct a DIY survey:

Determine what you need to study; consider all the things that matter to your business, such as matters that you have few answers to or would like more clarity on.
If you have already conducted exploratory or explanatory research, consider other related factors or issues that you’d like to study.
When you find a topic of study, tie it to a larger purpose or campaign, such as advertising, optimizing the customer buying journey, etc.
1. Consider conducting causal research on the matter, as this will find cause and effect relationships.
2. If you perform it and identify cause and effect relationships, you may need to rework your intentions or original questions.
Come up with several preliminary questions. An ideal starting point is to sift through the 6 main types of survey questions and to deliberate which will be most useful and relevant.
When you’ve come up with 10-15 questions, consider organizing them into two or more surveys. Shorter surveys yield greater survey response rates.
As you organize your questions, create the appropriate theme for each survey.
Create a callout that briefly explains what the survey is for.
Use a strong online survey tool to create, launch and run your survey to the correct target market.
Perform a survey data analysis, jot down key findings and share them with your team.
Take action from your survey findings. You can also create more surveys to test your actions, such as via A/B testing.

Mastering All Business Endeavors

A DIY survey allows you to gain actionable insights quickly, moving the needle for all kinds of business campaigns. But in order to reap the most benefits out of your survey, you’ll need to opt for the strongest online survey platform.

After all, this platform dictates your DIY survey’s capabilities. When you’re deciding on the best market research tool for your business, use a mobile-first platform, as mobile dominates the digital space and you ideally need one with the best mobile experience.

The platform should also offer artificial intelligence and machine learning to remove low-quality data, offer a broad range of survey and question types, provide an estimated survey completion time, offer various viewing options of post-survey data, disqualify low-quality data (such as the aforementioned gibberish answers and flatlining) and more.

Most importantly, it should allow you to survey anyone. We suggest a platform with a reach to millions of consumers, along with one that offers the Distribution Link feature, so that you can not only deploy your survey to random respondents, but to specific people via email, social media, etc.

When you use an online survey platform with all of these capabilities, you’ll be getting the most out of your DIY survey. As such, the cons of this survey will be easy to overcome.

by lorraine

How to Collect Customer Feedback with Surveys

You won’t be able to understand your target market and cater to its needs without collecting customer feedback. Relying solely on secondary market research is a thing of the past, with the accessibility and speed to insights that many online market research tools provide.

It’s now more important than ever to gather customer feedback, as there are so many digital outlets for customers to voice their opinions, be they frustrations or satisfaction.

72% of customers will share a positive experience with a business with 6 or more people. However, 13% of unhappy customers will share their experience with 15 or even more people.

At face value, this disparity may not seem so caustic, when you compare 72% with 13%. However, the challenge lies in the fact that, in most cases, customers don’t share their dissatisfaction with businesses. In fact, only 1 in 26 unhappy customers will complain.

As such, it is up to businesses to extract customer feedback from their customers.

This article provides an in-depth glance into customer feedback and how to collect it with survey research, using the correct methods and the correct tool.

Understanding Customer Feedback

Customer feedback refers to all the information that customers provide about their experience with a business, whether it is in regards to a product, a service, a specific experience and virtually everything else in their customer buying journey.

Customer feedback can be either verbal or written communication from your customers, expressing how they feel when dealing with your business in any capacity. As such, aside from giving feedback on the main issues listed above, customers can sound off on other matters concerning your business, such as advertisements, sensory influences (think taste and smell) and your brand in its entirety.

The purpose of customer feedback is to reveal customers’ degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a business across touchpoints and offerings. This kind of feedback is used to help product, marketing, customer service, customer success and sales teams understand how to improve, ultimately to make their customers happy.

Companies can collect customer feedback through a variety of means, such as interviewing customers over the phone, using VoC programs, asking for reviews, speaking with them in-store and through other means.

You can also passively collect feedback for your team by providing your customers with a place in the product where they can make comments, complaints, or compliments. This is usually facilitated via SaaS and other cloud-based services.

The most potent way of obtaining customer feedback is through polling software, which allows companies to survey the masses belonging to their target market. It can also target specific individuals by sending surveys to them via the Distribution Link feature.

The Importance of Obtaining and Studying Customer Feedback

All businesses, whether they are B2C or B2B, must work towards collecting and studying their customer feedback. This is because, in order to improve your product, service and overall customer experience, you’ll need to understand how your customers feel towards all of these matters.

Customer feedback essentially serves as a guiding source for your business’s growth. It allows customers to express exactly what they appreciate and dislike about your company; this is invaluable information for improving your business and taking any action. After all, you wouldn’t want to launch campaigns that drain your funds while yielding little to no ROI.

In addition, feedback is powerful, as it grants your leadership team insights from the customers themselves, which allows your team to forge a path forward in every part of your business — from product to marketing, through UX and customer support. These insights are especially critical for building and maintaining customer satisfaction.

By gaining customer feedback, your business will be able to sustain a customer-first model that prompts customers to buy from you continuously. As such, using customer feedback is also a key towards building customer retention.

Additionally, customers tend to favor marketing personalization, as no one likes to be sent generic and stagnant messaging and offers. Marketing personalization, as its name suggests, allows businesses to communicate in a hyper-personalized way to customers. But without collecting their feedback, it is nearly impossible to create personalized experiences for them.

Moreover, without customer feedback, your company will never know if customers are reaping value out of your offerings. This presents a major lack for product and go-to-market teams, since without feedback, they’re wasting time and resources on offerings that customers may draw little value from. Remember, as per the intro, only 1 in 26 unhappy customers complain.

When customers draw little to no value from a product, or are unhappy with other business-related interactions and issues, they will leave, increasing a company’s customer attrition rate, while lowering its customer lifetime value.

Needless to say, your business will see an exodus of customers and plummeting sales if it lacks customer feedback.

Despite the importance of gaining customer feedback, customers themselves don’t believe that companies are using this feedback to make any improvements, as 53% of shoppers believe their customer feedback doesn't go to anyone who can actually take action on it.

As such, the three main concerns for your business are to properly obtain feedback from customers, especially the segments on which you seek to run a campaign, to collect feedback at the most appropriate times and to analyze it correctly.

When to Collect Customer Feedback

The pertinent question to ask now is: when should you collect customer feedback? In order to answer this question, you must first mull over WHY you need to collect feedback. There are a few opportune times to collect feedback from your customers. Sending them surveys during this time will be beneficial for your campaigns.

The following lists the most apt times to gather customer feedback:

Immediately after customers interact with your content, no matter what stage in the funnel they are in.
Before you begin working on any marketing, branding or advertising campaign.
1. There is a slew of sub-campaigns for each three of these major categories. You ought to survey your target market on their feedback before working, let alone, launching any of them.
2. These insights will let you know how to form a campaign, what to include and what to avoid.
3. Customer feedback in the pre-campaign stage allows you to avoid snafus and faux pas, including in relation to cultural trends.
After customers encounter obstacles in their customer journey.
1. Whether they have difficulty finding what they need on your website, checking out or signing up for something, you should ask for their feedback to unearth exactly what’s troubling them so you can fix any obstacles quickly.
After customers checked out (successfully).
1. Even if customers were able to check out without issues, you should still get their feedback as a means of checking up on them and your digital experience/ how well your site functions.
After customers received their order.
1. You can obtain product satisfaction feedback after your customers have received their orders and used them. This is usually a few days to a week after customers have received their order, depending on what it is.
Long-term follow-up.
1. This is especially useful if you offer a subscription service or sell a long-term product, such
When you need to ask them to make a recommendation.
1. The most apt time to do this is a considerably long time following a purchase, or several purchases.
2. The most common way to test customers whether they would make a recommendation is with the NPS survey.

How to Gather Customer Feedback with Surveys

You’ll need to be strategic when it comes to gaining customer feedback in order to gain valuable data. Surveys provide many formats for obtaining customer feedback.

Once you have determined why you need to collect customer feedback, as the previous section examined and have an end goal, proceed to the next step by asking yourself how you will collect feedback.

An online survey platform offers the most efficient method of gaining customer feedback, as you can survey any demographic group you wish. Surveys grant you insights on all of the situations highlighted in the section that covers when to collect feedback.

To gather customer feedback, first choose the main campaign for the feedback. For example, let’s say your customers signed up for your newsletter.

You can send them a consumer survey to ask how they discovered your brand, why they signed up, what they’re looking for and what they like about your brand. This kind of survey will largely be based on customers’ first impressions and brand awareness.

If you’d like to understand how your customers viewed a recent event you held, whether it is digital, such as a webinar, or physical, such as a grand opening of a store or after they shopped during a promotional sale, conduct an event evaluation survey.

This survey is specifically designed to gauge the CX of your events and can help you see how you excelled, fell short and what to change/prepare fr for your next events.

If you’re dealing with long-time customers, you can send them the aforementioned NPS (Net Promoter Score) survey to determine if your consumers are detractors, promoters or passive customers for your brand. You can ask follow-up questions on how you can improve and take action from there. This way, you can master catering to their consumer preferences.

Connecting with All Your Customers

Customer feedback enables you to connect with customers on things that matter the most to them, allowing you to prioritize all the most necessary actions for improving your business.

The feedback you derive from customers will inform your company on crucial matters as it grows and evolves. This, in turn, helps your business thrive.

You should keep in mind that gathering customer knowledge is a continuous and important practice for any customer success manager or marketer. As such, it is important to choose a robust online survey platform to carry out all of your feedback campaigns.

A strong online survey provider operates via random device engagement (RDE) sampling, which enables you to reach respondents in their natural digital environments, as opposed to pre-recruiting them. This stamps out social pressures to answer in a particular way and cuts back on biases.

You should also use a mobile-first platform, as mobile dominates the digital space, so ideally, you would need a survey tool with the best mobile experience.

The platform should also offer artificial intelligence and machine learning to remove low-quality data, offer a broad range of survey and question types and disqualify low-quality data.

Most importantly, it should allow you to survey anyone. As such, you’ll need a platform with a reach to millions of consumers, along with one that offers the Distribution Link feature.

This feature will allow you to send your survey to specific customers, aside from deploying them across a network. This is especially important for gathering feedback during the specific times mentioned in the section on when to collect feedback.

When you use an online survey platform with all of these capabilities, you’ll be getting all the quality customer feedback you need.

by lorraine

How to Develop a PR Market Research Study

A PR market research study couples two business concepts that appear unlikely to be linked together. After all, PR and market research have maintained a steady distance from their business cousins, known as advertising and digital.

As such, PR and market research are not known to be typically used in tandem, if used together at all.

However, given all the changes in market research over the past several years, from the possibility of agile research, to the emergence of mobile market research and the advancement of data democratization, the realm of PR has much to gain from conducting a market research study.

Much of these changes in the market research sector have already been detected by PR professionals, 58% of which believe that technology will drive considerable change to the PR industry.

In addition, the global PR market is forecasted to grow by 10.2% by the end of 2021, chiefly due to businesses recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and using technology to reorganize their business.

With technology and innovation acting as the chief drivers behind market research progress, the PR industry can feasibly take advantage through the use of a PR market research study.

This article explores the PR market research study, its use, benefits and how to develop and promote one for your business or PR agency.

Understanding the Meaning of a PR Market Research Study

Market research has extended into all subsets of marketing and business practices. You’re probably familiar with or at last heard of how to do market research for a business plan. A PR market research study essentially takes this concept and implements it for PR purposes.

As its name suggests, this is a kind of market research study designed to extract primary data to support public relations campaigns. This involves empowering a range of PR intelligence and campaign requirements.

How a PR Market Research Study Works

This kind of study is conducted to use the research results that you garner for broadcasting, whether it is for press releases, company outreach, branded content, blogs, news sites and other media outlets, including print.

You can conduct a PR market research study through various market research techniques, including secondary research sources such as industry blogs, news sites, statistics sites and more.

No market research campaign is complete without conducting primary research, as this form is the most unique to a brand, along with being the most relevant, precise and up-to-date kind of research.

This is because, given that primary research is self-conducted, the business or PR agency wields complete control of the study. As such, the party conducting the study decides the topic at hand, the direction of the market research campaign, the types of survey questions, the specifications of the target market sample and virtually all else.

You can conduct a PR market research study through PR surveys. A DIY survey leads the way in innovation when it comes to performing market research for PR purposes. This is because it accelerates the survey completion process, allowing anyone to conduct a survey rather than relying on a firm via the syndicated research method.

When you run a DIY survey campaign on a strong online survey platform, you won’t sacrifice speed for quality, as a strong platform offers various quality checks to stamp out low-quality data and survey fraud.

The Importance of a PR Market Research Study

This study helps gain critical insights for a wide array of public relations needs. As such, it carries importance for various PR efforts, fulfilling the needs of companies’ in-house PR teams, along with those of PR firms.

When it comes to pitching branded content, a press release or any other PR content to media outlets, a PR market research study allows you to gain all the insights you need on any demographic. This way, your brand can forge compelling storytelling and much-needed content for your company, the kind that captures the attention of journalists, bloggers and other media mavens within your niche.

This allows you to maximize the effectiveness of your pitch and press efforts, given that this kind of study aids you with credible data to reel in the attention of your desired publication, support your claims, make headlines and build brand trust.

There are also various efforts a PR market research study can assist with when it comes to planning a new project. This involves gaining insights on how competitors are faring in their PR efforts and their brand equity, how to perform on different channels including traditional and social media and how to tinker with your messaging to frame your brand in the best possible light.

A PR market research study allows you to measure existing attitudes from your target market in regards to your brand. This also helps put your brand awareness and brand visibility into perspective.

When examining the attitudes, opinions and perceptions of your target market or even the public, you can track how these aspects have changed before, during and after a campaign to understand its effects. This will help you decide whether to continue with a campaign, change its course or end it completely.

You can A/B test the communications you intend on releasing, whether it is for forming the basis of a PR story, the images you seek to test or the opinions on the statistics you’ve gathered from an earlier market research study.

These PR elements, along with any others you seek to test or survey your respondents on, are vital to the success of your PR campaign. Thus, a PR market research study benefits your business in regards to all of your PR efforts, as the data you extract can inform your ongoing PR efforts and support new ones.

How to Develop and Promote a PR Market Research Study

Performing a PR market research study is not as difficult as it may appear to be. By following instructions in a step-by-step fashion and using a strong online survey platform, the kind that allows you to make your own survey in three simple steps, you can establish an insight-driven PR market research study.

The results of a well-planned PR survey will enable you to produce the media placements you seek, as many news outlets are keen on publishing B2C and B2B survey results. The media is especially bent on publishing controversial survey results, as these kinds gain more reach and therefore media coverage.

However, there are some survey reports that generate little to no publicity. As such, the reporters and editors you pitch to will discard your media pitches. This is because not all survey studies manage to obtain media attention, especially from the companies that don’t frame their results properly.

A PR market research study helps you prevent rejections, by testing your post-survey findings via the aforementioned A/B testing and other surveys. The following provides the steps you ought to take to develop and promote a PR market research study

Find a topic or issue that you would like to study.
1. This will serve as the basis of your market research study. Make sure that your topic is culturally and thematically relevant to your industry.
2. Come up with a few key questions you need answers to, especially as they relate to the topic of your study. These preliminary questions should involve your niche.
3. Maintain a study topic and questions as original as possible.
4. You should attempt to frame them to extract compelling results, the kind that sparks media attention.
  1. For example, you can frame your findings as follows: “25% of readers are unhappy with the fashion industry and seek more relatable models.” This headline points out a problem, one that your business can potentially fix, which you can include later in your content.
Choose a potent online survey platform and a survey research method.
1. You ought to opt for a DIY survey, as aforementioned. This will grant you speed to insights and grant you full control over the PR market research study.
2. Online surveys tend to be a cost-efficient method for running your business survey.
Make sure you use the correct survey sampling size.
1. This will ensure accuracy within your studied population and statistical significance.
2. The platform you use should assist you with this with a sample size calculator.
Promote your PR survey study.
1. You can do so via direct mail, PR, social media and online advertising to promote the survey for its intended respondents. In order to do this, your survey platform will need to offer the Distribution Link feature, which allows researchers to send individual surveys to specific people, rather than being mass-deployed.
2. You can also advertise the survey on websites, especially those that you would want to publish the survey results.
Consider using survey incentives.
1. These can be either monetary or monetary.
2. Depending on the online survey platform you use, some incentives may exist within a mobile game or app. As such, the prizes you can award to respondents who complete your survey would exist in their game or app, such as points, lives, extra time, etc.
Analyze your survey results.
1. You can do so by filtering data options available on your survey platform.
2. Do not exaggerate or misuse the findings. Otherwise, your brand will lose credibility and will mar its reputation, since your data will be illegitimate.
3. Survey publicity won’t work when it misleads or downright lies about results.
4. Try to look for interesting results that your industry may not have expected.
Mull over relevant and news-worthy pitch angles and headlines.
1. Write an outline of your story with your headlines in mind.
2. Write a pitch based on your story content. Consider two or more versions of it.
3. Run another survey to see which version your respondents find the most interesting and compelling.
Make sure your survey doesn't have duplicative information.
1. Conduct secondary research to assure your competitors haven’t released similar findings and stories. These won’t generate demand from media outlets or readership.
2. If your survey resembles a competitor’s, conduct another one that is either more in-depth, or covers another topic.
Contact the media.
1. Have a list of media contacts you’d ideally like to get in touch with to publish your findings and/or their PR assets.
2. Provide a high-level description of your study survey so that they open your email pitch.
3. Ask if they are interested in surveys and if they prefer to see the raw results or your writeup of them.
Highlight the main points in your pitch.
1. Summarize a few key findings that deal with a specific business issue is a favorable approach for increasing your chances of landing media coverage.
2. Don’t put off reporters by sending raw data.
3. However, some outlets may require submitting the complete survey data for review.
Keep product promotion to a minimum if you must mention it at all.
1. Pitches that are overly self-promotional are unlikely to convince journalists to use your pitch.
2. Lead your story with an unexpected statistic, even if it doesn’t fully bolster the sponsor’s key message.
3. Include promotional content further down in the news release.
Take part in as many other promotional activities as possible.
1. Doing so will generate attention, brand awareness, interest and leads.
2. Write an op-ed; this kind of asset has the prowess of swaying opinions. In addition, there are online media channels that distribute op-eds.
3. Blog about the findings/ PR asset on your website.
4. Create social media posts touting your findings.
5. Reach out to social media influencers to post about your results. You should ask them to link to your blog, op-ed or other PR content asset.

Meeting All PR Expectations

You can meet all of your PR expectations by conducting a PR market research study. Such a study will grant you unique insights you can use to churn out PR content and learn which kind of stories and assets resonate with respondents the most.

In order to adequately run this kind of study, you’ll need to use the proper online survey platform. While there are many such survey platforms, choose the one that offers the most capabilities.

For example, you ought to use the kind that operates on random device engagement (RDE) sampling, allowing you to reach respondents in their natural digital environments, which reduces various kinds of survey bias.

You should also opt for an online survey platform that implements artificial intelligence and machine learning to disqualify survey fraud and poor-quality data and provides a mobile-first approach design.

An online survey tool with these functionalities will allow you to carry out all PR market research studies and other market research campaigns, at speed and at scale.

by lorraine

How to Implement an Advanced Design with Survey Logic

The Pollfish online survey platform is feature-rich, offering various methods of using survey logic in your surveys. Logic directs respondents to relevant questions, assuring you ask the correct follow-up questions based on their answers.

While the Pollfish online survey platform is intuitive, it can be overwhelming to maneuver between the different survey logic options at times.

This article explains the three main types of survey logic functions available on the Pollfish platform and how to use them to remove any ambiguity.

Understanding Survey Logic

Many providers of automated surveys offer the functionality of survey logic to augment the survey experience by routing respondents to the proper questions.

This is necessary, as not all respondents will respond with the same answers; as such, not all follow-up questions will be relevant to all respondents. Instead, they’ll need to be sent to questions that are logically next in line with the answers that your respondents provided.

That’s where survey logic comes into play.

The term “survey logic” denotes the mechanisms that change survey behavior, appearance and content based on the answers that respondents give.

Logic instills changes by way of automation, so the researchers don’t need to take action in order for the survey to make a set of certain functions. Instead, it saves the researchers manual labor by automating the survey functions.

Survey logic is mainly concerned with routing respondents to the relevant questions after they answer a question. It works by directing respondents to specific questions based on their answers.

How to Apply Survey Logic to Single-Selection and Matrix Questions

Understand survey logic by beginning with single-selection and single selection Matrix questions.

Go to the Questionnaire section of the survey.
Have your set of preliminary questions ready so that you are ready to apply logic.
Choose the Single Select or Matrix Single Select question type(s).
Go to the left-side menu panel and select “Apply logic” at the bottom.
1. This is next to the tree branch icon, which also exists at the top left of the panel.
2. Hence, this is why survey logic is sometimes referred to as “branching.”
Add in the rules that will appear in the next interface.
1. They will appear as such: “If the answer at Q1 (Question 1) is A, go to” “...”
2. There, you can add where you want to direct the respondents.
3. You have the option of seeing the logic path on the right side, showing you the flow of questions the respondents will undergo.

How to Apply Survey Logic to Multi-Selection Questions

In multi-selection questions, you cannot apply logic to just one question. Instead, you’ll need to do so in all the questions. This is because each answer is routed to a specific question, and since respondents can select multiple answers, they’ll be led to banks of questions.

Have your set of questions ready, with rules established on how respondents are to be routed based on their answers.
At each question, go to the left-side panel and click on “Apply logic.”
1. This is the tree branch icon, situated right below the pencil icon and to the left of the “Multiple Selection” question type.
Add in the rules to your logic based on each answer respondents can provide.
1. For example, if in Q1 (Question 1), the answer choices are A, B, and C and D and each answer has 2 follow up questions that pertain to that answer choice, you must route the respondents to the proper follow-up questions based on the selections they make in Q1.
2. Another example, the logic at Q1 is: if the answer is A go to Q2, if B, go to Q4, if C, go to Q6, if D, go to Q8. Those who answer A will answer Qs 2 and 3, B Qs 4 and 5, C Qs 6 and 7, and 8 and 9.
3. But since it is a multi-select question, you must also apply logic at Q3 that states if B, go to Q4, if C, go to Q6, if D, go to Q8.
4. Then at Q5, the order will be, if C, go to Q6, if D, go to Q8.
5. Finally at Q7 should state, if D go to Q8.
Apply the logic until the last question.
1. This will create a ladder of logic, with layers in each question.

How to Apply Survey Logic to Reference an Answer from a Previous Question

You can refer back to an earlier question to determine the path the respondent will take in the survey by applying logic.

As such, you can use a scenario in which all of your respondents will be directed to a set of questions, for example, questions 1-7. But, you seek to apply logic to only questions 8-11. You can do so when you apply logic.

Have your set of questions ready, with rules established on how respondents are to be routed based on their answers.
At each question, go to the left-side panel and click on “Apply logic.”
1. This is the tree branch icon, situated right below the pencil icon and to the left of the question type.
2. You may not need to apply logic to every question.
Take the following example to insert an answer from a previous question.
There is a survey that asks in Q1: “What is your favorite baseball team?”
1. Qs 2-5 are universal questions that all respondents can answer and are about baseball in general.
On Q’s 6-10, let’s say you want to ask questions specific to those who selected the Yankees in Q1.
1. As such, in Q5 you would insert logic that dictates the following: if the answer at Q1 was Yankees go to Q6, in any other case, end the survey so only those who chose the Yankees will answer only Qs 6-10.

Designing the Perfect Survey

To design a strong survey, you’ll need to apply survey logic to different kinds of questions. This advanced feature is invaluable but can create roadblocks when applying it to different types of questions.

You should therefore know how the three main survey logic scenarios differ and how to use this function in all three.

In addition, to adequately run this kind of survey function, you’ll need to use a quality online survey platform, the kind that makes it easy to create and deploy surveys.

You should also use a mobile-first platform since mobile dominates the digital space and no one wants to take surveys in a mobile environment that’s not adept for mobile devices.

Your online survey platform should also offer artificial intelligence and machine learning to remove low-quality data, disqualify low-quality data and offer a broad range of survey and question types.

Additionally, it should also allow you to survey anyone. As such, you’ll need a platform with a reach to millions of consumers, along with one that offers the Distribution Link feature.

With an online survey platform with all of these capabilities, you’ll be able to set up survey logic for all your campaign survey needs.

by lorraine

The Complete Guide on Market Research vs Market Analysis

Market research versus market analysis. This is a topic of contention for many in the business and research worlds. Both of these concepts yield critical data and intelligence for businesses and both of them are necessary to sustain a business.

Both market research and market analysis empower businesses to analyze areas of their industry, predict future trends, hone their business practices and lead organizations effectively. They both deal with big data problems from time to time. Both of these concepts also allow businesses to assess industry expectations and meet them.

However, although these terms are used interchangeably and offer similar business benefits, they are not the same thing, as each represents different key factors, processes, objectives and methodologies.

We’ve taught you about the differences in market research vs. user research. This guide lays out market research vs. market analysis, allowing you to understand all of their key facets and differences, so that you can understand when and how to apply both.

Understanding Market Research

Market research refers to a process that is far more specialized than market analysis, as it entails examining a specific market and its corresponding customers. It is usually bent on answering distinct questions regarding customer behavior along with all else that pertains to a target market, which is the group of consumers most likely to buy from a business.

Market research involves studying customers at an in-depth level, which therefore includes segmenting them into distinct groups and designating them with individual customer personas. This involves the practice of performing market segmentation, along with conducting secondary and primary market research techniques prior, during and after administering market segmentation.

Aside from referring to and implementing primary and secondary resources, market research encompasses both quantitative market research and qualitative market research methods.

Given that this kind of research is centered around customers, it examines a variety of customer traits and characteristics. They include the following:

Customer buying behavior
Customer preferences
Desires and needs
Customer aversions
Opinions and sentiments in regards to
1. Values
2. Products
3. Cultural trends
4. Current events
5. The industry at large
6. Prices
Lifestyles
Behaviors
Customer experience (CX)
Views on the industry at large
General feedback

Market research is a practice undertaken by business owners, researchers, analysts, marketing departments and even individuals. Essentially, market research is used to gather feedback and data directly from the customers, mainly to assess the viability of particular business decisions.

The Importance of Market Research

Market research carries a great deal of importance, as it empowers all businesses with critical data that steers them towards making the right business decisions.

Firstly, it’s important for startups and new businesses to conduct market research before launching their business or even innovating on a product. Although it is tempting to push a product to market, a lack of market research has grave consequences.

It is difficult to acquire new customers for established businesses, as it costs five times more to acquire a customer than it does to retain an existing one. Additionally, selling to a new customer has a low success rate of 5-20%, while selling to an existing customer has a success rate of 60-70%.

This environment exists for existing businesses. It is even more arduous for startups and yet-to-be registered businesses to gain a customer base. As such, these businesses must conduct market research. It grants them valuable knowledge about the particulars in their industry and most importantly, their target market.

Only when you understand your customers can you serve them properly. After all, you're not just selling a product or service. Businesses of the present can only survive if they provide a strong experience for their customers. 73% of U.S. customers say that CX is a very important factor in their purchasing decision. 1 in 3 custumers will leave a company after just one bad experience.

Clearly, customer experience is vastly important and in order to create positive experiences that not only draw in but retain customers, you’ll need to understand your customers at a deep level.

Market research makes this possible, as it allows you to learn everything about your target market, segment them into smaller, more distinct groups that you can dedicate to different campaigns and satisfy them continuously.

Understanding Market Analysis

Market analysis is the process of examining a particular market, industry, niche or segment. It is carried out by way of quantitative and qualitative assessments of a market.

This analysis relies on raw data that predominantly focuses on a market's size and potential. As such, it involves studying a market by observing various factors that involve these two concepts.

A market analysis involves observing the following aspects: market volume, value, its different customer segments and their customer buying behavior, economic conditions, regulations, the competition, barriers to entry and political, social and cultural trends, as they relate to the market.

A market analysis uses current and historical data to forecast future market events and outcomes. This data includes information on the above topics of observation. Businesses use market analyses so that they can understand how their products and experiences may exist under a certain environment.

This kind of analysis allows companies to plan ahead for the future in a strategic way, using data for decision-making. This is because it allows companies to get a plain understanding of the most important factors of their market.

A market analysis is an all-encompassing practice of examining a market, therefore, it uses a wide range of sources. This involves using market research to provide key information on customers and other aspects of the market. By relying on a vast number of sources, a market analysis can assess and predict all of a business’s growth options, as well as its possible stumbling blocks and limitations.

In short, a market analysis gives businesses a broader understanding of their market by relying on multiple means and sources of data that pertain to various aspects of the industry.

The Importance of Market Analysis

Market analysis is important for a variety of reasons. Almost every successful product or service of the present involves having conducted a thorough market analysis. This analysis is often the first and the most significant stage in the development of a marketing and business plan.

The process of a market analysis is important, as it allows business owners to evaluate whether their product or service will satisfy their customers’ needs. This way, they don't waste time on producing products, product updates and features that will perform poorly and generate few sales.

A market analysis helps gain insights into the shifts occurring in the economy. This can include changes in regulations that directly or indirectly affect your business. It also helps you stay aware of market trends, which puts supply and demand in perspective.

This helps you set reasonable prices that are commensurate with demand. It allows you to understand the desirable products and services along with those that drive little demand. These key aspects enable your business to become fully acquainted with the economy, along with the particular one of their industry.

In addition, this kind of analysis is important in that it provides insights into your target market, the segment of the market most likely to be your customers. It does so, as it involves studying your demographics along with their behaviors, traits and expenditures. In this sense, market analysis is critical as it implements market research.

Furthermore, a market analysis will help you plan the most promising strategy to market your product or service product. This is because when analyzing the key facts of your market, many marketing messages will come your way.

Even by casually browsing your competitors’ sites and social channels, you’ll discover various marketing techniques, from ads, to landing pages, webinars, promotions and much more. This will give you critical information on the kinds of marketing methods to test and try.

Given that a market analysis touches on so many components of a market, it equips businesses with essential knowledge for making auspicious business decisions. This kind of knowledge allows you to complete a business plan, as it has its own section, showing prospective and plausible investors that you understand your market.

The results that your market analysis draws enables your company to identify both the opportunities and risks of your particular market. All in all, this kind of analysis sheds light on all the foundational aspects of a business, along with its main ongoing concerns. This kind of knowledge will inform and bolster all kinds of business endeavors.

The Key Differences Between Market Research and Market Analysis

There is considerable overlap between market research and market analysis, given that some market research projects may include a market analysis and especially since market analysis encompasses market research.

Additionally, you can complete both a market analysis and market research for a business plan. You can use both of these insights-rich methods to support a wide array of different documents and reports. Both of these can point you to the appropriate action based on the data you collect.

However, these two terms are not the same and should, therefore, not be confused with one another.

The main differentiating factor between them is that market research is inclined on gathering customer-specific intelligence. Market analysis, on the other hand, seeks a far more expansive perspective of a market, thereby relying on more resources, to execute all the possible business forecasts and examine all growth options.

Whereas market analysis is broad, market research is much more specific and fine-tuned. Market research is therefore restricted by the population of studies, emotions and time, as well as different kinds of human interaction.

In contrast with market research, market analysis works by depositing large quantities of data into a large storage framework. Market research works by collecting specific data points necessary for answering certain research concerns.

Market analysis often yields results that last in the long-term, while the results of market research tend to be valid for several months to years, depending on the population and theme of the study, given that public opinion can change quickly.

In conclusion, market analysis strives to render a clear picture of the majority of a market, while market research is focused on understanding its customer base and those possible prospects.

Reinforcing All Your Research and Analysis Needs

Market analysis and market research are two exceedingly important processes of gaining information to bolster your business. Despite their similar nature and often conflation, they are two distinct practices and should not be mistaken for one another.

However, in order to conduct market research and even garner intelligence for market analysis, your business ought to use a strong online survey platform. It can be used to study your customers on a deep level, along with what people perceive in your market. You can also send surveys to specific people with Link Distribution, allowing you to better understand your market by surveying key players.

To do so, you ought to look into a strong online survey platform, the kind that operates via random device engagement (RDE) sampling, which reaches respondents in their natural digital environments, scaling back on survey bias.

You should also opt for an online survey platform that implements artificial intelligence and machine learning to disqualify survey fraud and poor-quality data and offer a mobile-first design.

Such a platform will ensure you gain the most quality insights on your market and customers in a timely way.

by lorraine

Creating the Ultimate Brand Advocate through Survey Research

All businesses should strive to create the ultimate brand advocate, or at least attempt to form some degree of brand advocacy.

This is because brand advocates play a major role in strengthening a business; they raise brand awareness, help brands acquire new customers, reinforce brand trust with existing customers and even vitalize brand equity.

Brand advocates influence 50% of purchasing decisions. In addition, a heaping 92% of online customers trust recommendations from their social circle; clearly, brand advocates are integral players when it comes to helping businesses achieve success, as they make word-of-mouth marketing possible.

This article explains what a brand advocate is, along with describing the importance of brand advocacy, what makes a strong advocate and how surveys help brands obtain a loyal brand advocate.

Understanding Brand Advocacy

A brand advocate is a person who shares positive feedback about their experience and patronage with a company across their network and through various means and media.

Unlike a partnership or an endorsement, brand advocacy doesn’t rely on influencers, though they too can become brand advocates. A brand advocate works without any incentive other than their appreciation for a brand. This means, they do all of their advocacy for free.

Although typically associated with word-of-mouth marketing, a brand advocate can support a company via social media channels, online reviews, forums, chat rooms, emails, and other electronic and non-electronic means.

A brand advocate can also express their satisfaction with a company through their own content, whether it is a blog post, images or videos of their using a product or interacting with a company.

This kind of advocate acts as a representative of a brand community, showing others how a brand and its offerings are valuable. Their support for a company is entirely voluntary, thus, they want to take part in advocacy but don’t have to, as they aren’t getting paid for it.

Brand advocates are usually enthusiastic, and outspoken ambassadors, that rank as promoters in an NPS survey. When businesses identify and leverage ambassadors to drive new business opportunities, they are using brand advocacy.

Examples of Brand Advocacy

Brand advocacy can include various actions. It works best when advocates do it authentically because, although brand advocacy can include influencers, this kind of marketing is unpaid and completely organic.

A few examples of the work that brand advocates can provide include:

Personal (word-of-mouth) recommendations to friends, family and colleagues
Social media posts
User-generated content (UGC)
Customer referrals
Reviews
Participating in (or building) customer communities
Mentions in forums
Link-dropping

What Makes a Good Brand Advocate

In addition to recommending a brand privately, a good brand advocate is anyone who doesn’t shy away from publicly supporting and praising a brand and its products and services.

A valuable brand advocate is one who proactively promotes your business through various outlets and media. Such an advocate is typically a customer but they can virtually be anyone, such as employees, executives, partners and influencers who are genuinely satisfied with your brand and are happy to publicly show their support for it.

The more ideal brand advocates are loyal, have a high customer lifetime value (CLV), have an online reach and closely represent your company’s values and personality.

As aforementioned, a brand advocate works best when they act authentically; no one likes being marketed to under the guise of genuineness. That’s why most advertisements and the like are marked as such. Ex: “paid partnership with…”

When your advocates’ values align with your brand, their advocacy appears to be far more authentic than it would otherwise. This also means that these advocates are in a better position for reaching your target market, as they typically have a network full of people with like-minded interests and views.

For example, if you are an activewear company, a strong brand advocate will have a fitness background, such as that of a worker in the space or someone who takes their fitness routine seriously.

It is especially important for your brand advocates to be real users of your product, service or experiences, as this kind of authenticity carries the core strength beyond brand advocacy: that of brand trust.

This concept makes a brand advocate much more useful and impactful than an influencer, as paid influencers promote products they wouldn’t normally use, making it easy to label their efforts as product placement.

When your brand advocate isn’t affiliated with your company, their support is seen as more genuine and influential to potential customers.

Finally, engaged employees can also be ideal brand advocates, as they are loyal to a company and share their workplace experiences and culture as employee brand advocates. They share these experiences on their social media and other outlets.

The Importance of Brand Advocacy

Brand advocacy is not merely an added benefit for marketing departments and their corresponding businesses at large. It carries major importance for businesses on several fronts.

First off, a successful brand relies on positive public perception, as this is the core of a business’s reputation. Brand advocacy contributes to this with positive messaging and other content that reinforces a brand’s strengths to the masses.

Secondly, customers who share their positive reviews and experiences about a brand on social media and other digital spaces can reel in new customers. As such, a brand advocate helps increase customer acquisition, which is often more expensive than customer retention.

In this way, a brand advocate positively influences your sales. In fact, as the intro mentioned, brand advocates influence a hefty 50% of all purchase decisions — that’s a significant amount of revenue brought in via free marketing efforts.

Brand advocacy is a must, as it renders a company to stand out in a crowd of competitors. This makes a brand seem more trustworthy than its competitors with few or no advocates. Brand advocacy operates as a powerful publicity machine beneficial for all types of organizations, from B2C retailers to B2B companies and even charities.

Brand advocacy also encourages consumer loyalty. This is crucial, given that customer retention costs companies less than acquisition and yields more profits than acquisition. Retention drives 52% of revenue, whereas acquisition drives about 45%.

Brand advocacy and customer loyalty have a symbiotic relationship, in that brand advocates influence existing consumers to remain loyal, while loyal customers can be so committed to a company that they too become brand advocates.

Brand advocacy also builds trust. When consumers trust a company, whether it is in its service, product promises or delivery of values, it will patronize it instead of its competitors. It will also remain in their minds as opposed to other companies in the same niche.

Why? Consider this: a brand with brand trust is valuable, desirable and therefore memorable, whereas a brand without it is seen as just another fish in the sea, another filler or placeholder for the main player. In this case, the evident key player is the brand with brand trust.

Brand advocacy is also important for content marketing strategy, as it boosts content creation. Whenever a brand advocate includes a brand in their social media, video or blog content, they’re providing free marketing. This becomes useful for SEO, when they include links to the brand, which can drive their readers and followers to your website.

You can also ask your brand advocates to contribute to your blog or other content assets, such as a testimonial. Content is king for a reason, as it keeps your website from becoming stagnant. A high content volume also contributes to brand awareness.

Finally, brand advocates can help expand a business’s target market. This is because advocates help convert members of audiences that are not part of a business’s target market. For example, a local gym may notice that most of its clientele are people ages 18-40. However, a brand advocate may encourage and convince a 60-year-old to frequent this gym.

How Surveys Allow Brands To Obtain Brand Advocates

Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither are brand advocates; rather they are cultivated personas that have to be assured of a brand’s excellence in products, services and experiences.

Brand advocacy is also built through connections. When customers experience strong connections, they connect with brands. Whether it is through brand messaging, values or their CX, when customers form a connection with a brand, they trust it, and brand trust is the gateway to brand advocacy.

But to build this trust, businesses need to first have a strong grip on their target market. As such, they need to study their consumers through easy and practical means. That’s where survey research comes into play as the key practice in primary market research.

Surveys are the most potent tools when it comes to studying a customer base, as they provide firsthand insights from the customers themselves. These insights include information on their customer buying behavior, their likes, hobbies, aversions, opinions, desires, needs, behaviors and virtually all else.

Surveys can be deployed to the masses, across a wide geographic area and tinkered so that only the respondent with the desired demographics, localities and even behavioral qualities are qualified to take part in the study.

That way, businesses only observe the most relevant respondents and gain answers to their most pressing inquiries.

Surveys provide brands with a window into the minds of their target market, allowing them to better market to them, serve them, and most importantly, understand them to cater to them properly and make them feel seen and heard.

Best of all, they are quick to complete, both in terms of deployment and completion of the surveys themselves, should you use the correct online survey platform, that is.

Forming Meaningful Connections with Consumers

Brand advocates are key players for businesses, as they not only posit them in a positive light, but sing their praises to their network of family, friends, colleagues and peers, along with third parties. All companies can therefore benefit from brand advocates.

Surveys are the go-to tools for learning about and fully understanding your customers. While there are many online survey providers, they are not all built with the same capabilities and functionalities. Businesses should therefore choose wisely by opting for a potent online survey platform.

This kind of survey provider should offer an agile platform, one that can easily allow brands to take part in an agile research strategy. It should be a mobile-first platform, as mobile use dominates the digital space.

It should also include advanced skip logic to route respondents to relevant follow-up questions, use artificial intelligence and machine learning to skout out low-quality data, have a wide range of filtering data options and engage respondents in their natural digital environments via random device engagement (RDE) sampling.

When brands use such an online survey platform, they are on the right track towards studying all their consumer segments and building the ultimate brand advocate.

by lorraine

How to Create a Customer Journey Survey for All of its Stages

Brands ought to create a customer journey survey to observe how their consumers traverse throughout their buying journey.

After all, 76% of customers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations, and It is the customer-centric companies that reap more profits, typically yielding 60% higher profits than companies that aren’t.

Understanding customers’ needs and expectations largely involves understanding their customer buying journey to properly cater to them, as no customer journey is exactly equivalent.

Some customers may undergo long customer journeys before converting. Other customers may detour and head straight to the checkout, while others may leave mid-journey without making a purchase or converting whatsoever.

This article explains the customer journey survey, why it’s useful and important, how to create one and the questions to use for all of its key stages.

Understanding the Customer Journey Survey

The customer journey survey is a kind of survey that examines consumers in relation to their customer buying journey, as its name suggests. It probes customers on the common things they experience and feel throughout their journey, including specific parts of it.

The customer buying journey is a path of all customers’ digital (and sometimes physical) visitations, behaviors and actions before they make a purchase.

This journey is a kind of process in which customers become aware of, examine and evaluate and make the decision to purchase a new product or service. In the digital space, these journeys do not always conclude with a purchase, as sometimes, they are cut short when a consumer decides to purchase elsewhere or not all.

The customer journey survey can be holistic, covering all parts of a customer journey that businesses either perceive or discover by previously surveying their customers or getting feedback via a voice of customer (VoC) program. This survey can also focus on a key aspect of the buying journey, such as one of its three main stages.

The three main stages of a customer journey are the awareness stage, the consideration stage and the decision stage. Businesses ought to deploy different tactics in their content marketing strategy, along with their ecommerce strategy so that customers stay engaged in each of these stages and are prompted to the next one, until they finally make a purchase.

The Importance of the Customer Journey Survey

This kind of survey is important in several ways. Firstly, it helps form the journey itself at a high level, serving as a tactic for customer journey mapping. This practice entails establishing a visual depiction of customer processes, needs & perceptions during their interactions and relationship with a business.

Customer journey mapping is as significant for small and medium-sized businesses as it is for larger enterprises.

Essentially, the customer journey survey allows businesses to map out the customer journey itself. Rather than forming one through assumptions or online templates, this kind of survey shows businesses exactly what customers are doing, thinking and feeling in their journey.

As such, the insights from this survey enable businesses to form their own customer journey maps which they can use for future marketing campaigns or for their strategic planning process.

By understanding the journey of your customers when they engage with your company, this survey type allows businesses to understand the steps customers take – which includes the steps that are easily accessible for brands and the ones that aren’t.

These steps are important for a number of reasons; they include triggers that incite customers to take some kind of action, whether that is clicking through an ad to its landing page, going further into their journey or finally making a purchase.

For example, these steps can include online review, in which 95% of customers read online reviews before visiting a business. 54% of shoppers comparison shop when they browse online, another crucial step in their final purchasing decision.

As such, it is important for businesses to understand the steps of a customer journey, as they shine a light on key customer insights, allowing brands to not simply map out their customer buying journeys, but optimize them.

In addition, being able to map out and improve the customer journey involves taking the proper steps towards making an impact. In this case, the customer journey survey is effective for configuring and optimizing budgets. This is because it shows businesses how customers are reacting to certain messaging, images, offers and other aspects of their customer experience.

In doing so, the customer journey survey is critical to improving your customer experience (CX), as it dictates how customers feel about a business and plays a major role in customers’ purchasing decisions. This survey helps improve CX, as it allows researchers to diagnose existing issues in their journeys, in turn, allowing businesses to tend to those issues, fix them and innovate more on their customer journey, products and CX as a whole.

Creating a Customer Journey Survey

Creating this kind of survey requires taking several key considerations.

First off, if it is your first customer journey survey, you may need to first form a high-level customer journey map that lays out your expected customer journeys. In order to map out this preliminary customer journey, use an analytics source, such as Google Analytics, or a specialized one, such as one that offers session replay.

These tools allow you to access key analytics on your digital traffic, allowing you to see how a customer made their way to a webpage — whether they clicked on an ad or arrived organically — the duration of their visit, how they traversed a site, how they engaged and more.

These insights will help you design your customer journey map and allow you to categorize your journey into the three aforementioned stages of awareness, consideration and decision. It won’t give you much insight into the kinds of customer personas and segments that are taking these journeys. That’s where the customer journey survey becomes incredibly useful.

Not only does this survey let you examine customers' stages and mindsets throughout their journeys, but to identify the kinds of journeys typical among your customer segments and personas.

After you parse through your analytics and other digital traffic tools, refer to your customer segments and their habits. If you do not have access to this, you should conduct market segmentation, another practice made possible thanks to consumer surveys.

Once you have studied your customer segments, consider the segments and personas whose journeys you intend to survey. It is possible that you may need to survey them all to get a clear picture of your customer journeys across personas.

Either way, begin your customer journey survey by organizing each sub-campaign by each persona type. You can also group sub-campaign based on journeys in a certain marketing campaign, such as a particular offer or landing page. The most important thing is to pin down the purpose of your survey campaign so that you have a central point of study.

Next, consider which stages you need to survey; having observed your analytics helps you determine this. If you need to study all stages, consider creating surveys in chronological order. Come up with some key inquiries you need to be answered.

Then, choose from the question examples to use in each step of the journey from the examples in the following sections.

Survey Questions for Awareness

What is the biggest problem you have with [something pertaining to your niche/products]?
1. Answer type: Multiple-choice, multiple-selection, with an open-ended field option
What bothers you the most about [completing an action, buying a product in your niche, etc.]
1. Answer type: Multiple-choice, with an open-ended field option
How do you usually go about fixing this problem?
1. Answer type: Multiple-choice, with an open-ended field option
What have you considered to fix/ tackle this problem?
1. Answer type: Multiple-choice, with an open-ended field option
Have you considered using [your brand] for this problem?
1. Answer type: Yes or no, followed by a follow-up question on whether they’ve tried competitors’ products/services and another question on what they like/ dislike about them.
2. Apply skip advanced logic to route your respondents to follow-up questions.

Survey Questions for Consideration

What are your biggest concerns about [the problem]?
1. Answer type: Multiple-choice, multiple-selection, with an open-ended field option
What is the easiest way for you to solve this issue?
1. Answer type: Multiple-choice, with an open-ended field option
What would make you choose to try [your brand] if you haven’t already?
1. Answer type: Multiple-choice, multiple-selection, with an open-ended field option
What do you think of this selection? [Mid-funnel journey question for users of product pages, site menus, etc]
1. Answer type: Multiple-choice, multiple-selection
How would you rate our services based on the following? [Use image of an ad with a list of strengths relating to buying from your brand]
1. Answer type: Rating scale, stars, etc.

Survey Questions for the Decision Stage

When thinking about other companies that provide product X, which brands come to mind?
1. Answer type: Multiple-choice, with an open-ended field option
If all of the brands that can fix the problem had different prices, which would you purchase from?
1. Answer type: Multiple-choice, Matrix question with options that mention price, capabilities and quality
Which company are you most likely to buy from to fix your problem?
1. Answer type: Multiple-choice, multiple-selection,
Have you considered switching brands for this problem?
1. Answer type: Yes or no, followed by a follow-up question on what would make them switch brands or try yours.
Does this ad make you want to buy from us? [Use a multimedia file, such as an image or video that features your brand’s strongest capabilities to fix the customers’ problem.]
1. Answer type: Yes or no, with an open-ended field option
2. Answer type:

Optimizing the Customer Journey Survey

Being attuned to the customer journey is important, as it lets market researchers and businesses understand what their customers go through before finally making a purchase, or cutting their journey short before converting.

The customer journey survey assures that businesses can both map out their customer journey and understand their customers’ decisions throughout it. This kind of approach is strategic to better understanding customer expectations and is therefore crucial for optimizing the customer experience.

Aside from setting up this survey, market researchers need to use a strong online survey platform to carry out this survey campaign.

The most potent online survey platform makes it easy to make your own survey in three easy steps, offers advanced skip logic to route certain respondents to the correct follow-up questions, uses random device engagement (RDE) sampling to engage respondents in their natural digital environments, as opposed to pre-recruiting them, implements artificial intelligence and machine learning to disqualify poor-quality survey data and much more.

Businesses who use an online survey tool with these capabilities and more are well-equipped to create customer journey surveys, deploy them, map out their customer journeys and become well-adapted to their customers.

by lorraine

How to Build Brand Trust With Surveys

Businesses must reach a sense of brand trust, as it reflects customers’ expectations of a brand being able to fulfill its promises about its products, services and experiences.

As such, all businesses must work towards securing a strong sense of brand trust, as no business is immune to customers who don’t trust it.

Although large companies carry high brand equity and therefore seem to be at an advantage when it comes to brand trust, 76% of consumers trust small businesses more than large.

However, this doesn’t mean that small companies automatically have more brand trust and can reap all of its benefits. All brands have to establish this concept for themselves, as lacking it has dire consequences. 81% of customers say that they will only buy from a brand they trust, which leaves the brands that they don’t trust at a major disadvantage, one that will undoubtedly harm their revenue.

This article explores the notion of brand trust, its importance, benefits, how to achieve it through five common ways and how survey research helps brands attain this consumer confidence.

Understanding Brand Trust

Brand trust gauges how much confidence a target market has in a business. Customers exhibit their trust in a brand as a kind of willingness to rely on the ability of a brand to perform its key functions and the other promises a brand makes, whether they are in the form of advertisements, social media, their website, their marketing content or otherwise.

Brand trust typically arises after customers evaluate companies' offerings. However, there is much more involved in trust-building. Customers, therefore, don't merely assess offers; rather, they weigh a company’s promises against their products, services and experiences.

This involves CX (customer experience), the total of all the feelings that customers undergo throughout their customer buying journey.

The concept of brand trust is rooted in a brand’s reputation, as such, it carries all the important aspects of maintaining a good reputation with customers and the general public. It should thus come as no surprise that brands with poor reputations struggle, while brands with good reputations strive.

It may take longer for brands to establish a healthy level of brand trust when it is new, virtually unknown or untested, or in times of reputational crises. As for the latter, it can emerge during scandals, significant bad reviews, poor social mentions and more.

The Importance of Brand Trust

This business concept is important for various reasons, most prominently because the way consumers, especially a target market, feels about business matters. Trust is important, as it is one of the most positive feelings that customers can have towards a brand.

Brand trust brings value to a target market. While some situations may prompt customers to buy from a brand they don’t trust, these are nothing but one-off instances of need and lack of other options. Trust, on the other hand, fosters consumer loyalty, the bedrock of repeat sales, aka customer retention. It is no wonder that an increase in brand trust correlates with a higher customer retention rate.

As such, when brands build trust, customers reward them with ongoing loyalty, a long-lasting relationship in which customers don’t merely buy from the same brand, but choose it over competitors time and again. In this way, the continuous support brands attain with brand trust yields a higher CLV, or customer lifetime value.

CLV denotes the total monetary value a customer will bring to a business during their relationship with the business across their lifetime. Given that brand trust incites customers to continuously purchase from the same brand, it positively ties in with customers’ CLV. Thus, the longer relationships present in retention spur more monetarily valuable customers.

Aside from valuable customers, brand trust is crucial to a company's livelihood, as it softens the blow of a reputational crisis. This is because customers who are loyal will continue to engage and purchase with a company they trust, as opposed to a company they have little or no trust in. As such, brand trust serves as a kind of security blanket, enabling companies to take more risks.

Brand trust also forges brand advocacy. When a happy customer becomes a recurring customer, they tend to speak out about their positive CX, therefore becoming a customer advocate. Customer advocates help brands obtain brand awareness and augment their brand visibility, reputation and overall branding efforts.

They do this by spreading rave mentions about the brand they trust on social media, forums, review sites, brand websites’ comment and review sections, along with via word of mouth. This is tremendously important for a business, as customer advocates do many of the things that salaried marketing and PR employees do, but for free.

Finally, when a brand reaches high levels of brand trust, it is not only setting itself up for a better reputation and higher sales, but it is growing in its potential to be a key player in the cultural trends of an industry. Sometimes, this potential may carry over to greater cultural relevance, such as being a household name of a product that represents an entire country.

The Benefits of Brand Trust

There are several benefits to brand trust, which complement its importance, as laid out above. These benefits also bring new ideas that support the need to establish and maintain brand trust. The following lists the key benefits of securing a strong sense of brand trust within your business:

Brand trust drives new business, making customer acquisition more feasible.
It makes consumers more receptive to marketing campaigns.
It fosters connections with consumers and drives loyalty.
It allows brands to innovate more, since consumers trust what they.
It makes those who write or speak negatively about a company lose credibility.
It helps brands achieve cultural relevance when strong enough.
Key benefits such as brand loyalty, advocacy and goodwill allow businesses to overcome various challenges and obstacles.

10 Ways to Build Brand Trust

There is far more to building brand trust than simply executing a strong product experience. Consumers have growing concerns about the customer experience (CX) that brands promise, along with other promises brands make in their marketing messages, such as their impact on society.

As such, businesses need to pay attention to other key facets to work towards strengthening, solidifying, and in some cases, establishing brand trust. The following lists include 10 pieces of advice for brands to build trust among their target market and the general public.

Create quality products and services.
Establish optimal omnichannel CX, including digital experience, in-person, over the phone, etc.
Charges reasonable prices.
Offer promotions, sales and customer rewards programs.
Include a generous return policy.
Treat customers well, whether on a chat, on phone support, etc.
Handle customer service issues quickly.
Keep up your end of promises.
Establish clear communication with customers.
Create consistent content; content is king for many reasons.

How to Forge Brand Trust Through Surveys

Survey research is a proven method of accurately measuring consumer sentiment through customer feedback — when used with the correct online survey platform, that is. Surveys allow businesses to probe as deeply as they wish into virtually any business matter, from product satisfaction to customer effort. When it comes to building trust, surveys allow market researchers and business owners to understand their target market’s needs, desires, expectations and aversions, which essentially tells them all they need to know to build trust.

Researchers can set up surveys with questions that are as granular as they need, allowing them to zero in on a topic, so that they can identify and apply the proper course of action, whether that entails correcting something, creating a new product feature, changing an existing experience and much more.

Additionally, researchers can make their sampling pool as granular as possible in the screening section of a survey. In this section, researchers can filter respondents as precisely as they need, setting eligibility requirements on demographics, psychographics, device used and more.

Researchers can even set restrictions based on how respondents answer additional screening questions, permitting only those who answer in a certain way to take part in the survey. That way, only the qualified respondents will be able to take the survey.

By providing precise information and quality data, surveys enable businesses to extract only the information that they need to build brand trust. Businesses can deploy as many surveys as they deem necessary. By iterating surveys, brands can gather as many perspectives as possible from their target market, paving the way for new ideas to build and improve trust and maintain statistical accuracy in the findings.

Heightening Your Brand for the Long Term

Brand trust is critical for the survival of any business. Whether you seek to increase sales or customer loyalty, remain relevant or simply to stay afloat, you need to build brand trust for your business.

When your brand consistently delivers on quality, reliability and credibility, it will yield significant benefits, as customers will go to your brand first and repeatedly when they look for products and services in your niche.

To build brand trust, you must understand your customers as precisely as possible, cater to their needs and form marketing campaigns and promises to begin with. Survey research has transformed businesses' access to consumers, allowing them to reach a wide swath of their target market and extract their feedback and other necessary customer data.

However, not all online survey platforms are built the same, therefore, they don’t all offer the same capabilities and reap the same benefits. To gain the most quality customer data, businesses must use a strong online survey platform, the kind that offers random device engagement (RDE) sampling to engage respondents in their natural digital environments, uses

You should also use a platform that offers advanced skip logic to route respondents to relevant follow-up questions, one that implements quality data checks via artificial intelligence and machine learning and much more.

When an online survey platform offers these capabilities, businesses gain the most relevant and high-quality consumer data, the kind that allows them to accurately understand their customers’ preferences, expectations and virtually all else. In turn, it allows businesses to feasibly build and improve their brand trust.

by lorraine

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