Mobile Market Reseearch Resources

How SaaS Integrations Help Sustain Agile Data for Market Research

In today’s mobile-first digital age, market researchers would be hard-pressed not to find SaaS integrations and solutions designed to carry out market research campaigns.

Given the efficiency that SaaS brings organizations, a colossal 94% of businesses already use SaaS products. Sustaining a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.4% from 2017 to 2022, the SaaS industry is not at risk of undergoing a slowdown — on the contrary, it is slated for growth.

SaaS has also progressed into the market research space, with the prevalence of online survey tools, platforms and integrations.

While it is undoubtable that SaaS offers value to market researchers, not all SaaS solutions foster agile data.

In keeping with our stance on agile data for market research, this article explains how SaaS integrations can forge agile data, with a real use case example from one of our clients.

Defining Agile Data

Agile data refers to a variety of techniques traditionally used by IT professionals to ensure effective collaboration on the various data aspects of software systems.

As opposed to entailing a uniform approach, agile data employs several techniques and philosophies to allow for efficient and productive cooperation when dealing with software systems.

Although smooth collaboration appears to be a self-evident necessity — therefore not needing the concept of agile data — in reality, it is very difficult to achieve. This is due to the different role specializations, visions and priorities among IT and data professionals.

Thus, agile data is a crucial concept to incorporate into software systems so that teams have a stronger means of working collaboratively and quicker speed to insights.

The same notion applies to agile data in market research, given that it too relies on SaaS and copious amounts of data.

The Need for Agile Data in Market Research

Market research requires agile data solutions in order to keep up with business needs. This entails access to accurate data on target populations through efficient means.

In market research, such a population is often the target market, the group of consumers most likely to buy from a business and are thus the target of various business endeavors such as advertising, user testing, etc.

Businesses pour so many investments into their target market, thus, the stakes are much higher than a traditional research project, as there is a heightened requisite to acquire an ROI. Thus, the data that market researchers extract must be above par.

But agile data in market research does not merely represent the results that a market research campaign has yielded. Rather, it requires the means of extracting the data in the first place to be agile as well.

As such, SaaS solutions in market research must offer agile data aggregation and agile interfaces. Most market research SaaS exists in the form of an online survey platform, given that effective survey studies provide a vast array of insights for market research projects.

But not all of these survey platforms are optimized for agile data. There are several ways for a survey platform to provide agile solutions. The first was via the aforementioned mobile-first approach (link above).

You can also gain agile data through the use of SaaS integrations. That way, you are not limited to relying on a survey platform on its own.

How SaaS Integrations Build and Strengthen Agile Data

SaaS integrations buttress various business endeavors, including those of market research. This is because using SaaS integrations with a main solution or even in tandem with smaller solutions, strengthens your market research campaigns with an ecosystem instead of a lone wolf market research platform.

The addition of integrating your existing SaaS solutions in your market research certainly has its advantages. SaaS products are built to cultivate agile data and provide other advantages as add-ons to your main SaaS provider.

In order for an online survey tool to gain agile data, its SaaS integrations must advance the key efficiencies found within agile data. These include:

Easing collaborations
Enhancing the features of your online survey platform or other market research SaaS
Using only the aspects of each software that you only need due to the presence of more than one SaaS
Identifying course changes more quickly, and holding market research directly accountable for business results.
Organizing data for practical survey data analysis
Accessing information sooner
Improving the quality of data
Garnering further insights delivered at speed

SaaS Integrations Use Case with a Pollfish Client

There is a vast amount of available SaaS integrations for market research products, even if they are not all built the same and do not offer the same functionalities.

In order to generate agile data, market researchers, business owners and marketers need to employ the correct SaaS integrations, particularly those that help researchers gain the benefits laid out in the prior section.

To prove that SaaS integrations can build agile data for market research, the below explains how a Pollfish customer was able to do just that: use a SaaS integration to sustain agile data for their market research needs.

One of our clients in our vast clientele pool is an audio streaming and media services provider.

The audio streaming provider has multiple accounts on the Pollfish platform, including a main account, which runs surveys across the world, in over 15 countries. The main account is used for various market research needs, which include:

creative testing
ad testing
push notification concepts

With 9 users on the account and various survey campaigns in the works, the streaming provider is in constant need of agile data. There is little room for error in the main account of such a major enterprise; it therefore has the necessities that only agile data can provide.

These exigencies include:

speedy insights
ease of collaborations
enhanced data organization and displays
quality data
a smooth integration

The audio streaming client was able to fulfill these needs through an integration with BigQuery on the Pollfish platform. BigQuery is a serverless warehouse on which the client was able to build a massive dashboard.

This SaaS integration allowed the client to store, segment and view the data that it extracted from Pollfish in their BigQuery dashboard. It enabled the client to route all the Pollfish data into the BigQuery database in real-time. This includes survey demographics, respondent profiles and the questionnaire content itself.

Pollfish was able to provide agile data through its platform’s capabilities, along with the friction-free integration with BigQuery, which allowed the media client to view and segment their Pollfish data.

Additionally, the client was able to keep track of several performance metrics, receive translated responses from Pollfish and was able to benchmark their metrics on a rolling basis.

All in all, the media client was able to quickly and efficiently make use of their data via a SaaS integration on the Pollfish platform.

Striving for Agile Data in Market Research

The agile data (AD) concept is a method involving various strategies for IT professionals to implement in software systems. Used in different situations, agile data is used to improve collaborations and other kinds of productivity, while avoiding snafus.

Agile data is a must in market research and other data-heavy industries — and most industries must rely on consumer data in order to build customer loyalty and remain competitive. Thus, numerous sectors can stand to use agile data solutions.

In market research, the key is to choose an online survey platform that can provide agile data — in a proven way. SaaS integrations are one of the ways in which such a platform can remain agile, that is, if the integration itself and the integrated platform permit agility.

Frequently asked questions

How can agile data make market research easy?

Agile data improves collaboration between data sets and surveys and makes collecting information more efficient and productive. Therefore, it is vital to choose an online survey platform that provides agile data for market research. One such way is using SaaS integrations.

Why is agile data market research important for industries?

Agile data is a must in market research and other data-heavy industries since all industries require consumer data to build customer loyalty and remain competitive. Furthermore, agile data makes it easy for industries to collect data from different platforms, increasing collaboration. This also eliminates repetition and any chance of errors. Thus, numerous sectors stand to use agile data solutions.

What key efficiencies should Saas Integrations have to strengthen agile data?

A few ways that SaaS Integrations can make the collection of agile data easy are by enhancing online survey platforms and easing collaborations between data sets and survey platforms. It can also organize data quickly for practical survey results and analyze business results directly through market research surveys.

How can Pollfish's SaaS Integrations help clients with their data?

SaaS Integrations allow clients to store, segment, and view all their survey data stored in the BigQuery dashboard in real-time. The dashboard includes respondent profiles, survey demographics, and the questionnaire content itself.

What is agile data?

Agile data is a data collection technique used by IT professionals to ensure coherency between various data aspects of software systems.

by Pollfish Marketing Team

How to Increase Your Survey Completion Rate

The survey completion rate is a key metric in determining the success of your overall survey campaign.

A prudent market researcher will check the status of their surveys, as a means of creating effective survey studies for their market research campaigns. Checking your survey status requires looking into more than just the amount completed.

Instead, you should take your survey completion rate into consideration.

This article explains this metric, how it differs from the survey response rate and how to increase it so you can quickly gain all the necessary responses from your target population.

Defining the Survey Completion Rate

The survey completion rate, as its name implies, measures the rate at which your surveys are filled out and submitted by your intended responders. It is expressed as a percentage.

Specifically, it alludes to the number of surveys completed in relation to the number of surveys your respondents started.

This means that the entirety of your targeted sampling pool isn’t a part of the survey completion rate, only the respondents who have entered and interacted with your survey count towards this rate.

As such, the more respondents that complete their survey out of those who began one, the higher your completion rate will be.

A low survey completion rate is a consequence of survey attrition, specifically dropout attrition.

How Survey Completion Rate Differs from Survey Response Rate

The survey completion rate is often conflated with or used interchangeably with the survey response rate. Although they delve into similar territory, that of completed surveys, there is a notable factor that differentiates the two.

Like the survey completion rate, the survey response rate measures survey completions. However, it refers to the amount of respondents who completed a survey in relation to the total sampling pool, i.e., all those who received the survey, or were prompted to take part in one — not just those who started one.

A low survey response rate is also a consequence of survey attrition, but that of nonresponse attrition.

The calculation for the survey response rate is as follows:
# of completed surveys / number of sent surveys (via email, survey software, CRM, etc.) X 100

An example of the calculation:
Surveys sent: 500
Number of respondents who entered the survey: 240
Number of completed surveys: 229
Response rate = 229 / 500 = 0.458
0.458 x 100 = 45.8%
The survey response rate in this scenario = 45.8%

How to Calculate the Survey Completion Rate

The calculation for the survey completion rate mirrors that of the survey response rate, save for the differing variable. In this case, you aren’t dividing the total number of completed surveys by all those in the sampling pool, i.e., by the amount of sent surveys.

Instead, you must divide the total complete surveys by the number of surveys your respondents started. Below is the formula.

The calculation for the survey completion rate is as follows:
# of completed surveys / number of respondents who entered the survey X 100

An example of the calculation:
Surveys sent: 700
Number of respondents who entered the survey: 380
Number of completed surveys: 300
Response rate = 300 / 380 = 0.78947
0.78947 x 100 = 78.95%
The survey completion rate in this scenario = 78.95%

Why a Low Survey Completion Response is Disadvantageous for Your Research

As you can see from the differences in the calculations, it is critical to achieve a high survey completion rate.

When your survey response rate is relatively low, it is understandable in that you are comparing the completed surveys in relation to the entire sampling pool, whereas in the survey completion rate, the completes are in relation only to those who already began taking your survey.

Thus, a low survey completion rate points to dual survey attrition: both nonresponse and dropout attrition. This is because respondents with nonresponse attrition are always present, despite not being taken into account in the survey completion rate calculation.

A low survey completion rate compounds this in that nonresponse attrition is already present, yet exacerbated as those who have already started the survey declined to finish it.

Here are some of the other disadvantages and consequences of a low survey completion rate:

A poor survey experience
Distaste with your brand (especially if the survey mentions it, whether directly or indirectly)
The wasted opportunity of understanding key members of your target market/ population.
Wasted survey deployment (whether it's via email or an online survey tool)
Longer times to reach your target amount of survey completes.
DIfficulty in receiving responses from all your audiences (some survey tools allow you to enter multiple audiences per tool).
Incomplete data (especially if you use any method other than an online survey tool.

Methods to Increase Your Survey Completion Rate

A low completion rate can be unsettling for many market or general researchers. Fortunately, there are certain best practices that can increase your survey completion rate. These pertain specifically to the survey-taking experience, as the completion rate is contingent on the survey itself.

Here are a few critical methods that improve your in-survey experience.

Keep your survey short, on-topic and relevant to your target market. You can go so far as to create multiple surveys that befit your different market segments.
Mention the point of the survey and highlight its benefits. Some respondents will be much more willing to finish a survey if they know its purpose. This will motivate them, especially if it is designed for some sort of greater good, whether it’s societal or concerned with the respondents’ own CX. Even if this won’t be a motivating factor, no one will want to finish a survey if they feel it is useless or done in vain from not knowing its basis.
Don’t create questions that are difficult to answer. For example, if you need to better understand your CX, conduct a customer experience survey and ask questions about a specific experience in a customer journey. Or get even more granular with a survey based on specific aspects of one experience. In short, simplify questions.
Assure you don’t offend anyone of your sampling pool members. Although most surveys are anonymous, all cultures aren’t the same. The same goes with demographics; some won’t feel comfortable answering certain questions that may be based on topics sensitive to them. If respondents don’t leave a survey, this may cause them to partake in survey bias at the very least.
Only ask the questions you need — conduct secondary research. In keeping with the first piece of advice of maintaining relevance, avoid unnecessary questions. These will easily bore or irritate your respondents. That means you should only ask the most pressing questions, the answers of which you won’t find elsewhere. As a good market research rule of thumb, begin your research via secondary research. This will assure you steer clear of unneeded questions, unloading your question output.
Test your survey among your team. There’s no better way at getting a feel of your survey experience than by taking the survey yourself — or having someone at your team test it out. Your team members can give you some of the quickest feedback that is both honest and actionable. Other ways to test your survey are via A/B tests; this is the most optimal method of testing variations of your survey and their corresponding performance.
Create engaging elements. Boredom is a survey killer; keep respondents engaged with visually stimulating elements. This can include adding a few visual-ratings questions, questions with media files and those with various formats, ex: mixing Matrix questions with basic multiple-choice questions.

Elevating Your Research with a Healthy Completion Rate

Researchers ought to bear in mind that a healthy survey completion rate will vary between survey campaigns and the surveys themselves. With that said, you should aim for a high completion rate, as this is indicative of a well-built survey, meaning it will play a role in increasing the overall response rate.

The larger your completion rate, the larger your completed sampling pool is. A larger sampling pool signifies a greater representation of your study’s target population. Thus, it provides for a more accurate data set.

The best way to take control of your survey completion rate is to implement a strong online survey tool. Such a tool will deploy surveys across networks, iterating repeatedly until all your survey quotes are filled. As such, you won’t have to worry about this metric as much as those using another survey distribution method, such as via email. Nonetheless, a strong survey platform should allow you to keep track of your survey completion tool, as it shows you how well you’ve designed your survey.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the survey completion rate important to know?

The survey completion rate is the rate at which surveys are filled out. It refers to the number of surveys filled out and completed by respondents in the total sampling pool. It is expressed as a percentage and shows the relationship and enthusiasm of your customers.

Will a low survey completion rate be harmful to my business?

A low survey completion rate shows dissatisfaction of your customers towards your business. It also reflects a poor survey of customer experience like experiencing technical glitches. This is why it is important to use an automated market research platform for building surveys.

What is a good completion rate for a survey?

A 50% or more survey completion rate is considered an excellent response rate and is usually driven by increased motivation and a better customer/business relationship.

How does an online survey tool help in boosting the survey completion rate?

An online tool enables businesses to distribute the surveys to different networks where it sends them repeatedly to ensure that all the questions are answered. This, in turn, increases the survey completion rate.

How can I increase my survey completion rate?

Create simple, easy-to-understand questions. Most importantly, keep the survey short and relevant to the topic. Mention the point of the survey and highlight the benefits, so that respondents know its purpose. Avoid including questions that are likely to offend anyone. Only ask the questions that you cannot extract from secondary information or research. Finally, check the effectiveness of your survey by testing it on your team members.

by Pollfish Marketing Team

Using Automated Surveys to Attain Business Goals

Automated surveys are leading the charge on catering to a business’s target market; consequently, they make up the building blocks of a business. While this may seem like a long shot, it is the case for a number of reasons.

Firstly, customers of the present are more demanding than ever, as 76% of customers expect businesses to know about their needs. Automated surveys are the most apt tools to deliver on this front, given that the raison d'etre of automated surveys is extracting key insights about customers as a means to better serve them.

As such, these tools are the most equipped to understand customers as precisely as possible and thus help businesses in fulfilling their needs.

Moreover, companies in the U.S. lose over $62 billion annually due to poor customer service. Automated surveys function as preventative efforts against losing money. This is because they help gather key insights on your target market, allowing you to test your own marketing efforts.

This article explains automated surveys and their various formats, along with how they help attain business goals.

Defining Automated Surveys

Automated surveys are surveys designed for the modern age. As their name hints at, these surveys are conducted via automation — the application of technology that performs tasks that humans otherwise would, in an effort to minimize human labor while achieving the same outcomes.

This new form of surveys has rung in the era of automated surveying, the practice explained above. In doing so, automated surveying has brought about new auxiliary tasks, which have led to many improvements in different areas.

These improvements hinge on the capabilities unique to automated surveying and have allowed marketers to gain insights for different areas of business.

The Capabilities of Automated Surveys

Automated surveys can be used for a variety of campaigns and macro-applications. They also carry out specific uses, such as avoiding customer churn rate, etc. Here are a few more key purposes and ends that these surveys can help you attain in your research endeavors.

1. Marketing: Marketing market research surveys can be used to study a wide variety of behaviors and opinions, as they relate to marketing. These surveys automate processes that deal with learning about competitors, campaign effectiveness and customer base.
2. Branding: These surveys help you conduct branding market research, i.e., surveys that test brand awareness, design, logos and other associations of a brand.
3. Advertising: You can automate surveys for advertising market research, which involve high-level campaigns, concepts and individual ads.
4. Market segmentation: These surveys allow you to conduct market segmentation, which allow you to learn the subgroups of your target market. This is ideal for more advanced targeting, as not all members of your target market share similar interests, behaviors and other categorizations.
5. Competitor intelligence research: These surveys gather data on competitors, both direct and comparable, so that your business can find market opportunities, product ideas, costs and other competitor aspects for comparison. This shows you businesses how they stack up against your business contenders. From this intelligence, businesses can make key decisions on how to differentiate themselves from competitors and offer better customer experience (CX).
6. Customer loyalty: This is a key differentiating factor in the success of any business, as loyal customers will make repeated purchases and engage in other positive behaviors, such as leaving positive online reviews and engaging with your social channels. The customer loyalty survey can be conducted in a number of formats and styles.
7. Obtaining quality answers: This is also referred to as avoiding survey fraud. There are various ways your surveys can receive poor answers — the kind that are inaccurate, rushed or spell out gibberish, as nefarious respondents do not care about providing honest, quality answers. Respondents can also simply be too bored or exhausted to partake honestly. Automated surveys can bypass low-quality responses by way of technical checks.

The Pros and Cons of Automated Surveys

Automated surveys help simplify various difficulties; by easing tasks for businesses, they can reach their goals that much quicker and less laboriously. But like any form of automation, they too can fall prey to a few snags. Here are a few of the key advantages and drawbacks that automated surveys present:

The Pros

Discovering key unknown facts: Automated surveys can amass a wide swath of insights, allowing you to come across facts that were otherwise unknown, such as certain customer preferences, needs, distastes and even personas.
Reduction of labor: By their very nature, automated surveys were designed to cut back on human input, making certain business campaigns less labor-intensive. They especially curb difficult manual tasks such as finding qualified respondents and typical manual tasks such as sending the surveys out to the correct respondents.
AI-powered: Artificial intelligence is arguably the strongest force of automation in that it learns human behaviors as it automates. As such, it mimics human intelligence so that surveying takes key actions (preventing disqualified demographics and answers, instituting quality checks, etc.)
Quickening the research process: Market research can be a lengthy process, as it involves turning to both primary and secondary sources of information. These surveys are known for ramping up speed, allowing you to breeze through the survey and larger market research process.
Identifying key business strengths and pitfalls: These surveys allow you to dive deep into the perceptions surrounding your business along with its various campaigns and communications. This gives you insight into how your business excels in the eyes of your target market, along with the areas for improvement.
Keeps boring and technically challenging tasks at bay: These surveys automate a series of tasks and subtasks that are not only laborious, but dull as well. Certain key tasks to the survey experience, such routing respondents to particular questions based on their previous answers is virtually impossible to do manually. It would take too long and require technical knowledge.
Accruing real-time responses. As these surveys accrue responses, you can view them in real-time, allowing you to analyze, report and understand how much more time your study will need and the rate at which you get responses.

The Cons

Parked answers: This refers to respondents who begin a survey at a particular time, yet “park it,” i.e., leave it inactive, until a later time that they wish to complete it. This can create biases, in that certain events that occurred in the interim can sway respondents’ answers.
1. Additionally, it slows down the survey process, regardless of its real-time results.
Lengthy surveys: Automated surveys typically allow researchers to take the DIY approach. As such, many researchers create surveys on the longer end of the spectrum. This may be detrimental to your survey response rate and campaign at large if you don’t provide incentives.
1. Sometimes, even in the case of incentives, long surveys lead to boredom, disinterest and therefore, biases.
Misinformation: Even a well-built survey can be susceptible to misinformation. While a strong survey platform can weed out biased answers, some can still fall through the cracks. For example, a respondent may provide an open-ended answer that is not thought out and presents a half-truth just to finish the survey.

When Automation Powers Market Research

Automated surveys provide recourse in the overarching campaign known as market research. Although there are still many types of research you’ll need to conduct manually, such as rifling through secondary sources, organizing focus groups and the like, automated surveys remove a major weight from researchers’ shoulders.

This is because, aside from the macro applications and main purposes that automated surveying helps businesses fulfill, there are a myriad of other capabilities they can perform.

Their edge lies in their capacity of automation, a relatively new concept. This makes automated surveys far easier to conduct than phone, email and CRM-based surveys.

Frequently asked questions

What are automated surveys?

As the name suggests, surveys that are conducted by using automation are known as automated surveys. They reduce human labor while offering the same outcomes that have led to many improvements in different areas.

What can you use automated surveys for?

Automated surveys can be used for a range of campaigns, such as preventing customer churn. Not only this, automated surveys are used in different fields including marketing where it analyzes the behavior and opinions of people. Other fields include branding, market segmentation, advertising, customer loyalty, and competitor intelligence research.

What are the pros and cons of automated surveys?

When it comes to the pros of automated surveys, they help businesses differentiate between their strengths and pitfalls, reduce manual labor, quicken the research process, collect real-time responses, and enable businesses to discover previously unknown facts, such as customer preferences. Not only this, these AI-powered automated surveys enable businesses to study human behavior in real-time. The cons of automated surveys include parked surveys left inactive by the respondents, lengthy surveys, and misinformation, for instance, open-ended answers that present a half-truth response to a question.

Why are automated surveys better than manually designed ones?

Automated surveys are better than manually designed ones as they are easier to conduct than phone, email, or CRM-based surveys when it comes to market research. They also offer researchers an edge as they minimize the burdens associated with manually designed surveys. Automated surveys achieve this by performing several capabilities in addition to macro applications.

What are the capabilities of automated surveys?

Automated surveys can be used in marketing to automate processes that deal with competitor research or studying the customer base. In branding, automated surveys test brand awareness, logos, and their link with a brand. They are also used in advertising, marketing segmentation, and competitor intelligence research to advertise market research, learn the subgroups of a brand’s target market, and gather data on competitors, respectively. Other than this, the capabilities of automated surveys include assessing customer loyalty towards a brand and preventing survey frauds.

by Pollfish Marketing Team

How to Conduct a Survey in 5 Easy Steps

If you need to conduct a survey for market research or any other kind of research, there are certain steps you should adhere to. Complying with these steps will ensure you form effective survey studies.

Surveys are powerful tools for extracting virtually any kind of information. Whether you need to examine the behaviors of a particular population, perform market segmentation, find correlations between variables or discover attitudes towards your own brand, survey research makes it possible.

This article instructs marketers, researchers and business owners on how to conduct a survey that brings value to your research endeavors in 5 steps.

What Constitutes a Useful Survey

A survey must be business-savvy if you need primary research for a business, medically apt for medically-oriented research, socially-inclined for a social science study and so on. As such, each type of survey is unique to its study, macro application and specific type of survey research.

This is because surveys should never be used as lone tools. They work best when connected to a larger campaign. Thus, before you embark on survey research, you should consider what it is you need to study.

If your research is specific to a vertical, you will need to conduct other research, such as secondary research before turning to surveys. Only then can you decide which gaps you need to fill.

A useful survey fulfills a certain purpose; for some, it can be finding a correlation between a variable and a phenomenon, for which you would need to conduct descriptive research. Another research effort may require statistically valid information, for which you would need to conduct quantitative studies and a longitudinal survey.

All in all, a valuable survey is a survey generated through methodical means, as survey research involves a process.

How to Conduct a Survey

Since conducting a survey is contingent on a methodology, researchers ought to understand how a general survey campaign must be conducted. The following explains how to run a survey campaign in five simple steps.

Step 1: Determine the Higher Levels of Your Survey Campaign

Even if you have a target population you’d like to study, start from the top of your campaign. As aforementioned, you’ll need to attach your survey to a larger campaign, or macro application.

For example, if you require a survey for market research, decide which subsector your study fits under. For example, it may belong to digital marketing, advertising, branding, PR, or competitive research — in the overarching campaign of market research. If you would like to study a social phenomenon, find a category under the social sciences into which the survey fits into.

Step 2: Filter Your High-Level Campaign Further By Considering General Inquiries

After attaching your survey to a larger campaign, group your campaign further by considering your general themes and inquiries. Identifying them will help you filter your specific survey beyond the macro and higher-up levels.

You’ll need to find the correct type of survey research and survey method to dictate your survey study. Regarding the former, you’ll need to determine if your survey requires descriptive, exploratory or causal research.

As for the latter, which has a greater focus on the length of a survey and its respondents, you can group your survey into retrospective, cross-sectional, longitudinal and prospective studies.

Since the latter methods involve frequency of deployment, you can better understand whether you’ll need to conduct one or several surveys for your study. Since surveys are best kept short for more responses and quicker data collection, your study will likely need more than one survey.

This is especially true if you opt for retrospective or longitudinal surveys, which can last for weeks to years.

Additionally, the length of your study will also give you an understanding of how many questions you’ll need and how to thematically divide your survey.

Step 3: Create a Specific Campaign and Generate Questions

Now that you’ve found the type of survey research to undertake and tied it to a method, you’ll need to go back to step one (so to speak).

From the general inquiries you’ve put together in step two, attach them to a specific campaign under your macro application. For example, say you’re conducting market research and require a study on advertising. You’ll need to attach your survey to an existing campaign under your advertising department or create a new campaign within it.

In this case, consider your advertising needs and general inquiries. Do they revolve around a new ad campaign? Specifically, what exactly do you need to research? Perhaps you would like to learn how your target market responds to different messaging, imagery and promotions. If so, create a campaign centered on it.

Once you’ve chosen or formed a specific campaign within a higher-level campaign (in this case, advertising), take your general inquiries and use them to form specific questions.

Step 4: Put Together Your Screener and Questionnaire

Step 4 revolves around the survey itself, which requires a dual approach: forming the screener (the screening questions and demographic quotas) and the questions themselves, i.e., the questionnaire.

You may need to conduct secondary research to understand the kind of people who constitute your target market or target population. Or you can conduct market segmentation to learn about the specific segments of your target market, as mentioned in the introduction.

Once you know exactly who to target the survey to, input them into the screener section via demographics, geolocation and other audience criteria. Add screening questions for a more precise targeting. With these questions, you can permit respondents with specific answers to take part in your survey as well as prohibit certain ones based on their answers.

For the question portion, add the questions you’ve come up with in Step 3. As you input them into the online survey tool of your choice, consider how you can make them better. Some questions will warrant an “other option,” while others will require a follow-up question (but only to certain answers.”

Example: “Which of the following brands have you heard of?” (A multiple-choice, multiple selection question)

If the respondent chooses one (or more) of the answers you provide, they should be routed to a follow-up question about the brand(s) they selected. This can be done via skip logic.

But, if they select “none of the above,” they shouldn’t be routed to a question about any of the brands, but rather to another question. Or if your survey is dependent on knowledge of the brands you provided, you can consider ending the survey for this respondent.

There are of course, plenty of other question considerations to take when creating insightful market research questions. For example, some questions may require a scale, such as the Net Promoter Score or the Likert scale.

The former is appropriate to use in customer satisfaction and customer loyalty surveys, while the latter can be used in virtually any survey that requires answers with variations in, say, agreement with a statement. In such a case, the answers would include a scale with “strongly disagree” and “strongly agree” at opposite ends of the scale.

Step 5: Launch, Analyze & Take Action Post-Survey

When you’ve decided on how you’re going to organize your survey based on your questions and settled on all the necessary questions, you’re almost at the launching point.

First, review your survey. Make sure there are no technical glitches (ex: if you’ve added media files to questions) or typos.

Before launching the survey, consider adding survey incentives. These will assure you receive your results sooner. They will also posit your brand in a favorable light if your survey mentions it explicitly.

After launching the survey and receiving all the preset amount of completed surveys, it’s time to analyze survey data. There are a number of ways to go about this, from deciding on a data presentation mode(i.e., as cross-tabs, in charts, graphs, spreadsheets, etc.), to searching for statistical significance, to finding patterns and correlations.

With the correct survey data analysis, you’ll be able to put your data to use effectively and make informed decisions. After analyzing your survey results, you should amass key findings into another document and organize it into the nature of your findings.

Then, you’re in the final stage: post-survey mode. At this final juncture, you should consider what to do from the insights you’ve gathered. Perhaps it’s time to take action, or you may need more information, for which, you can create another survey.

If you decide to take action, consult with your team on the most logical course of action to take, whether it requires price markdowns, different approaches to improving CX, or providing customers with additional information or anything else to improve your business or research needs.

Mastering Survey Research for all Campaigns

To master survey research campaigns, you ought to perform research (usually secondary) on the research sphere itself, which is steadily innovating. Additionally, you need to have one secret weapon in tow: a strong online survey platform.

Through this platform, you’ll be able to conduct a survey — from creation to the launch phase to the analysis — with ease. A proper survey platform provides all the necessary interfaces, capabilities and quality checks to power your survey research.

Frequently asked questions

What are some useful points for conducting a survey?

A useful survey is never used as a lone tool. It always accompanies a bigger campaign. A useful survey fulfills a specific purpose - it can be finding a link between a variable and a phenomenon, for which you would need to conduct descriptive research. If your research is specific to a topic, you might need to conduct other research, such as secondary research, before turning to surveys.

What makes for a good survey?

Keeping survey questions neutral, having close-ended questions, a balanced set of answer choices, and diversifying option standards (having a rating scale of multiple-choice questions) are among some of the fundamental ways of making your survey interesting and valuable.

What constitutes an effective questionnaire design when conducting a survey?

When creating a questionnaire, the questions should be as specific to the target customers as possible. They should use basic wording and always have the option of 'other' to have more avenues for research. However, to skip all this hassle, use a market research survey platform to provide you with the data you need.

What is your survey launching process?

Once we have all the questions we want to include in the survey, we review them for any technical glitches. We also add survey incentives to encourage people to fill out these surveys and then launch these surveys on our target market's choice of social media platform.

How do you analyze survey data?

We analyze data sets in different ways. For example, sometimes our researchers organize all the collected data in tabs, graphs, and charts to find common patterns and correlations or sometimes to look for statistical significance.

by Pollfish Marketing Team

Diving into the Sample Survey to Understand Your Target Market

A sample survey is an effective method of collecting data on a larger population and making inferences about it via a sampling of it. It helps market researchers and business owners examine their target market, no matter how immense it is, by surveying a subset that accurately reflects the whole.

An essential method of data collection, businesses can apply it to several market research campaigns to make deductions about their target market.

This article explains how to use a sample survey to understand your target market.

Defining a Sample Survey

A sample survey is a means for collecting data on a targeted population to make inferences and predictions about the population. This method is primarily used to extract customer data on a business’s target market.

As such, sample surveys gather information from a target market sample to make inferences from a subset of the target market members. In this way, researchers can perform market segmentation on their target market, to identify smaller segments. They may also learn more about their already identified segments, as part of their ongoing market research efforts.

A sample survey provides valuable audience insights that help you keep your customers satisfied, improve their customer experience and build their customer lifetime value.

The Benefits of a Sample Survey

The main benefit of sample surveys is their ability to estimate a population’s characteristics from a small subset of the population. It’s a good method for making inferences on a large target market where you can’t possibly survey every member.

As a business owner, your chief concern is keeping your customers satisfied. Here are some benefits of using a sample survey:

You get the ability to estimate a population’s characteristics from a small subset of the population.
You can make inferences on a large target market where you can’t possibly survey every member.
Sampling smaller sections of your audience provides insight into the behavior of individual audience subsets, which you can use for more narrowed targeting.
You’re able to identify customer pain points and improve the customer experience
It helps you foster customer lifetime value by consistently tracking the needs of your most valuable customers, providing insights that help you improve the customer journey. As its name indicates, CLV is a statistic that measures the value of a customer about a business. This metric does not merely gauge a customer’s value by their purchases; rather it measures their worth during their entire relationship with the company.

Types of Survey Sampling

There are two types of sampling methods in the sample survey: non-probability sampling and probability sampling. They are used in different situations; non-probability sampling is rarely used to reflect a target market, while probability sampling is used to reflect the target population and is more useful in survey sampling.

Nonprobability Sampling

In non-probability sampling, the sample of the population to be surveyed is not determined by chance. This type of sampling is nonrandom and cannot be used to reflect the target market, using non-random sampling to make inferences about a population is problematic. Some non-probability techniques include convenience sampling, snowball sampling, quota sampling and purposive sampling.

Probability Sampling

Probability sampling is when participants for sample surveys are chosen by chance. Each person in the target market has a known, non-zero probability of selection. This method provides an accurate description of the entire target market, making it the optimal type of survey sampling.

Sample Survey Methods

Here are the three methods of probability sampling that can be used to determine characteristics and make inferences about a target market.

Simple Random Sampling

Known as the most fundamental survey sample method, simple random sampling acts as the foundation for a variety of sampling methods. In cases of simple random sampling, each possible sample size of n carries the same probability of being selected.

For this method, elements are chosen one at a time, so that each element has the same probability of being selected-- this is what creates a simple random sample.

Stratified Simple Random Sampling

Stratified simple random sampling is a variation of simple random sampling where populations are divided into homogenous groups (called strata). The groups are called strata and a simple random sample is selected from each stratum. In the next step, results are aggregated from the strata so that inferences can be made about the target market. Inferences can also be made about the subpopulations identified through each stratum.

Cluster Sampling

Cluster sampling also divides the population-- unlike stratified simple random sampling, though, the target market is divided into groups called clusters that are heterogeneous, not homogeneous.

Within cluster sampling, there is single-stage cluster sampling and two-stage cluster sampling. For single-stage cluster sampling, a simple random sample of clusters is selected. Data is then collected from each unit in the sampled clusters. For two-stage sampling, a simple random sample is first selected and then a simple random sample is selected from the units in each sampled cluster.

Avoiding the Sampling Error

A sampling error is the discrepancy between a population parameter and the statistic you’re using to estimate it. The difference between a population mean and a sample mean is an example of a sampling error.

Sampling error happens because a subset of the target audience is surveyed, rather than the entire audience. The size of the sampling error can be studied through probability sampling methods.

While some sampling error is inevitable, you can reduce its occurrence with better audience targeting. The more targeted surveys you complete, the better you’ll understand the demographic mix of your audience. Audience targeting can also be used to divide the population into groups. You can reduce sampling error by testing subsets.

How Surveys Support the Sample Survey

Surveys-- especially those made through a solid survey platform-- can take a sample survey to the next level. Survey platforms with detailed audience targeting are key to reducing sampling error by identifying a population subset representing your target audience.

Understanding how a sample survey works and the survey sampling methods available is the first step to better understanding your target market, but the work doesn’t stop here. Applying these strategies for a successful strategy can be difficult without the right tools. Using a strong online survey platform to conduct your sample survey will have you predicting the reactions of your target market with ease.

Frequently asked questions

What are the two types of sampling methods?

There are two types of sampling methods in the sample survey: non-probability sampling and probability sampling. They are used in different situations; non-probability sampling is rarely used to reflect a target market, while probability sampling reflects the target population and is more useful in survey sampling.

What is a sampling error in a survey sample, and how to avoid it?

A sampling error is a discrepancy between a population parameter and the statistic you’re using to estimate it. Having detailed targeted surveys means you can better understand your demographic and audience segments, reducing the chances of a sampling error.

How can surveys increase the effectiveness of a sample survey?

Using a solid survey platform, businesses can take their sample surveys to the next level. Understanding how sample surveys can be conducted and understanding their methodologies is the first step to understanding your target market better.

How many sample survey methods are there?

There are three main methods of probability sampling that businesses use: simple random sampling, stratified simple random sampling, and cluster sampling.

What are the benefits of online survey samples?

Besides being easy and cost-effective, they provide immediate results and straightforward solutions, even if you choose to apply open-ended questions. They also foster customer lifetime value by letting you track the needs of your most trusted and valuable customers.

by Pollfish Marketing Team

How a Mobile-First Approach Creates Agile Data for Market Research

Mobile-first is an invaluable approach in regards to creating agile data — and as you know, you need data, particularly on your customers and market to keep your business intact.

A data-driven workforce is 58% more likely to surpass revenue goals, underpinning the need for businesses to have access to agile data solutions.

In order to reap this kind of data, you must conduct market research, which can be a feat given all the efforts that make up market research techniques come in conflict with the notion of agility.

Implementing the correct solution can remedy this conflict — if it is mobile-first. This article explains how a mobile-first platform yields agile data for market researchers, marketers, analysts and business owners.

Understanding Agile Data

Agile data is a method used by IT professionals, in which they employ a range of strategies for various situations so that they can work in sync effectively on the data component of software systems.

The agile data approach does not rely on one technique; rather there are many that form the backbone for providing data at speed. These include:

An agile design
Lean data governance for development teams to foster and maintain high-quality data assets within an overall IT ecology
Agile data warehousing
Database testing and more

However, establishing agile data is not solely an internal methodology. In order for it to be of any use to businesses and their employees, it must manifest in the front end, so that its users feel the effect.

In market research, a potent online survey tool can be a vessel for providing agile data. While there are many attempts at fomenting agile data, providing a mobile-first tool is the most powerful of all, in that mobile usage has skyrocketed in recent years.

The Importance of Agile Data

Just as many companies falsely deem themselves to be data-driven, many of them also fall prey to solutions that claim that agile is the norm for them, when in fact, they provide substandard data. Whether it is in regards to its frequency, quality or other capabilities, many solutions fall short of the heavy demands of agile data.

Companies need agile data in that it delivers speed to insights, i.e., data aggregation delivered at speed. But agile data depends on more than speed. It consolidates speedy insights with high-quality data.

As aforementioned, there is no single approach to delivering agile data. IT professionals and UX experts must work hand in hand on a market research platform’s backend to ensure a smooth and efficient data collection, parsing and filtering. This way, the receivers of the data — the market researchers — have a high-quality set of data.

In market research specifically, this is centered on receiving data from the correct respondents. This does not solely refer to the people in your target market, or even the ones you’ve preset in the screening portion. Instead, an agile source of data should quickly disqualify respondents who provide inaccurate or low-quality responses.

There are several ways that an agile platform can eliminate poor responses, such as gibberish answers, one-word answers irrelevant to an open-ended question, untrustworthy responders, such as those using a VPN and more. This is often achieved via technical checks on the market research platform.

However, in the true spirit of agile data, the market research platform must be designed with a mobile-first approach.

Defining Mobile-First

Mobile-first is a kind of design practice in which a digital experience is designed for mobile-first, as its name implies, prior to designing the same experience for other devices, such as desktop or tablet.

Mobile-first prioritizes the development of the mobile experience as a means to optimize it from the jump. As the project progresses, it eventually works towards designing the desktop version of the experience.

A mobile-first approach allows developers to scale up as the project evolves, rather than down, as they would in a desktop-first approach. This ensures that the mobile experience is adequate, rather than an inferior version of a desktop experience.

In a desktop-first design, the mobile experience appears to be a downgraded version of the desktop experience, as many graphics and site elements simply do not fit a mobile experience, given its much smaller screen size. A mobile-first design avoids this subpar effect in the mobile experience, therefore, it is of the utmost importance — and on several accounts.

Positioning a mobile-first methodology is also crucial, given that mobile traffic has consistently exceeded desktop traffic, ever since mobile had first surpassed desktop traffic in 2016. Therefore, mobile use has a far greater impact on reach.

This is critical for attaining agility in market research, as you need your survey sample to be representative of your target market. This is especially necessary if you have a massive target market or intend to survey over a hundred people. It would be nearly impossible to achieve agile data in this regard if not for a mobile-first design.

How Mobile-First Creates Agile Data

A mobile-first design optimizes the experience of mobile users. Since mobile users surpass desktop users, more of them are going to be the targets of an online survey platform.

Thus, a mobile-first design in the online survey platform itself is imperative. Even if a mobile site or app provides a mobile-first experience, your market research is in peril if the platform you use to deploy surveys on that mobile-first mobile property is not itself mobile-first.

This is because a poor experience will turn respondents away, causing survey attrition. Or, the frustration respondents undergo while taking your mobile survey will cause them to provide inaccurate answers or other manifestations of survey bias.

A mobile-first approach avoids these issues along with many others. It also allows an online survey platform to obtain agile data. When a survey for a mobile site or app is developed with a mobile-first approach, it eliminates points of friction. Thus, users are more inclined to take and complete the survey. This efficiency, in turn, produces agile data.

Furthermore, a mobile-first online survey platform removes the sense of inferiority in mobile in comparison to desktop. In this regard, it does not appear as if something in the mobile survey experience is missing. This creates an enhanced experience in a twofold manner:

It allows the market researcher to set up a mobile survey that includes all of their needs. This includes the capabilities of:
1. a wide variety of questions including Matrix questions
2. The addition of multimedia elements in appropriate formats
3. Multiple selection questions, open and close-ended questions
4. Advanced skip logic
5. Survey incentives
It enhances the experience for respondents, thus they are more likely to complete a survey and in a quickened manner.
1. Quick responses allow for the survey platform to faster meet all of its quotas, thereby fostering agile data.

A mobile-first approach can also help market researchers save money. This is due to the fact that the performance of many surveys largely depends on survey incentives. Most people do not have time to spare and those that do will want compensation for their survey participation.

Survey incentives make this possible — but they can be costly. In mobile surveys, rather than provide monetary incentives for mobile users, the online survey platform should allow for gaming incentives. The majority of digital users play games on mobile devices (Android, iOS).

As such, a mobile-first approach in an online survey platform would grant in-game perks to gamers who agree to take part in a survey. For example: in order for players to pass to another level, the incentive can be offered as coins/ tokens in the game.

Consequently, mobile players would much rather take part in a mobile survey that rewards them in their games, as opposed to offering them nothing. Thus, their willingness allows market researchers to reach insights sooner, buttressing agile data.

Obtaining Agile Data in Market Research

Many online survey platforms promise agile data but end up underperforming on this front. This is largely due to the absence of several in-platform components that forge agility.

A mobile-first approach in such a platform helps produce an optimized mobile survey experience, which retains respondents and eases the market research process. Market researchers should thereby select their online survey platform wisely.

They should opt for a platform that not only promises agile data, but corroborates it. The Pollfish platform does this via a mobile-first approach along with various quality checks and platform functionalities.

Frequently asked questions

What is the meaning behind mobile-first?

A mobile-first experience means that websites, apps, and other digital properties are specifically designed for the mobile experience, as opposed to fitting all the regular elements used on a desktop. Mobile-first surveys can easily adapt to a mobile screen, as UX designers and web developers ensure that the most important content is displayed and optimized for mobile devices. It is a cost-effective approach that allows the researchers to save money that was spent on conducting countless surveys that may or may not be accurate.

Why is a mobile-first approach important?

A mobile-first approach is cost-effective as it helps researchers save money spent on conducting countless customer surveys that may or may not be accurate.

How can agile data be used in surveys?

Agile data can eliminate low-quality or inaccurate responses from a survey and help in making accurate inferences. They also disqualify participants who use a VPN, give unworthy responses to open-ended questions, or give gibberish answers just for fun, helping to save time organizing data.

What is the link between mobile-first experience and agile data?

A survey optimized for mobile use eliminates all loopholes and points of friction, thus increasing customer satisfaction towards completing the survey. Hence, this efficiency produces agile data.

What is your agile data collection method for companies?

Companies require agile data to deliver speedy and high-quality data. And since there is no one way to approach agile data, our researchers have to work hand-in-hand with UI and UX developers to ensure a smooth data collection method.

Why do companies need agile data?

Companies need agile data in that it delivers speed to insights, i.e., data aggregation delivered quickly. But agile data depends on more than speed. It consolidates speedy insights with high-quality data so that businesses can make effective decisions that reduce organizational risks.

by Pollfish Marketing Team

How to Minimize Survey Fatigue for Quality Research

Although survey respondents from far and wide have undergone different experiences, they’ve all come upon one regrettable issue: survey fatigue. This phenomenon is one of the greatest detriments to survey research, as it hampers respondents who already have begun participating in a survey.

Valuable survey responses are hard enough to come by as it is, so when your respondents are hit with a bout of survey fatigue, it makes it even more difficult to retrieve needed responses.

This is because respondents who experience survey fatigue are less inclined to complete their survey, or do so in an accurate manner.

This article explains survey fatigue, including its four different types and how to minimize them so your survey research is never blighted by low-quality responses.

Defining Survey Fatigue

This occurrence denotes the phenomenon in which survey respondents become exhausted, bored or uninterested with a survey they’re taking or are about to take. This incurs several problems for survey research, in that when respondents are fatigued, the quality of their responses tarnishes.

The Two Main Types of Survey Fatigue

Eliminating this negative phenomenon hinges on understanding where and how it occurs. First, you ought to know that there are two main manifestations of survey fatigue.

Pre-Survey Response Fatigue: This takes place before prospective respondents take a survey. This kind of fatigue comes about due to repeated requests to take a survey. Sending too many prompts or reminders can thus cause this kind of fatigue.
1. It is the chief cause of a low survey response rate.

Fatigue During the Survey: This occurs as respondents are taking their surveys and can be caused by a variety of in-survey issues. As such, researchers should consider several practices to create effective surveys.
1. This kind of fatigue is responsible for survey abandonment during the survey-taking process.

How Survey Fatigue is Damaging to Businesses

Survey fatigue is not merely a problem for survey respondents, who can certainly do without feeling fatigued from a tool that ultimately benefits its creators, i.e., the researchers. It is generally best to avoid surveys prone to cause fatigue, as online respondents will associate negative feelings towards surveys and be disinclined to take them again, even when offered with survey incentives.

Here are a few other main ways that survey fatigue damages not merely your survey research, but your business, by extension.

Tarnished answers: Fatigue naturally leads to poor quality answers. This outcome is extremely damaging to survey data quality. There are a number of ways that fatigue creates substandard answers. Here are a few examples:
1. Survey biases such as acquiescence bias, flatlining, random response bias and many more.
2. Gibberish answers to quickly complete the survey.
3. Answers with little to no thought on the questions, thus inaccurate or not fully representative of the respondents’ true opinions and experiences.
4. Skipping open-ended questions or answering them with one word just to rush through the survey.
Survey attrition: The most severe instance of survey fatigue will lead to survey attrition, in which respondents abandon their surveys, rendering them incomplete and since they’ve not been submitted, useless. Survey attrition also refers to nonresponse attrition, which refers to the first type of survey fatigue, in which would-be respondents do not take part in a survey. This form of attrition is called nonresponse attrition.
Waste of resources and money: Whether you hire a survey panel or run online surveys, surveys bound to generate fatigue waste the efforts of your respondents. It’s best not to trouble respondents as they are part of your target market, or target population. As aforementioned, a bad survey experience will repel them from taking part in future surveys, which is damaging since you either selected them (in panels) or managed to get them to participate via an online survey. Regardless of whichever method you brought them to your survey, fatiguing them wastes time and money.
Negative Perceptions of your business: Fatigue does not simply cause negative associations with surveys, but it posits your brand in a negative light. This is especially true for B2B brands, as B2B surveys are targeted to partners and existing business clients, who are obviously aware of the brand behind the survey. Even leads will form an opinion of your brand, as they often land on surveys via a digital experience with your brand. B2C brands may also suffer poor brand perceptions by way of survey fatigue, as some surveys will require mentioning the brand and its operations. Ex: in a survey measuring an ad or marketing campaign, or in a customer feedback survey.

The Causes of Survey Fatigue & How to Avoid Them

There are several factors at play when it comes to this phenomenon. The most evident cause is a poorly formed survey. Whether it is the question structure of the survey, the nature of the questions themselves, or poor targeting, these unfavorable structural elements all contribute to survey fatigue. The following are some critical causes to consider, as they all factor into survey fatigue.

Incorrect targeting: you may set specific demographics quotas to your survey, but are they correct? You ought to understand your target market to a T before sending them any surveys. If the content of the surveys feels irrelevant, respondents will easily incur survey fatigue. Solutions:
1. Study your target market via secondary and primary research before sending surveys aimed at them, especially if you operate a niche business and the survey is in relation to a niche subject matter.
2. Conduct market segmentation to divide your target market into even smaller segments. This way, you can send relevant surveys catered to each type.
Long questionnaires: Some surveys require more questions than others. However, long questionnaires tend to be tiresome and quickly cause respondents to disengage. Also, if some interruption occurs (spotty Wifi, etc.), all their responses will be gone and they’ll be reluctant to restart and go through the entire process. Solutions:
1. Keep surveys as short as possible.
2. Break up a long survey into smaller ones when possible.
3. Offer incentives and an estimated completion time to respondents.
Over-surveying: Continuous prompts for respondents to take part in surveys can be bothersome. As such, this may cause both of the survey fatigue types, as respondents will be too bored to begin a survey and may become bored while taking one, when they’ve done so several times. Solutions:
1. Consider the need for your surveys; if it is not all that necessary, eschew it.
2. If you require follow-up surveys to the exact same panel, consider planning out how many surveys you’ll need and letting the panelists know in advance.
Repetitive questions: These will frustrate and bore your respondents, not to mention, make the survey longer than it needs to be. Solutions:
1. Avoid using Matrix questions consecutively.
2. Route users to appropriate questions via skip logic.
3. Keep questions as disparate as possible, unless they’re follow-up questions respondents get via skip logic.

How to Minimize Survey Fatigue

There are plenty of other causes of this kind of survey repellent. Even the most vigilant researcher can fall prey to creating a fatigue-inducing survey. This is because getting bored is part of human nature, so plenty of respondents may inadvertently experience some level of fatigue.

To combat survey fatigue, here are a few considerations and best practices to put into use that are not mentioned in the previous section with solutions.

Be concise with questions. Do not cram two inquiries into one. They may be related, but this forces the respondent to think more and can lead to feeling overwhelmed.
1. Ex: Instead of asking: “Which brands have you heard about and which is the best one in your opinion?”
2. Form two questions: “Which brand have you heard of?” Use skip logic if they've heard of at least two to the following question: “Which is the best one in your opinion?”
Provide all possible answers if you’re using multiple-choice questions. However, keep this to a minimum if you’re using a scaled or Matrix question.
Leave no ambiguity on your questions. If your questions or answers leave respondents scratching their heads, they’ll unlikely care to finish their surveys, let alone truthfully.
Limit open-ended questions. Open text fields require writing, something many respondents will be hesitant to do, especially if pressing a button in a multiple-choice becomes too laborious for them.
Be consistent with scaled questions. Avoid confusion by keeping scales consistent. For example, if you choose a 5-point Likert scale, keep it at five points throughout. Don’t mix and match scaled questions.
1. Ex: If the following is used in one answer range;
2. Extremely satisfied
3. Somewhat satisfied
4. Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
5. Somewhat dissatisfied
6. Extremely dissatisfied
7. Then the following answers should follow suit
Keep the language consistent with the target market/population. Some populations will understand professional terms and jargon, while others won’t.
1. The same applies when surveying different generations in the same survey; if the lingo is only understood by one demographic, do not use it in a survey with various demographics, as they may not understand it. Looking up terms while taking a survey can lead directly to fatigue.
Keep surveys culturally relevant. Do not ask the same questions to members of different countries, geographical districts and cultures, as fatigue will inevitably ensue.
1. Ex: listeners of pop music may not know anything about country.

Relying on a Potent Online Survey Tool

Using a strong online survey tool is the best solution for eliminating survey fatigue. This is because a valuable online survey platform offers various ways to structure questions, provides quality checks (for example, on gibberish or flatlining answers, etc.), avoids survey fraud and allows you to thoroughly screen respondents so only the most relevant ones take part.

These aspects cannot be provided with survey panels alone.

Additionally, researchers ought to be heedful of the online survey platforms they choose. After all, the survey experience is at the heel of the platform. A strong survey platform can avoid fatigue, even when rookie researchers set out on their first survey campaign.

Frequently asked questions

What is survey fatigue?

Survey fatigue is the phenomenon where survey respondents lose interest in the survey they are taking, reducing the attention they pay to the questions, causing them to provide inaccurate answers and at worse, survey attrition .

What are the two types of survey fatigue?

The two types of survey fatigue are pre-survey response fatigue and fatigue during the survey. Pre-survey response fatigue usually results from overspending prompts and reminders. Fatigue during the survey often results from in-survey issues.

How does survey fatigue damage businesses?

Survey fatigue can lead to tarnished answers, survey attrition, waste of resources and money, and a negative perception of your business. Plus, online respondents will be less likely to take surveys in the future if they have a negative experience.

What causes survey fatigue?

Survey fatigue is most often the result of poorly created surveys. Specific causes can include incorrect targeting, long questionnaires, over-surveying and repetitive questions.

How can you minimize survey fatigue?

You can minimize survey fatigue through the following methods: being concise with your questions, providing all possible answers (in the case of multiple- choice questions), avoiding ambiguity, limiting open-ended questions, being consistent with scaled questions, keeping language consistent with your target market/population and keeping surveys culturally relevant.

by Pollfish Marketing Team

How to Conduct Healthcare Market Research Like a Pro

Healthcare market research is essential to providing optimal patient care, which is much needed in an industry hailed as people-centric, especially in a world rife with a pandemic.

Market research allows healthcare industry professionals to gain a deep understanding of the needs and behaviors of their patients — the kind they otherwise wouldn’t have. Additionally, it allows practice providers to expand their patient network, and increase their patient retention rates by helping them provide products and services tailor-made to the needs of their patients.

This article expounds on how to conduct healthcare market research for healthcare market researchers.

Defining Healthcare Market Research

Market research is the process of researching the viability of a new product or service through both primary and secondary sources. Primary sources use techniques like in-depth interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic studies to understand how products are used, how they can be improved, and how they can be streamlined.

Secondary sources involve a wide variety of research that has already been conducted such as statistics publications, scientific journal articles, and market research articles.

Healthcare market research applies the concept of market research to the healthcare industry. Instead of gauging how products are used, healthcare industry professionals use market research to learn about how their services can better benefit patients (and how they can reach and retain more patients).

The Importance of Conducting Healthcare Market Research

While the healthcare industry relies on services and products to keep patients healthy, market research specific to this industry is seldom conducted.

Healthcare market research needs to be prioritized because it creates a path to better care, and this is what the healthcare industry is fundamentally all about. The best way for healthcare providers to succeed in the industry is to form a clear understanding of this target market through market research methodologies.

Gaining access to the proper research can be a gateway to building a strong reputation, attracting more patients, garnering good reviews, and being a community go-to. As you learn more about your patients’ wants and needs, your quality of care will increase and you’ll build patient trust.

The Makeup of Healthcare Market Research

When conducting healthcare market research, you’ll need to conduct both primary and secondary research for a holistic market research campaign. Combining these methods yields powerful insights with the potential to transform patient care.

Primary Healthcare Market Research

Primary market research in the healthcare industry involves communicating directly to existing or potential patients. You do this to learn about your target market, which gives you the ability to perform market segmentation. Dividing your patient base into narrow market segments allows you to address a specific sector of your target audience.

You can conduct primary research using these methods:

Online Surveys
1. Surveys include questionnaires and screeners that you can deploy to your target market via an online survey tool.
2. A 3-minute survey will yield more responses than a 5-minute survey, so try to get the information you need in as few questions as possible.
3. With online surveys, you can reach a specific segment of your target audience while saving time and maximizing responses.
In-depth interviews
1. In-depth interviews are one-on-one interviews that can happen over the phone or in person.
2. Time estimates range from 20 minutes to over an hour.
3. This intimacy and time-frame allow the researcher to get detailed feedback, as healthcare can be a sensitive topic.
4. Personal interviews make it easy to gather information without privacy concerns. An average study might interview 10-50 participants.
Ethnographic research in healthcare settings
1. Ethnographies are field studies that use observation and interviews to study how people use products, interact with technology, and find/use services.
2. Ethnographic research allows the researcher to record behavior in addition to participant feedback.
3. It can be performed in-person or by software.
4. While recall methods rely on participant’s memories, this real-time observational method is more reliable.
5. Customer journey mapping can be integrated into this technique to see how patients interact with a healthcare provider's website and how they locate services from providers through phone referrals or word of mouth.
Focus Groups in Healthcare Settings
1. Focus groups are a great technique for healthcare market research, especially when a product or service is new.
2. The group-brainstorming format stimulates ideas and feedback that you might not be able to get out of an individual.
3. A great healthcare marketing research method is a hybrid of focus groups and ethnography studies.
4. This lets you observe your consumers in their natural setting before bringing them together for a brainstorming session.

Primary Healthcare Market Research

Secondary market research is the process of gathering already published data. You can speed up this process by purchasing high-quality market research reports. They provide in-depth data, statistics, and results that reveal areas and topics that need to be explored through primary research.

Here are some secondary market research sources for the healthcare industry:

Published market research reports are a great source of information. The healthcare market research section of marketresearch.com is a great place to get started.
Consumer reports and industry reports are a perfect starting point for researching target markets and trends. Visit Statista for reliable reports relevant to the healthcare industry.
Healthcare provider websites, i.e., those of your competitors are often a natural starting point for market research. You can find relevant annual reports, presentations made for investors, and other information that shows you where you’re positioned in your field and what areas you need to focus on with your primary market research.
NCBI is full of secondary research information pertaining to patient care.
UpToDate is a medical resource providing clinical decision support that’s been proven to improve patient care.
BMC Health Services Research offers a collection of journal articles on topics relating to healthcare practices like policy, the health workforce, health services research methodology, protocol, and more.
Census data can also be helpful in exploring demographic information.

Tips for Healthcare Market Research Surveys

Healthcare market research surveys are nothing without responses. Follow these tips to boost your response rates:

Target Your Population: Choose a target population relevant to your survey goals. If this population is hard to reach, consider using software to find survey takers who meet your criteria.
Prioritize Question Clarity: Keep your questions simple with the least number of steps possible. The easier your survey, the more responses you’ll get.
Be Mindful of Survey Length: As a healthcare industry professional, you know how valuable time is. Make sure your survey doesn’t take too much time to complete so that respondents can easily fit it into their schedules.
1. Shoot for between 5 and 15 minutes. You can make it even more manageable by using skip logic to let respondents only answer the questions most relevant to them.
Offer Incentives: you can boost your survey response rate by offering extrinsic survey incentives like discounts, coupons, gift cards, or even cash rewards.

Healthcare Market Research Use Cases

The above techniques are only helpful if you know how to use them, so let’s dive into use cases. Here are some ways you can use healthcare market research to expand the reach and improve the overall patient experience:

Evaluate healthcare access: you can investigate benefits and barriers to healthcare among groups with limited access (for example, low-income and senior citizens). You can target populations in rural areas and inner cities for the best results.
Improve business operations: this gauges the effectiveness of your business processes. It allows you to discover where you need more support and where systems could use some tweaking.
Healthcare feedback questionnaire: this survey helps you find out if your patients are satisfied with their care if they were taken care of in a timely manner and if their needs were met.
Women’s health research: This allows you to monitor the healthcare female patients received, which includes their opinions, concerns and fears. This is especially important for gynecologists and those who provide health services targeted at women.
Healthy lifestyle programs: This divulges whether patients are interested in secondary health programs such as health and wellness classes, smoking addiction aid, stress relief, weight management, mental health support, pain management, etc.
Teen health survey: this gives teens a confidential place to provide info on teen health habits, tobacco, drug, and alcohol abuse, bullying, and family issues. You can use this info to tailor-make special programs to aid your teen patients.

Upgrade your Patient Care with Healthcare Market Research

Healthcare market research can help you understand your patients and what they need to feel healthy and happy with their patient care. Staying on top of your healthcare practice isn’t limited to the day-to-day — it also involves the need to monitor patient satisfaction to keep your practice’s online perception in check. Surveys can come to your rescue on this matter.

Healthcare market research is important, but it shouldn’t take time away from patient care. That’s why you need a robust online survey platform to aid your in healthcare market research efforts. With an online survey platform, you can collect the data you need to better your practice. Plus, online surveys are one of the only kinds of primary market research where you don’t have to meet with someone in person (making them pandemic-proof). They’re the best way to listen to your patients’ needs and improve your practice accordingly.

Frequently asked questions

What is healthcare market research?

Healthcare market research is research that helps healthcare industry professionals understand the needs of their patients, expand their patient network, and increase their patient retention rates.

Why should you conduct healthcare market research?

Healthcare market research is important because using it to guide your practice improves patient care, strengthens your practice’s reputation, attracts patients, garners good reviews and establishes your practice as a trusted one in your community.

What are some primary healthcare market research methods?

For primary healthcare research, use surveys via an online survey tool, focus groups, phone calls and ethnographic (field) research.

What are some secondary healthcare market research resources?

For secondary healthcare market research, look for resources like published market research reports, consumer reports and industry reports, healthcare provider websites (like your competitors), NCBI for patient care research, UpToDate for clinical decision support, BMC Health Services Research for healthcare best practices and census data for exploring your demographic information.

What are some tips for healthcare market research surveys?

For the best healthcare market research surveys, target your population well, prioritize question clarity, keep your survey length to a minimum and offer incentives to up your survey participation.

by Pollfish Marketing Team

The Quick Guide to Customer Experience Survey Questions

Businesses need to form the right customer experience survey questions in their surveys to reap valuable insights on their customers. Regardless of the industry you operate in, providing an optimal customer experience (CX) is vital to the success of your business. Customer experience can make the difference between acquiring new customers and losing them to a competitor.

Customer experience is an umbrella term that refers to all the impressions your customers harbor about your brand e throughout all the stages of their interactions with your brand, which includes the customer journey before and after generating sales.

A remarkable CX can improve the overall customer lifetime value, while a poor one can contribute to a high customer churn rate.

As such, if you intend on attracting and retaining customers, you must establish an optimal customer experience from the moment they become aware of your brand until they seize their keyboards to write a review.

This article will provide you with the various types of customer experience survey questions you can ask your customers in order to refine your brand’s CX.

Using Customer Experience Survey Questions to Measure Your CX

Since the success of your business hinges on customer experience, you should continually check in with your customers to ensure that you provide them with an excellent CX. Online surveys are one of the best and easiest ways of doing this.

Customer experience survey questions are the key to measuring the strengths and weaknesses of your customer experience. This research technique can shed light on how your CX can be improved at every step of the buyer’s journey.

In order to make the most of your research efforts, however, it is important that you create customer experience survey questions that will yield valuable and accurate results, which will help you enhance your brand’s CX.

The following will acquaint you with the various kinds of customer experience survey questions with examples.

Questions about the Discovery Process

The first step in the buyer’s journey happens when they become aware of your brand. From their earliest encounter, a customer is already forming opinions about your company, which is why your CX needs to be flawless. After all, first impressions matter. Customer experience survey questions to ask about the discovery process include:

How did you first learn about our company?
1. Multiple-choice answer (i.e. “Social media” / “Google search” / “YouTube ad” / “Recommended by a friend” / “Other”)
Think back to the first time you visited our website. On a scale of 1 – 10, how easy was it to find the information you were looking for?
1. Scaled response (1 = very difficult 10 = very easy)
How did our Instagram channel influence your feelings about our brand?
1. Multiple-choice answer (i.e. “I did not visit your Instagram channel.” / “I visited your Instagram channel, but did not find the content interesting.” / “I learned a few new things about your brand from Instagram.” / “Your Instagram channel is what convinced me to purchase from your brand.”
Which of the following features did you use while considering which product to purchase?
1. Multiple-choice answer, with multiple selections allowed (i.e. “Live chat” / “Ratings and reviews” / “Support videos” / “Product comparison matrix”)

Questions about the Consideration Process

Once familiar with your brand and offerings, customers often shop around to find a better price or ensure they choose the product or service that best suits their needs. By understanding your customers’ thought process during this phase, you can enhance the CX to ensure your products and services are seen in the best light. Questions to ask include:

While you were deciding which product to purchase, how easy was it to find the information you needed on our website?
1. Scaled response (1 - 10, with 10 being very difficult)
2. Multiple choice (i.e. “Very easy: / “somewhat easy” / “difficult” / “very difficult” / I did not find the information I was looking for on the website.”)
What other companies did you consider before choosing our company?
1. Multiple-choice answers with multiple selections allowed – list out your main competitors in these responses.
2. Based on the response to this question, you can use skip logic to route respondents to the appropriate questions to understand how you measure up to competitors.
When choosing our product, how well did we convey the following aspects of our product :
1. Use a matrix to list out items you want to assess (i.e. product features, product quality, ease of use, pricing options)
2. Allow users to rate each of these by providing a scale of 1 – 5 (1 = unclear, 5 = very clear)
What was the best part about browsing our website?
1. Multiple-choice answer (i.e. “The interactive design that let me explore product features” / “The videos” / “The blog with personal stories.”)
2. Open-ended answer

Questions about the Purchase Process

Once someone has decided to purchase from your company, it is imperative that your purchase process provides a smooth and enjoyable customer experience. Barriers in this process can result in abandoned carts, bounces or, even worse, a prospect choosing your competitor instead.

Where did you purchase this product?
1. Multiple-choice answer (i.e. “On your website” / “On another website” / “At one of your stores” / “At an independent retailer”)
How easy was it to purchase this product on our website?
1. Visual rating system with 1 – 5 stars
2. Multiple choice (i.e. “Very easy” / “Somewhat easy” / “Difficult” / “Very difficult”)
What can we do to improve the purchase experience?
1. Text entry field to allow the respondent to provide unique insights about the checkout experience
2. Multiple choice (i.e. “Allow guest checkout” / “Provide the option to check out using PayPal” / “Improve the mobile checkout experience”)

Questions about Usage & Support

Customer experience doesn’t end at the checkout. CX is equally important once your customer has the product in their hands or starts using your services. Ease of use plays into the overall experience, as does the support customers receive when they encounter issues. Understand how your customers use your products and access support by asking the following:

Did you have any problems using the product at first?
1. The response can be binary (yes/no) to the first question. For those who answer “yes,” use skip logic to route them to the next questions.
2. Or multiple choice (i.e. “No, I was able to use the product immediately.” / “I had some problems, but I was able to figure out how to use the product eventually.” / “It was very difficult to use this product.” / “I was unable to use the product.”)
What problems did you experience when you first used the product?
1. Open-ended answer.
What actions did you take to resolve the problems you had using the product?
1. Multiple choice (i.e. “I contacted customer support” / “I used your support forum” / “I watched videos on your YouTube channel”)
2. For those who answer “I contacted customer support,” you can use skip logic to get a better understanding of their customer support experience.
How satisfied are you with the support our customer service team provided?
1. Customer Satisfaction Score survey (CSAT) format, with responses provided on a 1 – 5 scale, with 5 indicating “very satisfied.”
2. Visual rating system with various emoticons.

Questions about Retention

Your customers are successfully using your product or service, so your job is done, right? Not quite. As long as your customers use your product, you will need to provide support and prompt them to make repeated purchases, be they to cross-sell or up-sell.

As such, it’s important to understand how long your customers will use your product. To understand this, the following questions are helpful.

How likely are you to continue using this service?
1. Likert scale with responses ranging from extremely unlikely to extremely like.
Would you purchase this product again?
1. Multiple choice (i.e. “Yes” / “Maybe” / “No”)
2. Use skip logic to route to additional questions to explore why someone would not purchase your product again.
How long do you think you will use this product?
1. Multiple choice (i.e. “A few weeks” / “A month or longer” / “A year” / “More than one year”)

Applying Your Findings to Improve Your CX

Today, customers have multiple resources at their fingertips to help them assess your brand. As such, the customer experience you provide can make the difference between retaining a customer for life or losing them to a competitor.

While your customers shop around, the experiences they encounter along the way will influence their final purchasing decisions. Once they purchase your product or service, will they keep it and stay a loyal customer? Your CX may be the deciding factor.

Once the responses from your customer experience survey questions are in, you can start to sift through your findings and identify areas to improve CX at every step in the journey. You’ll be one step closer to attracting the right types of customers and keeping them satisfied throughout their entire relationship with your brand.

Frequently asked questions

What are some customer experience survey questions that ask about the discovery process?

To learn about the discovery process, you can ask questions about how customers first learned of your company, their first impression of your website, how your social media influences their feelings about your brand and what website features they utilized while making purchase decisions.

What are some customer experience survey questions that ask about the consideration process?

When researching the consideration process, you can ask questions about how easy it was for customers to find information on your website, what competitors they considered before choosing your company, how well customers think you conveyed certain aspects of your product and what customers believe to be the best aspect of browsing your website.

What are some customer experience survey questions that ask about the purchase process?

You can learn about the purchase process by asking questions about where customers purchased a product, how easy it was to purchase the product on your site and what you can do to improve the overall purchase experience.

What are some questions about usage and support?

You can learn about usage and support by asking questions about any problems customers might have encountered while using the product, what actions they took to overcome these problems and overall satisfaction with customer support and service.

What are some questions about retention?

To learn about customer retention, you can try asking questions about customers’ likelihood to continue using the service, if they will be repurchasing the product and how long they think they’ll be using the product.

by Pollfish Marketing Team

Using B2B Surveys for Lead Generation & Scaling Your Business

B2B surveys may appear to rarely be in use, but they are invaluable tools for B2B companies.

Although survey research is commonly used for B2C companies to better understand their target market, specific market segments and to test their own customer experience, B2B companies have plenty to gain from launching a survey campaign.

Even B2C companies benefit from B2B surveys, in that aside from catering to consumers, these companies must also bolster their relationships with their partners and business customers.

Surveys largely fuel B2B market research, but they are also the chief drivers of lead generation. This article explores B2B surveys and how B2B companies can use them for lead generation and scaling their business.

Defining B2B Surveys

A B2B survey is a survey designated for business professionals to complete so that a B2B business can better understand its target market and specifically, its partners, business clients and prospects.

The former two targeted respondent types are crucial for retention, while the latter is used for incoming business, i.e, lead generation. All three spheres are critical in the upkeep of a B2B business and as aforesaid, in B2C businesses at times.

As far as lead generation is concerned, B2B surveys provide a means for nurturing leads, bringing them closer to conversion.

How B2B Surveys Present an Important Force in the Sales Funnel

By nurturing leads, B2B surveys are crucial components of the sales funnel. Typically, these surveys are administered in the mid to late stages of the sales funnel, when prospects have some familiarity with a business and show some degree of interest.

Moreover, these surveys can also be sent to post-sales customers, i.e., partners, members and business customers. While surveys to those in the mid to late stages of the sales funnel help drive leads, post-sales B2B surveys encourage partner and customer retention.

This is because these surveys are used to probe business professionals on how to better serve them, which includes:

Discovering pain points in your digital experience or content assets (reports, white papers, blogs, etc.)
Identifying successful assets, experiences and communications
Learning how to improve existing lead generation efforts (ex: questions on emails, assets, etc.)
Understanding partners’ and prospects’ reactions to your product, solution or experience
Finding the key information that prospects seek while using your product or navigating your content marketing assets.

How B2B Survey Differ from B2C Surveys

B2B surveys serve a different market and have different end goals than do B2C surveys. As such, although they are both surveys, they differ in several ways. As such, they each have their own set of challenges and benefits.

As we laid out the benefits in the above section, the below explains the differences between these types of surveys, so that you can properly differentiate and conduct a B2B survey.

Sampling Pool Methods and Size

The survey sampling methods are disparate between these survey types. First off, B2C surveys rely on random, aka, probability sampling, as they attempt to reach all consumers that fit under certain criteria as opposed to those who are in the mid-late stages of the sales funnel.

B2B sampling pools, on the other hand, are far more concentrated than their B2C counterparts. Thus, these pools use non-probability or non-random sampling. This relies on the researcher’s judgment instead of random selections and thus, not all members of a target population have an equal chance of being in the sample.

Since they only gather specific individuals to be part of the survey, B2B surveys are much smaller in the sampling pool size.

Targeting

B2B surveys are more targeted. As such, they may only seek professionals with particular job titles. This kind of hyper-targeting is not found in B2C surveys. With the targeting focused on specific individuals, these surveys tend to be qualitative in nature.

An example of targeting respondents in the mid-stages of the sales funnel involves those who already happened upon a B2B site and engaged with some of its digital offerings. For further reference: a VP of Marketing for a telecom company downloads a report from a B2B company that focuses on scaling in their vertical.

The survey can be attached to the downloadable asset, or emailed to the VP.

With B2B surveys, responses aren’t always anonymous. This is because they often ask respondents to fill in fields about their job departments, job titles and many times, their names as well. This is especially true in a nurture campaign, in which a business lead may for example, receive an ABM package, then discover a blog post, which leads to a report. Within this B2B phygital journey, they may be targeted, as B2B surveys help you keep track of your campaigns. A name is evidently the best identifier of the professional behind this journey.

Response Rates

Given that B2B surveys often rely on non-probability surveys, have smaller sample pools and are hyper-targeted, their response rates are commensurately smaller. This is not necessarily a negative aspect, as it allows market researchers to focus on the qualitative features of their research. Additionally, in a hyper-targeted campaign, researchers and B2B marketers take a more targeted approach to nurturing a particular professional, rather than a group marketing approach.

Survey Methodologies

B2B surveys don’t always generate responses from their first release. Sometimes they require sending multiple reminders to the respondents to complete their surveys. Other times, they may require different methodologies. If you’ve asked one of your partners or business clients to take part in a digital survey and they haven’t done so, consider conducting it over the phone. This is especially useful if you have meetings with such individuals regardless.

How to Use B2B Surveys for Lead Generation

There are several ways to generate leads and push prospects further down the sales funnel, or, at the very least, keep your current business clients and partners satisfied with your relationship with them. The following enumerates key actions that B2B surveys help you take in order to scale your business, whether that’s strengthening already existing business relationships, or creating new ones.

1. Identifying valuable MQLs: B2B surveys provide key identifiers such as company names, positions, full names, emails and phone numbers. These identifiers alone can help you determine which respondents are MQLs, based on company size, funding stage and the respondent’s role. This also allows you to find the best content marketing asset to lead them to.
2. Insights into Buying Readiness: These surveys allow you to see exactly who is ready to buy and who is considering a long-term business relationship. For example, SaaS companies often gain new customers via contracts. A B2B survey allows you to ask directly for answers to an MQL’s buying readiness, whether it’s a 6-month contract or a one-time purchase.
3. Improving Your Content Strategy: For leads that require more nurturing, B2B surveys grant you insight into your leads’ content needs and preferences. Perhaps some leads prefer short-form content such as infographics and data bites. Or perhaps, they don’t care what kind of content piece it is, as long as it shows your product (ex: software, etc.) in action. Perhaps you need to inject more relevant content into your nurture program. A B2B survey can discover that, and even reel in trends within your industry by asking questions about them.
4. Eliminating Pain Points: B2B surveys point you to your leads’ pain points. These can exist in your products/services themselves, in which case these surveys give insight into their user experience (UX). If so, these are insights you can use to improve your retention, so that current customers stay customers. Or, you can also reel in more leads, by finding the pain points within the sales funnel. Perhaps there is a webinar that your leads thought missed key information. Either way, knowing about these pain points is a critical step towards eliminating them, so that your leads feel that you take their considerations seriously and offer solutions.
5. Providing Incentives: Your B2B survey strategy can benefit from providing incentives. Unlike consumer survey incentives, B2B incentives should be business-oriented. Therefore, a 20-dollar gift card or points on a mobile game won’t do. Rather, consider offering a small business promotion. For example, offer an enhanced trial of your offering. Ex: A SaaS company grants respondents a week of freemium access to their software.

Putting B2B Surveys into Action to Scale Your Business

There are many marketing efforts that have measurable scaling effects on businesses. With the current mobile-first digital age, content is king. However, content marketing alone is insufficient when it comes to catering to your B2B clients, partners and leads.

You need to understand their preferences, aversions and desires similarly to how you would with a consumer audience. This is how surveys make their way into the picture. B2B surveys help scale your business on a number of fronts.

From understanding your business customers for retention, to obtaining new leads and nurturing them down the funnel, these surveys are key for your business to scale — and in today’s competitive landscape, survive.

Frequently asked questions

What are B2B surveys?

B2B surveys are surveys designed for B2B purposes and therefore business professionals to complete. They provide firsthand feedback from the target market of the business. They can also be used by B2C businesses for gathering feedback from partners and vendors.

Why are B2B surveys an important part of the sales funnel?

B2B surveys are an important part of the sales funnel because they help nurture leads by helping B2B businesses understand the needs and wants of their audience. They’re often used in the middle/toward the end of the sales funnel when prospects are already interested in the business. Surveys sent in this stage help drive leads, while surveys sent post-sales to promote partner and customer retention.

How can B2B surveys be used to better serve business professionals?

B2B surveys can be used to identify various aspects of the digital experience, such as pain points, successful content assets, communication preferences, site elements, along with everything that the B2B respondents seek. . They can also bolster lead generation, by way of extracting key information that prospects crave while using your product or content marketing assets.

How are B2B surveys different from B2C surveys?

B2B surveys serve a different market than B2C surveys, and they have a different end goal, too. Instead of gathering information on how a business can help their audience, B2B surveys gather information on how a business can help other businesses. To accomplish this, they also have different survey sampling methods. B2B surveys tend to be more targeted and have a lower survey response rate.

What are the benefits of B2B surveys?

B2B surveys provide information like company names, positions, emails and phone numbers. They help B2B businesses find out who is ready to buy, as well as what businesses want a long-term relationship. B2B surveys also inform content strategy by providing insight into prospects’ needs and preferences. They can also help you eliminate pain points by revealing them to you.

by Pollfish Marketing Team