Accomplishing all Your Research Goals with Self-Service Market Research

Accomplishing All Your Research Goals with Self-Service Market Research

Self-service market research has been gaining ground in the research industry, putting traditional market research methods on the verge of becoming obsolete.

The self-service technology market is undergoing exponential growth, across various subsectors. The self-service technology market is projected to reach $72.51 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 11.27%.

Naturally, it traversed to the market research industry as well, as self-service technology is dominating this industry. There are 39,815 market research companies in the United States as of 2022, a 0.5% increase from 2021.

As self-serve market research businesses are rising in growth and popularity, researchers across industries and businesses are abandoning traditional market research methods wholesale.

But what exactly does this form of research entail and what is it capable of?

This article explores self-service market research, its importance and all that you can achieve with it.

Understanding Self-Service Market Research

This is a modern form of market research, in which researchers conduct all research activities themselves, whether or not they are professionals.

Self-Service Vs Syndicated Market Research

In this kind of research, it is the researchers themselves who have ultimate control over their entire research campaign, not their market research platform provider. In this way, it is the opposite of syndicated research, which involves using a research firm that conducts the entirety of your research campaigns.

Aside from conducting the research campaigns, the research firm has full ownership over the direction of the research and all the resulting data, which they can then sell to those who are interested.

Thus, in syndicated research, not only do researchers have no say over the direction of the market research campaign, but the data they purchase is not proprietary to them.

Self-Service Market Research in Full Depth

Because of this, self-service is not just a technological method of conducting research; it is a means of dealing with and owning all of the research you conduct.

This is made possible through certain market research companies — the kinds that provide market research software, specifically polling software. Polling software allows researchers across businesses to create and distribute surveys.

A strong platform is optimized to carry out the entire survey process. This includes facilitating the following aspects:

Audience targeting
Questionnaire building
A survey distribution service
Different options for survey deployment
A dashboard for analyzing your survey data collection

These are the main aspects of a self-service research platform, but there are many others that an ideal platform would provide (more on this in the following sections).

Essentially, a self-service platform allows you to conduct DIY market research, a method that permits you to take the do-it-yourself approach to market research campaigns. This means you have all the say on the ins and outs of the research study.

As such, a DIY survey is a tool that grants researchers ultimate control over their survey.

A DIY survey platform offers various capabilities that facilitate the survey creation and distribution processes. With this survey approach, the end-user (the researcher) is at the helm of the study.

That means you get to dictate its overall theme, objectives, target market, design, quotas and everything else in the survey study.

However, not all self-service market research platforms offer the same functionalities. Therefore, some will have more limitations than others, others will have completely different survey sampling methods and these platforms will also offer different levels of audience reach.

The Importance of Self-Service Market Research

This form of research carries a plethora of value in today’s digital age.

First off, this kind of research allows you to gain relatively inexpensive and timely results, the kinds you wouldn’t get elsewhere and through other methods.

You can use the self-service approach to market research to quickly get your questions answered and your problems solved. At the very least, you’ll get insights from your intended audience, the kind that you can use to take critical actions in your business.

Secondly, being able to access data on consumer preferences and needs is more important than ever, as the customers of the present expect fast response times. One of the quickest ways to address your customers’ concerns and needs is via survey research.

Given that a self-service platform gives you timely survey results, you’ll have the speedy insights you need to take action quickly or answer questions that suit customers. Thus, you’ll be able to delight customers at speed.

You wouldn’t want to upset your customers, as not only will they abandon your business, but are likely to share their discontent about your business with others.

In addition, self-service research is critical, given the higher demand for insights. 40% of businesses aim to increase data-driven marketing budgets. When it comes to being data-driven, market research is a must, as it provides invaluable data about your customers.

Moreover, self-service platforms are the most ideal in market research, as they grant you full autonomy over your survey campaign. You there get to target respondents as you see fit, come up with your own set of questions and pause/edit the survey when it’s running.

This wouldn’t be possible in syndicated forms of market research.

Thus, the self-serve model is critical, as it allows businesses to gain the crucial insights they need, all under one platform, which they can use to their advantage.

The key is to find the proper self-service market research platform that you can trust to conduct all your research with all the capabilities you seek. That’s where finding the right platform comes into play.

What You Can Do with Self-Service Market Research

Part of the large appeal of self-service market research is its many capabilities. These enable you to conduct any research campaign on virtually any survey target audience in the world. In addition, the functionalities of this kind of research are far-spanning.

These allow you to conduct various market research activities, not just survey campaigns. These activities will, again, depend on the market research platform you use.

You can use these activities to aid larger campaigns, such as advertising projects, testing of marketing messaging, product pricing campaigns, etc.

The following enumerates some of the capabilities you can count on with a self-service research platform:

Thorough audience targeting:
1. Target respondents beyond age and gender, with extensive qualifications you can filter.
2. A screening section that you use to qualify respondents based on their answers to specific questions.
Survey deployment:
1. Various survey deployment methods:
2. Random Device Engagement (RDE): A method that randomly distributes surveys across the internet, prompting random online users to partake.
  1. Pollfish operates via a digital polling mechanism that uses advertising networks and other digital portals on different devices, (mobile phones), to engage random netizens where they are, voluntarily.
  2. With RDE, there is no need to be wary of the survey bias that arises from professional survey takers and panelists.
3. Specific Online Channels and Respondents: A method in which you send surveys your way.
  1. You can send surveys to the specific digital spaces you choose, such as your website, partner sites and social media with the Distribution Link feature.
  2. You can also send surveys to specific people via email through this link.
Questionnaire setup:
1. Choose from a wide range of survey question types, from single selection multiple choice questions to Matrix questions, Drill down questions and many more.
2. Use survey templates in different business campaigns, such as logo testing, brand awareness, brand perceptions and more.
3. Using the Advanced skip logic feature, which routes respondents to specific follow-up questions based on how they answered a prior question.
  1. Thus, you can use it to create question paths for relevant questions to direct respondents in a more customized way.
Mobile-first surveys:
1. Mobile-first surveys ensure that surveys conducted on mobile devices are optimized for smaller screens and other mobile limitations so respondents can comfortably use them.
2. Many companies claim to be mobile-first, but most survey software is not ideal for mobile usage, as some question formats are not designed for the mobile experience (such as Matrix tables, for example).
AI and machine learning:
1. This provides automated surveys and all of their technical features.
2. This includes deploying quality checks on survey data, so no post-survey manual labor is required.
3. Quality checks remove survey fraud, such as gibberish answers, bots, VPN users, those who aren’t paying attention and other low-quality data indicators.
4. This way, your resultant data is of the highest quality.
A global support network:
1. Some self-service survey software providers have global tech support employees working 24 hours so that researchers are never left without a helping hand.
2. This means you can conduct surveys at any time of the day (or night) and reach out to the support team if you need assistance.
Conducive to global market research:
1. On Pollfish specifically, your surveys will reach 160 countries and are available to conduct in 46 languages.
2. We also offer a survey translation feature, which allows you to translate surveys in all the languages supported by Google Translate.
Various Market Research Functionalities:
1. A strong platform will offer various market research functionalities, those that go beyond simple survey creation.
2. This includes the following features:
3. Monadic A/B testing and sequential A/B testing.
  1. A/B tests are used to compare product concepts, communication ideas, or ads using equally structured groups of participants.
  2. With Monadic A/B testing, respondents claim their preferences for one concept that they get randomly. This is one of the many that the researcher wants to test and compare, instead of being exposed to two or more concepts at once.
  3. In sequential A/B testing, researchers can test multiple concepts at once, as opposed to just one with the monadic version. All possible combinations are used from the selected concepts shown to the participants.
4. Maxdiff Analysis:
  1. Also called the Best-Worst Scale; this feature allows researchers to prioritize new product ideas and tailor them to consumer preferences, needs and desires.
  2. Respondents choose what they consider the best and the worst option from a given set of options that relate to a product and its features.
  3. This mechanism allows you to identify what your target market values and what it detests.
5. The Van Westendorp Pricing Model:
  1. This is a pricing model providing data on product pricing based on consumer price preferences.
  2. It is used to unearth customers’ willingness to pay a scope of prices.
  3. It helps determine the prices that your target market holds to be acceptable, too high, too low and optimal.
6. Conjoint Analysis:
7. This allows researchers to assess the value that customers place on different parts of a product or service.
8. It also reveals the distinct advantages and imperfections of your product features.
Post-Survey Collection Analysis:
1. This is available through a dashboard, which hosts all your survey data per campaign and survey.
2. It includes a variety of data visualizations such as tables, graphs and charts.
3. You can import the data via PDFs, Excel, CSV and Crosstabs.
4. You can also view data granularly, by filtering the resulting data, which allows you to view how each demographic answered questions.
Integrations:
1. This will enrich any market research campaign, as it involves using other platforms in conjunction with your main self-service provider.
2. SaaS integrations are especially important, as they maximize the capabilities of your software, so you can create an exhaustive research campaign.

Making the Most of Your Research Projects

Self-service market research is possible with many companies on offer in the research sphere. However, they are not all the same; they have different capabilities and different reaches.

As such, you ought to select your platform carefully.

We suggest using a survey platform that offers all of the capabilities and functionalities discussed in this article. This will ensure a valuable campaign that is rich in insights, as well as ease of deployment and analysis.

A strong market research company will allow you to easily carry out and fulfill all of your market research activities.

Pollfish survey software allows you to create a thorough survey data collection, one you can customize to your liking, view however you choose and organize to the max.

In addition, with our vast array of question types, you can create virtually any type of online market research survey to support your research campaigns.

Researchers can leverage a wide range of information on their respondents by accessing a wide pool of data in their survey results dashboard.

With our advanced self-serve market research platform, you can form and excel at any market research campaign, no matter how difficult it may first appear.

by lorraine

What to Look for In All Kinds of Market Research Companies

Understanding the different kinds of market research companies out there is a must for any serious researcher.

This includes businesses as well, as market research provides critical information about your target market and the landscape of your industry.

It reveals how your company is perceived by your current and potential customers, how you can improve your offerings, how you stand up to competition and much more. Thus, it is clear why the market research industry has been rising, having recently surpassed $76.4 billion in revenue.

Given that market research companies are the foremost providers of this information, understanding the different kinds available and what they offer is essential.

That way, you can compare which is most suitable for your business needs, as all are different, therefore they all present different capabilities, functionalities and features.

Most importantly, you should know what it is you need to be on the lookout for in these companies.

This article provides a rundown on what you should look for when seeking out market research companies.

The Importance of Market Research Companies

These companies are invaluable to the market research industry — and for good reason.

According to Forbes, businesses can't afford to skip market research. That’s because it gains you critical insights into your target market, along with the market trends in your industry. You can’t miss these insights; doing so will harm your business.

That’s because there’s plenty of competition, even if your brand has plenty of brand awareness. As such, if you’re not paying enough attention to your customers, that doesn’t mean your competitors aren’t.

By skipping market research, you are not solely giving up key information on your customers, but are also losing your customers to your competitors, as they’re reaping crucial information about your shared target market. Thus, they’ll be able to foster better marketing campaigns and build stronger relationships with your customers.

To succeed in business, you need to understand your customer base from the outset and throughout. That’s because acquiring new customers isn’t sustainable for business success and there are many stats that back this up.

For example, acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing one. In addition, increasing the customer retention rate by just 5% increases profits anywhere from 25-95%. Moreover, the success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.

In order to retain customers, you need to understand them to a T, especially when it comes to their views on your business and niche. You’ll need to know what they like about your business, what they feel is lacking, their problems (especially if your business can resolve them) and much more.

Market research companies allow you to understand all of these customer concerns simply by using their services. A strong market research company will therefore allow you to easily conduct both a demographic analysis and psychographic analysis of your target market.

These companies allow you to reduce risks in all areas of your business, as you can conduct research into virtually every subject — with the right research company, that is. As such, a strong research company will enable you to embark on any research project, whether it is for market segmentation, product development and anything else.

In these ways, market research companies act as the conduit between businesses and customers.

Although these companies don’t sell to your customers, they allow you to understand all their wants, needs, behaviors and a heap of other concerns, so that you can properly cater to them and retain them for years to come.

The Two Main Types of Market Research Companies

Market research brands fit in more than just the category of their name. That’s because there are different types of research companies. However, most can be categorized into two main types of companies: syndicated research and custom research.

Regardless of which type you choose, you should know how they differ, as they involve completely different research campaigns, require different kinds of participation from you, yield different resulting data and more.

Syndicated research:
1. Syndicated research involves using a research firm that conducts the entirety of your research campaigns.
2. The research firm you use has complete ownership of all the resultant data, which they can sell to whoever is interested.
3. The firm can offer a survey distribution service, which is industry-specific and can be funded by several companies within a particular industry or niche.
4. Although you have the option of purchasing survey data through syndicated research, it is ultimately the firm and its partners who have full control over the direction of the survey study.
5. Thus, the survey data is proprietary to them, not your business.
Custom research:
1. This research is completely customizable by a business (or whichever entity decides to conduct research).
2. This is because it is conducted by and for one company — the client, aka, the researcher.
3. Presently, there are various software companies that allow you to perform market research via polling software.
4. A potent polling service is an online survey platform, which administers custom research, from targeting, to questionnaire setup to survey distribution and more.
5. The client that uses this kind of platform typically has full control of the survey campaign, including the resulting data.
6. That’s because they are in charge of setting the respondent qualifications, the questionnaire, the quotas and all else.

What to Look for In Market Research Companies

The type of research company you leverage is ultimately up to you and the needs and preferences of your business.

Some businesses will prefer using a syndicated research company to lessen their involvement in a research campaign, while others may choose a custom research company, as they prefer to be in full control of their survey study and be the sole owners of their survey data.

Regardless of the type of company you choose, you should assure it has the most potent qualities to perform your research and assist you in the process.

The following explores the key facets you should look for in market research companies before you select one for all your research needs.

Global Market Research

Many businesses seek to expand their reach by extending their services globally. Whether you provide products/services abroad or are thinking about making this move, it is key to find a company that allows you to conduct global market research.

That’s because, although your target market may be the same age and gender across countries, it is completely different in terms of consumer preferences, expectations, values and more. Many of these differences can be attributed to different cultures across different countries.

Not to mention, the different currencies, methods of purchasing, holidays, typical store hours and more that get added to the mix when dealing with international customers. Thus, a powerful research company will make all of these nuances attainable to research.

Thus, the company you select for your market research endeavors should facilitate global research campaigns. But there’s more to this. A truly convenient company will allow you to conduct global surveys without paying a premium amount or incurring extra fees.

Not all companies offer this convenience, but Pollfish does not charge you extra for global market research.

Organic Sampling and Random Device Engagement

One of the strongest methods of distributing surveys and gathering quality survey data is via the survey distribution model known as organic sampling, a method in which surveys are randomly distributed across the internet, coming upon random users online.

Pollfish specifically operates via Random Device Engagement (RDE), a kind of digital polling mechanism that relies on advertising networks and other digital portals on different devices, such as mobile phones, to engage random netizens where they are, voluntarily.

With RDE, there is no need to be wary of the survey bias that arises from professional survey takers and panelists. Many of these individuals aren’t fully anonymized or have their identities hidden (from the researchers) at all. Thus, they are under more pressure to answer questions in a particular way.

You don’t have to contend with this problem in organic sampling, as non-professional survey takers do not simply exist where they are online on their own will, but their identities are completely private. Thus, they are free to answer questions truthfully.

What’s also highly beneficial in Random Device Engagement, is that it is capable of reaching people by the millions. Thus, it is sure to capture the people that have all the required qualifications to take your survey.

The Pollfish RDE network reaches over 250 million customers worldwide. Thus, there will always be the respondents you seek to qualify for your surveys.

Our extensive sampling method reaches a network of 140,000 app partners, in over 160 countries.

A Variety of Question Types, Templates and Functions

The next incredibly important aspect of a strong survey campaign is its questionnaire. Thus, the market research company you choose should allow you to get as creative as you wish with your questionnaire.

To build a strong questionnaire, you’ll need to have all the necessary tools to form all the questions you seek. Luckily, Pollfish offers a wide range of question types that you can use in your questionnaire.

Here are just a few of the types of survey questions that Pollfish offers:

Single Selection
Multiple Selection
Matrix Question
Drill down question
Open-ended
Slider
Ranking

Aside from a wide variety of question types, a strong market research company will allow you to perform any campaign with templates. We currently offer 20 survey templates that you can edit to your liking and needs.

Our templates deal with all kinds of market research campaigns, such as brand perception, product concept testing, customer loyalty and more. While each template has a particular set of questions, you can add and remove as many as you need.

Aside from survey templates, our survey platform also enables you to add advanced functions to your survey questionnaires. These include the following capabilities native to the Pollfish platform:

Advanced skip logic feature
1. This routes respondents to specific follow-up questions based on how they answered a prior question.
2. Thus, it allows you to create question paths for specific answers to guide respondents to the most relevant questions.
Carry forward
1. This is an attribute that provides advanced piping capabilities to optimize your questionnaire experience.
2. Piping works by taking the answer(s) from the sender question and inserting them into the receiver question.
3. In the first piping iteration, researchers were able to funnel answer choices from one question to another based on respondents’ selections. The next question respondents would get would carry forward answers from previously piped answers.
4. The new Carry Forward feature allows you to pipe questions on more question and answer types, along with other capabilities.
Multiple audiences
1. This function allows you to form multiple audiences per survey, as opposed to just one.
2. Thus, you can create groups of audience in one survey alone, thus creating a hyper-targetted survey audience.

Customer Support

A valuable and reliable market research company is one that offers first-rate customer support. While this may sound to be subjective, there are certain key elements to particularly be on the lookout for.

Opt for a company with round-the-clock customer support. This means 24/7 support. Nothing comes close to this kind of convenience, as it empowers you to create surveys whenever and wherever you please.

In Pollfish, our customer support representatives are available 24/7, regardless of where in the world you reside. Thus, our platform is truly conducive to global market research, and we don’t only serve the English-speaking world.

We have a full team ready to support you and answer all your questions at any time of the day (or night). Thus, you’ll never worry about making a mistake on our platform, as someone will always be there to help you.

But there’s more. Our customer support team isn’t just there to answer questions or help with a roadblock. Instead, we have a team of experts that routinely checks surveys before they’re launched, ensuring you get the most quality results and don’t run into any technical hiccups.

A Multitude of Market Research Functionalities

A strong online market research platform provides more than just survey creation and a survey distribution service. It also goes beyond offering a robust set of templates and question types. At least that’s what you can expect with Pollfish.

We’re not just a survey platform. We offer a full scope of market research functionalities

Pollfish provides a diverse suite of market research products all under one platform. While we’re generally most known for surveys, we also provide other market research methods and campaign types.

We offer the following market research methods on the Pollfish market research platform:

Monadic A/B testing and sequential A/B testing.
1. A/B tests can be used to compare product concepts, communication ideas, or specific ads using equally structured groups of participants.
2. With Monadic A/B testing, your respondents will claim their preferences for one concept that they will get randomly. This is just one of the many that the researcher wants to test and compare, instead of being exposed to two or more concepts at once.
3. In sequential A/B testing, researchers can test multiple concepts at once, as opposed to just one with the monadic version.
Maxdiff Analysis
1. This is also called the Best-Worst Scale; a Maxdiff Analysis is a means for prioritizing new product ideas and tailoring them to consumer preferences.
2. Respondents choose the best and the worst option from a given set of options, which relate to a product and its features.
3. Respondents rate a list of items by selecting only two of them — the complete opposite of each other, labeling one as the best of the list and one as the worst.
4. This technique allows you to identify what your target market values and what it detests.
The Van Westendorp Pricing Model
1. The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter is a pricing model that provides data to make decisions on product pricing, based on consumer price preferences.
2. It is used to determine customers’ willingness to pay a range of prices.
3. In doing so, it helps conclude the prices that your target market deems acceptable, too high, too low and optimal.
Conjoint Analysis
1. A conjoint analysis allows researchers to measure the value that consumers place on various aspects of a product or service.
2. It shows exactly how your customers perceive the makeup of your offerings.
3. It also reveals the distinct advantages and imperfections of your product features.
4. This method breaks a product or service down by its components, called attributes and levels. Researchers can test different combinations of the components to identify consumer preferences.

Satisfying All Your Research Endeavors

A strong market research company will allow you to easily carry out and fulfill your market research goals. That’s why we suggest using a strong online survey platform, one that is capable of all the functions and services discussed in this article.

Remember, an online market research campaign is only as effective as the platform you use to operate it and not all market research platforms offer the same capabilities and customer support.

We advise you to use a trustworthy online survey platform, one that is rich in functions and features, along with a trusted survey distribution method like RDE.

You should therefore select your survey platform carefully.

Pollfish survey software allows you to create a thorough survey data collection, one you can customize to your liking, view however you please and organize to the max.

In addition, with our vast array of question types, you can create virtually any type of online market research survey to support your research campaigns.

Researchers can leverage a wide range of information on their respondents by accessing a wide pool of insights in their survey results dashboard.

Thanks to our advanced market research platform, you can form and excel at any market research campaign, no matter how difficult it may seem at first glance.

by lorraine

Everything You Can Do with Market Research Online Surveys

If you’ve ever begged the question, what can you do with market research online surveys? — we’ve got but one key response:

More like, what can’t you do with online market research surveys?

These digital tools gain you a wide range of insights into virtually anything about your target market or any target audience you intend to study.

You can apply them to any research project, as they grant you data on past campaigns (think existing ads, products or service sessions), as well as prepare you before you take any new action for your business.

Given that market research surveys have so many purposes, survey data remains important for both small and large businesses.

It is thus hardly surprising that the market research industry has grown 3.6% per year between 2017 and 2022 in the US on average. After all, it wouldn’t grow if businesses stopped relying on it.

This article gives you a deep dive into market research online surveys, what they entail, their importance and all of their applications.

Understanding Market Research Online Surveys

An online market research survey is both a major method and tool for conducting market research, which is the practice of studying your target market, the group of customers most likely to buy from your business.

Market research entails researching your target market and other customer segments in full depth, thereby understanding who they are, their needs, desires, preferences, aversions and more.

There are various forms of research, such as scientific, medical, socioeconomic, etc. A market research survey is a tool designed specifically for conducting market research, as its name suggests.

As such, it should include all the features necessary for researchers to learn what’s driving customer sentiment, market demand and a slew of other customer concerns.

An online market research survey is the modern form of a market research survey and market research at large. That’s because it is conducted online in an automated way, completes all quotas and grants you the swiftest and most accurate way to pull customer data.

Unlike other forms of conducting market research, online surveys allow you to get to the heart of the matter on virtually any topic. But there’s much more they can do, provided you use a strong survey platform.

When it comes to these surveys, the possibilities are endless.

What You Can Do with a Market Research Online Survey Platform

Most online market research surveys are conducted through an online survey platform. Such a platform allows researchers to partake in every part of the survey process.

However, keep in mind that all survey platforms are built differently, with different features and levels of respondent outreach.

The following outlines what you can do with an online survey platform:

Target your respondents.
Set all respondent qualifications.
Create screening questions to further determine eligibility.
Set quotas, the number of completed surveys and multiple audiences per survey.
Create the survey questions, i.e., the questionnaire.
Offer a variety of survey templates to align with various market research campaigns.
Create disclaimers, introductions and thank you pages.
Allow you to use a variety of question types.
Send your survey to a vast network of digital publishers randomly.
Allow you to send your survey to specific digital spaces and people.

In all, an online survey platform allows you to create and administer surveys, thus also working as a survey distribution service.

A powerful survey platform enables your online survey to perform a variety of tasks, which we cover further down this article. But first, let’s learn about the importance of these surveys.

The Importance of Market Research Online Surveys

Given all that we’ve already discussed that these surveys are capable of, you’ve probably caught on to their importance.

However, there are so many other reasons why market research online surveys are a must for your business, regardless of its stage, its brand reputation and other factors.

Firstly, these surveys form a critical aspect of your business strategy. This involves strategizing all things business-related, from understanding the reception to a new product, to how a support session was perceived.

With this knowledge in tow, you’ll be informed on how to make further business decisions and run different campaigns. Thus, you’ll be less likely to make major mistakes that will affect your bottom line, while delighting your customers.

Online market research surveys allow you to remain competitive, no matter how many players are in your industry, and how big (or small) your market share is. In fact, conducting these surveys is the answer to how to increase market share, as it helps you carry out productive campaigns.

These surveys are not just tools for gathering data, instead, they are also data visualizers, presenting your data in a variety of formats. This is especially important when you need to analyze survey data and use it to create a report, a whitepaper or any other type of research asset.

As data visualization tools, they also reduce and organize large amounts of information allowing you to easily compare two or more sets of data. This will depend on the data filtering capabilities of your online survey.

In addition, these surveys also allow you to uncover things not only in relation to your customers but your own business. You’ll therefore be able to learn things you would never have otherwise without this survey type.

That’s because this survey allows you to understand exactly how your customer base views your brand, how often they think about it, what they’d like to improve, what they dislike and so much more.

By understanding your customers in great depth, you won’t simply form better marketing, advertising and other business campaigns. You’ll also build stronger relationships with your customers, which fosters consumer loyalty.

Loyalty is the bedrock of customer retention, which is more important than customer acquisition. There are many reasons behind this, including the fact that the chances of converting existing customers are 60 -70%. The probability of converting a new customer is only 5- 20%.

Thus, by studying your customers with this survey, you’ll be able to understand them well, thus better appealing and catering to customers, strengthening your relationship. In turn, you’re building loyalty, allowing you to increase your customer retention rate.

Market research online surveys don’t merely allow you to understand how customers view your business, but your competitors as well. In this way, you can obtain all the competitive research you need simply by conducting such a survey.

All in all, these surveys are extremely important for all business affairs, as they help measure the representativeness of customer views and needs. The intelligence you gain from them allows you to make crucial decisions.

What You Can Study with Market Research Online Surveys

As mentioned, there are a myriad of things you can study with these surveys. As such, you can apply them to specific areas of business, including specific campaigns and macro applications.

As such, here we lay out several main purposes of conducting online market research surveys. As you can see, these are high-level and have many sub-methods and applications.

General Marketing: Marketing involves all the activities performed to aid a business sell its products/services, which includes educating customers, interacting with them and more. Marketing market research exists to help businesses gauge their campaign efficacy and better understand how their customers view various campaigns.
Advertising: Used to deploy sponsored messages to grow demand and elicit purchases, advertising, you can leverage it to influence customer behavior. This involves prompting existing customers to make more purchases or to gain new customers. Surveys can be used to determine which advertising messages are the most resonant and which ads elicit the most interest. You can ask questions to compare ads and their different parts.
Branding: This discipline involves creating a reputation, an image and a set of associations around a brand. Branding market research helps brands differentiate themselves from one another and form a style unique to a company. Businesses can tie these surveys to branding by using them to test new logos, slogans, value propositions, content ideas and more.
Market Segmentation: Market segmentation is a macro-application that refers to dividing a target market into smaller segments and assigning certain values to each segment to better understand all your customers. That’s because a target market includes all the customers most likely to buy from a particular business and is not solely defined by one group. Researchers can create questions about their target market’s habits, lifestyles, preferences and more to distill them into several segments. From there, marketers can adopt different marketing campaigns for each segment.
PR: Public Relations, or PR, as it is commonly referred to, aims to control the distribution and spread of information about a company (or individual) and the public. Its goal is to control the narrative of a business or organization to gain positive public perception. These surveys can help by asking questions on how well respondents know a business and their general thoughts on its operations, products, experiences, performance, etc. Researchers can also test out press release ideas and pitches through these surveys.
Brand Tracking: Brand tracking refers to continuously measuring or tracking, as its name suggests, your brand's health. This involves analyzing how your customers buy and use your products and what they think and feel about the brand itself. These sentiments are subject to change, especially when things change at a business, whether they have a new ad campaign, have been acquired or are offering new products. You can keep watch of this with these surveys.
Brand Awareness: This goes beyond whether or not your target market has heard of your brand. Brand awareness also deals with the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize your brand under various conditions and circumstances. A strong brand awareness is necessary to build long-lasting relationships with existing customers, as well as draw in the interest of new and potential customers.

Specific Market Research Endeavors to Study with Market Research Online Surveys

In the previous section, we discussed several broad campaigns, macro-applications and business topics that this survey type can support. Now, let’s move on to more specific usages of these kinds of surveys.

Here are some of the more specific purposes a market research online survey campaign helps serve:

Understand the makeup of your target market.
1. You can use this survey to form a target market analysis.
2. It will allow you to understand all the needs, concerns and behaviors of your target market and its segments.
Obtain customer feedback and get a deep read of your target market.
1. You can do so by centering the theme of this survey into that of a customer satisfaction survey.
  1. This includes forming it as the NPS, CSAT, CES, visual rating surveys & more
2. Doing so allows you to understand your customers’ CLV (customer lifetime value).
Excel in product campaigns.
1. Use it to test product satisfaction.
2. Innovate products with new features and upgrades.
3. Understand how your product compares with competitors' offerings.
Avoid negative publicity.
1. Use it to perform regular checks on the opinions of your brand.
2. Uncover customer aversions to avoid using in your messaging and brand image.
Obtain employee feedback.
1. Use it to run a pulse survey on your employees.
2. Retain strong company morale by discovering your employees’ thoughts on their job training, roadmaps, pipelines, their boss and more.
Improve your CX.
1. Use it to learn about your customer experience (CX).
2. This can involve all aspects of the customer buying journey.
Drive Lead generation.
1. Use this survey for B2B endeavors.
2. This will help you learn about the specific needs and desires of your target market, specifically your B2B clients such as partners, vendors and other business entities.
Acclimate with your niche.
1. Use it to keep up with market and niche trends.
2. Use it to produce a market trend analysis, so that you can analyze trends in an industry, including past and current market behavior, and dominant patterns of the market and its consumers.
3. This makes it easier to change with the times.
Complete a market analysis.
1. Being able to compare your brand with others
2. Getting a feel of the thoughts and attitudes in your overall space
Understand customer behaviors.
1. Use it to create a customer behavior analysis.
2. Learn the motivations of customers, their lifestyles and how those affect their purchasing behavior.
3. Create an RFM analysis to learn about your customers' recency and frequency of purchases, along with their monetary value.
Understand your demographics.
1. Use it to form a demographic analysis of your target market.
2. This is one of the preliminary things you ought to know about your customers.
Understand your psychographics.
1. Use it to create a psychographic analysis of your target market.
2. This allows you to understand your customers’ psychological characteristics, such as their values, desires, goals, interests, fears, aversions and lifestyle choices.

What You Can Set Up with Market Research Online Surveys

Now that you understand the various macro-campaigns and applications to use with these surveys, along with the specific tasks you can apply them to, let’s dive into this survey type itself.

There is plenty that you can set up with this survey type, along with key market research functions (more on the latter in the next section).

Thus, you’ll find several aspects of these surveys as you set them up. That’s because, as the previous section informed, you can use them to form specific market research survey types such as customer satisfaction surveys, etc.

Here is what you can set up within these surveys:

The questionnaire
1. This is the heart of any survey, as it contains all the questions.
2. You can build sophisticated survey paths with advanced skip logic, depending on the survey platform you use. These route respondents to different follow-up questions based on their previous answers.
Audience targeting
1. This section involves adding all the respondent qualifications you seek to designate your survey audience.
2. This section also contains your screener, to qualify people based on how they answer screening questions.
3. Some platforms will allow you to create multiple audiences per survey.
Distribution
1. This dictates how you will distribute a survey to your target audience.
2. There are two approaches to this on Pollfish:
  1. Random Device Engagement (RDE): A kind of organic sampling, RDE deploys surveys to a massive network of online sites, such as websites and apps. Respondents are targeted at random in their natural digital environments.
  2. Specific Online Channels and Respondents: You can also send surveys to the specific digital spaces you choose, such as your own website and social media with the Distribution Link feature. You can also send surveys to specific people via email with this link.
Data visualizations
1. There are various ways the survey can be presented. Within your survey results dashboard, you can view resultant data in the form of tables, graphs and charts.
2. You can also view it via other visualizations, such as the kinds in imports like PDFs, Excel, CSV and Crosstabs.
3. You can also view data granularly, viewing how each demographic answered questions by filtering the resulting data.

What Research Capabilities Online Market Research Surveys Include

Lastly, let’s touch upon the market research capabilities that these surveys can carry out. Not all market research surveys have these capabilities, as not all survey platforms offer them.

At Pollfish, we go beyond surveys.

That’s because Pollfish is not just a survey platform; it provides a full-scale market research experience. That’s because we offer a wide scope of functionalities that the average survey platform simply doesn’t have.

As such, you’ll find much more than merely survey creation on this platform.

You’ll find the following market research capabilities on the online market research survey on the Pollfish platform:

A/B testing:
1. You can conduct both Monadic A/B testing and sequential A/B testing.
2. Monadic A/B testing lets respondents choose their preferences for one concept or product they randomly receive out of many. These are what the researcher wants to test and compare, exposing the respondents to one concept instead of two or more at once.
3. Focusing participants’ attention on just one concept at a time grants researchers insights into making product, pricing and various marketing decisions.
4. Monadic testing is commonly used for gathering independent data for each stimulus — a contrast to comparison testing, where several stimuli are tested side-by-side.
5. Sequential A/B testing uses concepts with a specific distribution: all possible combinations are derived from the concepts that are selected to be shown.
6. Thus, each concept is evenly distributed and presented to the respondents at equal times in the first position.
7. This reduces biases that may occur from serving a concept always at the first position of a combination.
Conjoint Analysis:
1. A conjoint analysis allows researchers to gauge the value that customers place on different aspects of a product or service.
2. It shows exactly how your customers perceive the makeup of your offerings.
3. It unveils the distinct advantages and imperfections of your product features.
4. This method breaks a product or service down by its components, called attributes and levels. Researchers can test different combinations of the components to identify consumer preferences.
5. You’ll get a rich evaluation of how your customers rate the unique features of a product, rather than passing a general judgment on it.
Maxdiff Analysis:
1. Also called the Best-Worst Scale, a Maxdiff Analysis is a system for prioritizing new product ideas and customizing them to consumer preferences.
2. Respondents choose the best and the worst option from a given set of options, which relate to a product and its features.
3. Respondents rate a list of items by selecting only two of them — the complete opposite of each other, labeling one as the best of the list and one as the worst.
4. This technique helps to identify what your target market values and what it despises.
The Van Westendorp Pricing Model:
1. The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter is a pricing framework that provides data for decision-making in regard to consumer preferences on price.
2. The meter exists in the form of a graph, with ratings on price and value, presented as responses to survey questions that focus on the prices of different products and services.
3. It is used to determine customers’ willingness to pay a range of prices.
4. It allows businesses of different sizes and industries to set the proper prices of their offerings so that they can be in line with customer expectations.
5. It helps conclude the prices that your target market deems acceptable, too high, too low and optimal.

Conducting Thorough Market Research

As you may have gathered, online market research surveys offer a vast amount of capabilities. As such, you can take on various macro-applications, specific tasks and projects by applying these kinds of surveys.

While these surveys offer a wide breadth of functionalities and insights, they are limited by the online survey platform that administers them. In essence, it is the survey platform that grants these surveys all their powers.

As aforementioned, not all survey platforms have the same features; thus, not all market research online surveys can offer all of the functionalities and features mentioned in this article.

Thus, you should select your survey platform carefully.

Pollfish survey software allows you to create a thorough survey data collection, one you can customize to your liking, view however you please and organize to the max.

In addition, with our vast array of question types, you can create virtually any type of online market research survey to support your research campaigns.

Researchers can leverage a wide range of information on their respondents by accessing a wide pool of insights in their survey results dashboard.

In addition, we also offer the advanced skip logic feature, which routes respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on their answers to a previous question.

Thanks to our advanced market research platform, you can leverage the maximum number of market research capabilities with our online surveys.

by lorraine

Understanding Offline Market Research and Determining if You Need It

Have you ever considered using offline market research? Like its online counterpart, it too can be used to conduct both primary and secondary market research.

While we always tout market research online surveys, it is critical to understand all forms of market research. This way, you’ll always have various options on hand, which you can consider using when forming a major research campaign.

So how exactly is this industry faring in terms of revenue?

The market research industry has grown more than twofold since 2008, exceeding $76.4 billion in 2021 alone. Clearly, businesses are seeing the value in conducting this research for various business matters.

As such, we cannot stress the importance of market research enough. Again, studying just one facet of it is not enough. Thus, we suggest you get acclimated to offline methods of market research.

This article investigates offline market research, presenting the various methods used to carry it out, comparing it with the online variety, and ultimately, determining if you need to conduct it.

Understanding Offline Market Research

This is a kind of market research, except unlike most of the kinds of research performed in the current day, it is conducted entirely offline, as its name alludes.

Like its online counterpart, offline research has various methods that make it up. These methods can be far-ranging as well as of the subtype variety (for example, there are different types of ethnographic research or different types of surveys).

Offline research entails that the researcher has to do all the work to gather the research information, whereas, with online research, many of the tasks associated with obtaining the research are automated.

As such, offline research involves scouring through various sources and locations in order to find relevant information. This may include libraries, bookstores and newsagents. It may also require speaking with people with knowledge of particular subjects.

It, therefore, tends to be more time-consuming and may require traveling to come across the information.

Offline market research methods have been around for a long time, far exceeding the existence of online market research, for obvious reasons. Some of these methods are still in use to this day.

When used correctly, these offline methods are proven to yield results. As such, if you only use online market research methods, it may be worth considering offline strategies as well.

The Main Types and Methods of Offline Market Research

Offline research methods are a diverse mix and can thus cater to the needs and preferences of all researchers. Many of these methods are still around and can be used in tandem with online research methods.

Here are some of the most prominent offline methods for conducting market research:

In-Person Surveys

When surveys are conducted in person, they are considered to be interviews. Specifically, in market research, these are known as IDIs, or in-depth interviews. After all, when you speak with someone in person and face to face, there is a greater opportunity to collect as much information as possible.

This is due to the fact that such a setting allows for conversation, whereas written and online surveys are limited to the questions included in their questionnaire.

You can conduct in-person surveys in a twofold way: they can be preplanned or spontaneously / on the spot.

With the former approach, you would have to seek interview subjects and ask for their consent to participate in an interview. The interview would take place at a designated facility or a location most convenient for the participant.

With the latter approach, you can do so in public places that get plenty of traffic.

Many businesses prefer conducting these interviews in malls since their customers and target market members go there to browse products and shop. This method is advantageous, in that you can show your customers your products and have them form their opinions immediately.

As such, this method is especially useful for B2C businesses. However, it can also highly benefit B2B businesses, but these interviews would then be conducted at tradeshows or other events B2B companies frequent. They can also be conducted in-office or at your place of work (showrooms, stores, etc).

In IDIs specifically, a moderator spends between 30 minutes to over an hour having a comprehensive discussion with their participants one-on-one. IDIs are thus one of the most intimate and information-yielding approaches you can take with the survey route.

Snail-Mail Surveys

This is one of the oldest market research methods and though it may seem dated, it is still used in the present, especially to gain insights from older generations.

Snail-mail surveys are sent to respondents via the mail, for them to fill out the surveys and send them back to the researchers.

This approach can appease many older customers, especially if they aren’t physically capable of going to an in-person interview or aren’t adept at using computers to take an online survey.

These surveys are useful, as they show which customers are more likely to remain customers or buy from your business. Otherwise, why would they take the time to complete your survey, and then have to package it and send it back?

What’s best is that these provide you with a list of customers whose contact information you have. You can then cross-reference your list of contacts with the list of respondents who actually partook in your mailed surveys to have an understanding of those who are most serious about doing business with you.

Snail-mail surveys do have their share of downsides: they require far more time to fully conduct, as it takes more time to deliver them, have them filled out and finally, returned back. On the contrary, an online survey campaign can be completed in its entirety in a few hours.

In addition, if your survey includes open-ended questions, then your campaign is at the mercy of your respondents’ handwriting, which may not always be legible.

Phone Surveys

Yet another survey method, phone surveys are somewhere in between in-person survey interviews and snail-mail surveys, in terms of the time and effort required to complete them. They offer the same convenience as in-person surveys, as they too can become IDIs.

That’s because when you’re on the phone, you are free to ask and speak for however long you see fit (within reason). Unlike written surveys, phone surveys aren’t limited to the questions in a written survey’s questionnaire.

You can create new, follow-up questions as the phone conversation progresses. Thus, the data you extract from phone surveys is more comprehensive and may not require conducting any further primary research.

Phone surveys also have a major convenience over in-person surveys: the respondents don’t have to travel or even leave their homes to partake. This is especially critical during Covid and seasonal illnesses.

Additionally, some people prefer to stay home, and thus would much rather stay home for a survey session, rather than having to waste time getting to a certain location.

Phone surveys do have certain disadvantages. First off, not all will be willing to give up their spare time to talk with a stranger on the phone about a business or business-related manners.

Additionally, another major drawback of phone surveys is that many businesses don’t have enough contact information of their customers. They certainly don’t have the contact information for target market members who are not direct customers.

Thus, there are too many resources needed to dial respondents’ numbers and administer the surveys.

Focus Groups

A focus group is a small group of people who meet to informally discuss your topic of choice; this is usually business-related. However, it can also focus on the customers themselves, such as their lifestyles, buying patterns and more.

Focus groups are group sessions consisting of 5 to ten participants. They include a moderator, who leads the discussion using prearranged questions and topics.

A typical in-person focus group will consist of 4 to 12 participants, along with the moderator. A focus group session usually lasts a few hours and can require follow-up meetings.

The moderator leads the meeting with different topics and subtopics for roughly 60 minutes to two hours.

Aside from leading the discussion, the moderator must observe the group and take notes to record key moments in the session. Therefore, the focus group may also include using participant activity materials and audio/video recordings of the sessions.

Aside from taking part in a Q and A, a focus group can include other techniques to draw out insights from customers. These include doing role-playing exercises and more. As such, this method is more lively and interactive, as it includes more people than a one-on-one interview and more techniques aside from questioning.

Like in in-person and phone surveys, the resultant data from focus groups is more in-depth but it also tends to be more subjective. The output, therefore, involves more words, images, impressions and sentiments, rather than hard, statistical data.

In addition, some participants are more extroverted, leading them to dominate the discussion, while more demure participants remain quiet or answer fewer questions. This is where a one-on-one research method may be more useful, or easier to administer.

That’s because, technically, the discussion can be balanced, even with a mix of reserved and outspoken participants, but the moderator would have to step in so that the quieter participants can take part and the extroverted ones to allow others to speak. This would thus be more laborsome.

Observations

Like in-person interviews, observations typically occur in natural settings, that is, where people exist voluntarily.

Observations are part of ethnographic research, a qualitative research method that relies on entrenching yourself in various participant environments to extract challenges, goals, themes and more.

At times, it is best to observe customers in this way, noting where they choose to browse versus where they buy from, whether they’re looking for sales/promotions and more.

Thus, you can conduct observations to uncover real behaviors. This is a major advantage of this method, as people in surveys and focus groups may lie, as they are put on the spot (in offline surveys, that is, online surveys can be fully anonymized).

But when you discreetly observe shoppers in their natural habitats, they exist as themselves. They’ve got no one to impress or worry about judging their answers. Thus, you can learn a lot about customer buying behavior, customer motivations, needs and more, all by simply watching them covertly.

Some researchers observe shoppers and then use their findings to conduct follow-up interviews. Some research companies resort to using hidden cameras to record customers and gather information this way. Thus, some offline market research methods are also digital, even though they are not internet-based.

Like other methods, observations have some limitations as well. First off, you’ll need to find an ideal distance to observe customers discreetly, while being able to hear (and see) them. This can be difficult in crowded places, which tend to be loud and full of motion.

Most likely, in such scenarios, you won’t hear much of what your customers say to one another, unless you’re at a relatively quiet location.

In addition, while observing customers is useful, it won’t address your specific questions. Thus, observations are rarely a standalone affair.

Live Events

Using live events for market research is much like the above example of observation, except rather than observing people in basic, everyday settings, you’re going to observe them in special occurrences and planned events.

These can provide a mix of entertainment and research. The goal is to get the participants as engaged in the event as possible. This is typically a tactic of field marketing but can be applied to market research as well.

That’s because live events are a new type of market research called “engagement marketing,” which includes a mix of live elements, face-to-face discussions and even certain activities to enable customers to actively engage with your brand.

Conducting research at live events is crucial, as it can be more intimate than observations alone. Given that these are specialized events within your industry, you may set up a booth or nook with the intention of speaking with your potential customers.

With the customers’ consent, this can be treated as an interview, or at the very least, a time to pitch your product or service and get the opinions of it from your target market.

Thus, you can interview customers right then and there. This immediately transforms the event to be more than just a time for brand awareness, but to reap critical insights.

Live events have the disadvantage of the lack of time: both for you and your customers. That’s because many may attend such events without the desire to speak with businesses, let alone be interviewed by them.

As for you, you may be at the event with other tasks, such as making a presentation, pitching a product, handing out flyers, etc. Your business would need to dedicate a worker entirely for the purpose of research to actually get anything done on this front at a live event.

The Pros and Cons of Offline Market Research

As we’ve discussed in the prior sections with examples of offline research methods, we’ve alluded to both the positive and negative aspects of such methods.

You can draw your own conclusions, but to do so, it’s useful to have a concrete view of all the advantages and drawbacks of these methods.

The following does just that, listing all the pros and cons of offline market research methods:

The Advantages:

Reaching participants who don’t have access to the internet.
1. 6% of Americans don’t have adequate access to the internet at threshold speeds or with a fixed broadband service.
Being able to reach participants who aren’t internet savvy, don’t have internet devices or simply prefer not to use the internet.
Having wide-ranging approaches to conducting research if one doesn't garner enough data, whereas online research may only rely on one software, aka, one method.
Not all participants spend a lot of time online; this is especially true of those with eye strain.

The Disadvantages:

A much smaller reach to participants than in online research methods.
Secondary online research methods are easier to come by, doing so offline requires finding and speaking with a knowledgeable source.
They tend to all be time-consuming affairs.
Lack of time for deep thoughts in all in-person and phone methods.
It can be difficult to get people to answer all your questions, whether in written form or in person.

Offline Vs Online Market Research: The Verdict

Both offline and online market research methods have their advantages and pitfalls, but which is overall the best approach to take when conducting market research?

Offline market research provides many avenues that online research simply doesn’t, such as the personal touch of conducting in-person studies. That’s the major advantage of offline research over the online variety.

It is nearly impossible to create the same conversations and reap the same information digitally, or even over the phone. Thus, offline research methods are better for drawing out qualitative market research. That’s because they involve discussing thoughts, feelings and perceptions in full depth.

This can be limiting, however, as respondents may not remember or gather all of their thoughts on a subject right away, especially in an in-person setting, which puts more pressure on them. On the contrary, there is hardly any pressure in taking an online survey.

In addition, conducting offline research is much more difficult for obtaining quantitative market research. The reason behind this is twofold:

Offline studies take much more time to conduct and complete.
1. One focus group session alone can take hours.
2. Mail-in surveys can take months, even years to complete, depending on the respondents.
3. Calling people to ask for consent to a research project, as well as mailing them takes too long, and this is just to opt people in.
Offline market research reaches fewer people.
1. Many will ignore survey phone calls and snail mail surveys.
2. There are only so many adequate observations you can make on a daily basis.
3. A focus group itself only deals with 12 people at most.

Online market research solves both of these problems, as it can be deployed to the masses and completed within hours. This will, of course, depend on the market research platform you use.

Moreover, online research involves using polling software that targets the specific people you need for your research study. With offline market research, finding people who meet a variety of qualifications and who are also willing to take your survey is nearly impossible.

Online market research can also involve tactics that prevent poor-quality data and survey fraud by using AI to detect it and disqualify respondents who provide this data. This involves giving gibberish answers, skipping questions, and more. This is impossible to do in written, snail-mail surveys.

Thus, online research offers far more capabilities with survey software than does offline market research. Online market research can obtain both quantitative and qualitative research, reach the masses and do so in a timely manner.

However, it still is lacking in some regards, especially when compared with offline market research.

That’s because not all segments of the population spend much time online. Some segments do not have reliable internet access, as aforementioned, such as rural citizens. You may also have less tech-savvy, older customers.

You will therefore need to reach these segments offline.

In addition, offline market research gives you more access to primary sources of information and yields more comprehensive results.

Thus, it is often best to use both, specifically, whichever method is most suitable for your research needs. Using both will reveal different data about your target market.

Aiding All Your Market Research Projects

Although we suggested taking your market research endeavors both online and off, there’s more to this.

An online market research campaign is only as effective as the platform you use to administer it.

In essence, it is the survey platform that grants online surveys all their powers.

We therefore advise you to use a trustworthy online survey platform, one that is rich in functions and features.

Not all survey platforms have the same features; thus, not all market research online surveys can offer all of the functionalities and features mentioned in this article.

Thus, you should select your survey platform carefully.

Pollfish survey software allows you to create a thorough survey data collection, one you can customize to your liking, view however you please and organize to the max.

In addition, with our vast array of question types, you can create virtually any type of online market research survey to support your research campaigns.

Researchers can leverage a wide range of information on their respondents by accessing a wide pool of insights in their survey results dashboard.

In addition, we also offer the advanced skip logic feature, which routes respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on their answers to a previous question.

Thanks to our advanced market research platform, you can effectively pair online market research with offline market research campaigns.

by lorraine

How to Advertise a Survey to Maximize Campaign Awareness Via 6 Key Methods

You may be pondering how to advertise a survey to attract as many respondents to your survey studies as possible. After all, you’ll ideally need to reach a sizable number of people in your target market for validity.

While targeting your survey and setting up a strong questionnaire are important aspects of the survey process, reaching an audience and distributing your survey is equally important.

Advertising your survey allows you to do just that, as it is a major step towards luring in your survey target audience. This is critical, given that a significant amount of customers hate taking surveys, leading businesses to lose faith in the power of survey research.

But fear not; there are various methods you can deploy to win over survey respondents by way of advertising.

This article guides you through how to advertise a survey with six key methods and all their underpinnings so that you can increase your survey response rates and most importantly, solidify your research with a high survey completion rate.

How to Advertise a Survey

In some respects, advertising a survey is much like advertising a product. Both pursuits involve grabbing your audiences’ attention, enticing them and commanding them to take action.

But in other respects, advertising a survey is a completely different affair; the outcome doesn’t involve customers paying for something in return. Unlike product advertising, the outcome of survey advertising involves your respondents expending more of their time while not shelling out any money.

On the contrary, the outcomes of product advertising, when successful, are customers who grant businesses some of their time and spend their money.

Thus, you’ll find some of the methods for advertising surveys are similar to advertising a product or service, while other methods are completely unalike.

The following sections illustrate the six major ways on how to advertise a survey, along with the many activities associated with each method.

Share Your Survey on Digital Spaces

One of the best ways to advertise a survey is by utilizing the web and its various digital landscapes. This is a multi-pronged approach that does not require relying on just one digital space, such as one website or one mobile app.

When it comes to advertising your survey, think of the world wide web as your playground (more on this in the Rely on a Survey Platform section below).

While it may be challenging, if not nearly impossible to advertise your survey across all the digital spaces you wish, you can still do so on all of your digital properties. This means you should engage in both promoting and hosting your survey across all of your digital properties.

First, consider all the digital real estate your business owns. This involves obvious places, such as your website’s homepage, along with less clear-cut places, such as a static webpage.

Then, plan out how you’re going to present your survey throughout all the digital spaces your business is a part of.

The two main ways to display your survey across the digital space:

At times, your survey will exist as a pop-up, an image, or a button with a call to action that solely contains your survey. You can take this route if you want to cut to the chase quickly.

In other instances, you can insert your survey into your website content or even base a content asset on your survey. In this way, the surveys your business or organization conducts is highly useful for your content marketing strategy.

Where and How to Advertise Your Surveys Across Digital Spaces

Now, let’s explore where (and how) you can advertise a survey across the massive and ever-growing digital landscapes:

Website content
1. Use various available pages and elements on your website to advertise and take your survey. This includes:
2. Webpages:
  1. Homepage
  2. Landing pages
  3. Static pages
  4. Contact page
  5. FAQ page
  6. Blog
  7. Evergreen content places
  8. Event sign-up pages
  9. Reports and whitepapers
3. Web elements
  1. Page openers
  2. CTA buttons
  3. Within the text of long-form content
  4. Sliders
  5. Large images
  6. Below subheadings
  7. Links within content pages
Social Media
1. Leverage all your social channels to advertise your surveys. These include:
  1. Facebook
  2. Instagram
    1. Mention the survey in your bio, a post and in your stories.
  3. LinkedIn
    1. Make posts and ads showcasing your survey.
  4. Twitter
    1. Make posts and ads showcasing your survey.
    2. Create polls to quantify interest in taking a survey.
  5. Reddit
    1. Create posts, answer questions and create carousel and gallery ads for your survey.
2. Create a unique hashtag for your survey.
Emails
1. Email your survey to your customers, along with those you don’t have direct email access to. (there are services that provide email addresses, especially business emails, which are ideal for B2B surveys).
2. You can use a mass emailing tool such as MailChimp or a CRM platform like Hubspot.
3. It’s always useful to add personalization to emails.
4. 71% of customers say they expect personalization, as such, use personalized emails when promoting your survey.
External websites
1. Reach out to the advertising and editorial departments of popular websites and blogs, especially those relevant to your niche.
2. These will provide backlinks to your site and survey, as well as spread its message to digital properties aside from your own.
3. You should also reach out to your own business partners and business customers for collaboration projects that you can pitch your survey to.

Advertise a Survey through Advertising Platforms

While there are various means through which you can advertise your survey, sometimes the best place to do so is by advertising it via the “traditional” one. By traditional, we’re still predominantly alluding to digital advertising, but on platforms designed specifically for advertising.

You can deploy survey ads across the internet via specialized services, such as the following:

Google Adwords
- Ads from Adwords appear on both desktop and mobile devices and when using the display ads, you can target people by device type.
- You can publish ads within apps, browsers, and Google search results.
Bing Ads
- These ads cost significantly less than Google Adwords advertising.
- They grant you more control over the language, location, and scheduling of your ad campaign.
Criteo
- This platform provides online display ads via its Commerce Media Platform.
- It shows personalized online display advertisements to customers who have previously visited their advertiser's website.
AdMob
- AdMob allows users to decide which ads they want to see and to set filters, so that only the ads that are relevant to them are shown.
- This platform is useful for businesses that seek to monetize by showing ads in their mobile app.
AdColony
- A mobile ad platform that specializes in video ads. It’s typically used with mobile games that display video ads after users complete a certain level.
- Publishers can show video ads during in-app usage.
Airpush
- This is the second largest mobile ad platform for Android, and is also available for iOS.
- Airpush offers 12 different ad formats, including video ads, push notifications, in-app banners, landing page ads (post-click), interactive experience ads and overlay ads.
Amazon Ads
- These ads are usually used to promote your Amazon store but can be applied to promoting other things as well.
- Ads on Amazon can also appear as display ads on third-party sites, instead of being solely the search results on the Amazon platform itself.
AdRoll
- This is known as one of the best ad networks due to its retargeting applications.
- It uses Google and Facebook to track almost all your website visitors to retarget them with ads that incite them to return.

These are great ad platforms, but did you know there’s more to digital advertising than just PPC ads? In addition, not all PPC ads are limited to search engines and external websites.

In the prior section, we mentioned social media as a worthwhile platform for advertising a survey.

That’s because, aside from posting and sharing survey content and links to your survey, you can also post ads to social media networks. Ads get far more engagement than organic posts, and for good reason.

Since you’re paying for them, social media ads get exponentially more exposure, thus bringing your survey to a wider audience.

Facebook Ads
LinkedIn Ads
Instagram Ads
Twitter Ads
Pinterest Ads

Perform A/B Testing to Advertise a Survey

Whichever route you take to advertise a survey, you’ll need to assure you have an effective ad, one that viewers won’t just brush aside as a nuisance or ignore.

As such, we suggest that you perform A/B testing on your survey advertisements. Think about it; businesses perform A/B testing and other kinds of testing to certify the effectiveness of their marketing messages, including their ads.

So why stop there? A/B testing ads that lead to or promote your survey is just as beneficial as A/B testing all your other ads and marketing campaigns.

A/B tests are useful for comparing product concepts, communication ideas, as well as survey ads, by way of using equally structured groups of participants.

Use a reputable platform that you can trust to run your A/B testing. You can run A/B tests via Google Ads and other PPC advertising providers. Social media ad providers also allow you to run A/B tests. These include Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

You can even use an online survey platform to create and launch A/B testing. Not every such platform will provide this market research capability.

Luckily, Pollfish provides two types of A/B tests on its market research platform:

Monadic A/B testing
Sequential A/B testing

With Monadic A/B testing, your respondents will claim their preferences for one ad or concept that they will get randomly. This ad is just one of the many that the researcher wants to test and compare, instead of being exposed to two or more ads at once.

Focusing A/B test participants’ attention on just one ad at a time provides researchers with a deep dive into making data-backed decisions on specific survey ads.

In sequential A/B testing, researchers can test multiple concepts at once, as opposed to just one with the monadic version.

In this iteration, the A/B testing is also done within one group of questions, yet allows researchers to test more concepts per respondent. This grants researchers added flexibility and efficiency, as only one survey is able to test multiple advertisements for your survey.

Offer Survey Incentives

Another strong approach to advertising a survey is to reward the participants with survey incentives. These incentives can be both monetary and nonmonetary. You can get creative with your incentives to stand apart from your competitors.

Survey incentives are especially important when your survey clearly mentions or displays your brand. Given that you’re advertising your own survey, which probably exists in your digital properties, it is key to posit your brand in a good light.

After all, your respondents will know which company they are dealing with. Thus, you should consider using incentives to frame your brand in a positive way. Survey incentives will do so, showing your brand to be interactive and generous, along with considerate of the respondents’ time.

If respondents see your brand with your survey and it doesn’t offer incentives, this will lead to a negative impression of your brand, even if your respondents are longtime customers.

Survey incentives are essentially a gesture of giving thanks to the respondents, who have taken the time out of their day to provide you with key data.

Just make sure it is clear that your survey offers incentives at the outset. When dealing with a survey ad, always mention the incentive in your ad!!

If you’re using a PPC ad service and lack character space to mention the survey incentive, mention it in the image of your ad. That way, your respondents will be made aware that your survey offers an incentive, even if you cannot say so in the text of your advertisement.

Bring Referral and Influencer Marketing to the Mix

While there are plenty of ways to advertise your survey yourself, that is, through your brand’s digital properties (and even physical ads), you can always apply outside teamwork to advertise your survey.

As such, another crucial method for advertising a survey is to use external sources, such as referrals, influencers and partner marketing.

Referral marketing

Referral marketing represents the activity of having a customer share a specific referral link with others for others to complete a certain action. In this case, it involves completing a survey.

If the person who the customer referred to clicks the link and completes its desired action, (in this case,) both of them benefit in the form of some sort of prize, bonus or discount.

Brands usually reward their referral marketers with a discount or free product.

Influencer Marketing

Although influencers are typically enlisted when brands want to promote a physical product, they can also be used to advertise your survey.

This form of advertising usually includes social media, as people advertise a product or service on their social media channels in return for money, or free products.

The influencers are the people in a niche with a high social media following and a strong engagement with their posts. Influencers can be internet celebrities, traditional celebrities, along with other people or companies with a high level of influence and knowledge in their niche.

Advertising with influencers entails having the influencers in question promote your survey on their social networks. Essentially, they provide endorsements for people to take your survey.

As opposed to regular, text-based or video advertising, influencer advertising brings a more human side to it. That’s because influencers have followers that look up to them and view them as a trusted source for all things in their field.

As aforesaid, influencers commonly advertise physical goods, but they can promote digital ones as well, assuming that your survey exists in the digital realm.

This is a less-used route to survey advertising, but that makes it more unique and creative.

Partner Marketing

This approach entails two or more businesses that join forces for the purpose of advertising (or broadly speaking, marketing). By advertising your survey with a business partner, or through a partner, you can reach a greater audience.

Gather all the partners in your business network into a document. Consider using one that isn’t also your direct competition. While you can use a direct competitor, you ideally want customers to focus on your survey alone.

Partner marketing campaigns allow your business to collaborate with a supporting business that has a similar target market. When pitching your collaboration for the purpose of advertising a survey, remember to explain why it is mutually beneficial.

Then, work out a plan of which digital channels to use for advertising your survey.

Rely on a Survey Platform to Attract Your Survey Audience

Last but certainly not least, use a potent survey platform to advertise your survey. With such a platform in tow, you won’t have to worry about the specific nuances of your ad.

That’s because a strong market research platform will do all the heavy lifting for you when it comes to attracting respondents to your survey.

First off, a strong survey platform will allow you to buy a survey audience. It will do so by enabling you to set all of the respondent qualifications that you wish, along with quotas and integrating multiple audiences in one survey.

In this way, you’ll only receive completed surveys by the people you target, along with a specific number of completed surveys.

Thus, you won’t have to worry about reaching a high survey completion rate, as the survey platform won’t stop iterating until it gathers the entirety of the required completed survey count.

In addition, a strong online survey platform will send all your surveys to the masses, through an extensive network of publishers. These publishers include popular websites, apps and mobile sites.

With Pollfish, our network includes over 250 million customers worldwide. Our app partner network is composed of 140,000 app partners, in over 160 countries.

Organic Sampling and Random Device Engagement (RDE)

Our platform distributes surveys in a randomized way, to catch people who visit a digital property voluntarily. This is known as organic sampling.

Organic sampling allows you to reach non-professional survey takers and gain a far larger reach than you otherwise would.

This is because organic sampling involves what’s known as Random Device Engagement (RDE), a kind of survey collecting that relies on advertising networks and other digital portals on devices, to engage random people where they are, voluntarily.

Moreover, in Random Device Engagement, the surveys are delivered to users in their natural digital environments, capturing them where they prefer to be. They were not pre-recruited and thus do not face the same pressures and conditioning that they would in a research panel.

As such, respondents are more likely to answer questions truthfully, as they have no one to answer to, are not pressured to answer in a particular way and are kept anonymous and have got nothing to lose.

All in all, a reliable survey platform provides all the necessary tools to not merely create a survey, but to reach its intended audience. Thus, it essentially removes the need to do any advertising to your surveys.

Getting the Right Audience for Your Survey

Getting the right survey audience isn’t as daunting as it seems, at least not with Pollfish. That’s because Pollfish essentially removes the need to advertise a survey if you send it via our RDE network of publishers.

This survey platform continues deploying surveys until the requisite number of completed surveys is reached. Thus, there’s no need to fret over attracting a certain number of respondents, nor the right respondents, as the platform offers granular respondent targeting.

We want to conclude by stating that a valuable market research platform will offer you all the functionalities necessary for your studies. Thus, that is where your focus should lie when choosing a research platform: its functionalities and the quality of the data.

Our survey software allows you to establish a thorough survey data collection, one you can customize as you see fit, view however you please and organize to the maximum.

In addition, with our vast array of question types, you can create any survey type to aid any research campaign.

Researchers can reap a wide breadth of information on their respondents and access a wide pool of insights in their survey results dashboard.

In addition, there’s the advanced skip logic feature, which routes respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on their previous answers.

With a research platform offering all of these capabilities, it’s clear that Pollfish is the best survey provider that mitigates the need to advertise a survey.

by lorraine

Understanding and Using a Survey Distribution Service for all Your Research Needs

A survey distribution service is a necessity for all surveys — whether they're of the snail mail, telephone or digital variety.

Given that American internet usage keeps rising, with an increase of 8.4 million new internet users between 2021-2022, it is of little surprise that online survey usage has also risen.

Moreover, it’s not just businesses that can benefit from surveys, as educational institutions, research firms and even editorial sites can all reap critical data on their target audience with survey research.

More online surveys are also in keeping with the fact that internet usage is steadily growing globally as well, with an annual rate of 3.7%. Thus, brands can easily conduct global market research, with the right distribution method, that is.

This article explores all that a survey distribution service entails, its importance, its types and more.

Understanding What a Survey Distribution Service Is

As its name suggests, a survey distribution service is any type of service that administers surveys to their intended audiences.

Essentially, this kind of service is tasked with getting a survey from point A to point B, with Point A representing the creators of the survey and Point B the recipients. But there’s much more to survey distribution, as it is not solely a delivery service.

Instead, such a service should do the following to complete your survey process:

Identify your survey audience.
1. This will depend on the survey provider you use.
2. In an online survey platform, your dashboard, specifically the audience section allows you to set in your audience qualifications.
Reach your target audience.
1. For business purposes, this is going to be your target market — the group of people most likely to buy from your business.
2. Reaching the right respondents is at the heart of distributing surveys.
Prompt potential respondents to take the survey.
1. Prompting your respondents to take your survey includes first getting their demographic and psychographics data should they opt-in.
2. In this way, you determine if they’re qualified to take your survey.
3. It’s key to make a good first impression, along with designing a strong survey so that you encourage respondents to complete the survey.
Continue iterating until all respondent quotas are reached.
1. With an online survey campaign, you should be able to set the exact number of completed surveys in each survey campaign.
2. This includes setting quotas on your respondents.
3. For example, you may seek to gain 300 men and 300 women to take your survey, while getting a particular number of respondents that fall under certain categories like income or ethnicity.
4. Iterating until reaching completion is what agile market research is all about.
Save and organize all the data collected.
1. It is key to save and organize all the data that your survey collected so that it can be easily accessible to you, the researcher.
2. Organizing the data involves granting it accurate percentages and stats, along with presenting it in various formats such as tables, charts and graphs.
3. In addition, organizing the survey data involves allowing researchers to filter data as they please.
4. For example, the researchers should see post-survey results by filtering them by respondent location, age, ethnic group and all other qualifications.
5. This provides them a granular analysis of which respondents answer in which particular way.

As you can see, this kind of service is bent on more than just deploying surveys, since you want them to be taken by the right people and get a particular number of participants.

Thus, you can have different types of providers and use different methods of survey deployment.

The Importance of a Survey Distribution Service

The previous section delves into all the capabilities that such a service should provide, proving its importance.

But if you aren’t convinced of the need to use a strong survey distribution provider, here’s more about its importance.

As mentioned in the introduction, online survey usage is naturally growing with the growth in global and domestic internet usage. Thus, it is critical to reach the correct audience and do so in a timely manner.

A worthwhile survey distribution model and service remove this task from the researchers, freeing them of what otherwise would have been a major burden. It would be implausible to reach all your designated respondents via snail mail or over the phone if you don’t have their contact information.

That’s why you need to instead use an online survey platform. Added to this need is the aforesaid fact of the growing worldwide group of internet users. Luckily, the online survey software industry has been growing in the past five years, keeping up with the widening pool of netizens.

With a potent distribution service, you can distribute a survey to virtually anyone, which includes anyone in the world. Thus, you can easily partake in global research, all you need is a strong provider to deploy global surveys.

A quality survey distribution service also makes it far easier to study anyone in your target market, along with its various subgroups and customer personas.

Because of this, you can easily set up a target market analysis, as you can rest assured that the number of completed surveys you preset will be reached. In addition, given that this service also organizes all the survey data, you won’t have to go out of your way to make it neatly presentable; the service takes care of this.

Best of all, a strong distribution service ensures all the data you receive is accurate, error-free and fraud-free. That’s because a strong provider will perform quality checks to ensure you’re not getting gibberish answers, VPN users and other undesirable data.

Just keep in mind that not every survey service provides this feature. It is obviously in your best interest to seek a service that performs continuous quality checks, so your data is representative of your audience and doesn’t result in low-quality answers.

All in all, this kind of survey service is invaluable to your market research and virtually all types of research needs.

But equally as important as having a survey distribution service is the kind of provider and survey deployment method you choose, which brings us to the next section.

Main Types of a Survey Distribution Service

There are all kinds of ways to distribute your survey. When it comes to how you choose to do so, there are various service providers. Each takes a different approach to distribute your surveys to their rightful target audiences.

The Main Types of Survey Distribution Service Providers

First, let’s explore the main provider types for distributing a survey:

Syndicated research:
1. Syndicated research is predicated on using a research firm that conducts the entirety of the survey campaigns.
2. The firm, therefore, owns all the resultant data and can sell it to interested parties.
3. This kind of survey distribution method is generally industry-specific and is therefore funded by several companies within a particular industry.
4. While you can buy this survey data, the firm and its partnering companies wield full control over the direction of the survey study.
Custom research:
1. This is a kind of research conducted by and for one company — the client, aka, the researchers, who own the resulting data.
2. Market research companies, such as online survey platforms are the providers of this service, offering the data distribution, which clients can customize.
3. The client that uses the market research platform has full control of the survey data and the entire campaign, controlling the respondent qualifications of the survey, the questionnaire, the quotas and all else.
4. A survey platform in particular can be as customizable as the client makes it.

Both of these provider types will usually use online surveys, however, there are still some telephone and even snail mail providers. Some providers will even use various means to create and distribute surveys.

The Main Types of Survey Distribution Methods

Finally, let’s dive into how exactly survey providers, particularly online survey platforms distribute your survey to the masses. Remember, not all survey platforms are built the same and thus, not all will offer the following survey distribution methods.

Here are the main ways to distribute your survey:

Random Device Engagement (RDE)
1. A kind of organic sampling, Random Device Engagement allows you to distribute surveys to a wide network of randomized internet users.
2. RDE reaches and recruits respondents where they naturally frequent in the digital space, yielding voluntary, anonymous and randomized participation.
3. It lowers the biases associated with professional panelists, who may be pressured to answer things in a particular way, as they are not anonymous (or there on their own will).
4. Panelists are also more subject to survey fatigue, unlike a random user who chances upon your survey.
5. It provides you with a mass network of publishers, that is, if you use Pollfish.
6. This method can deploy your survey to millions randomly.
7. This method works best via random organic sampling and Random Device Engagement (RDE).
Specific Digital Channels and Respondents
1. As opposed to sending surveys to a mass network of randomized users and digital spaces, you can distribute your survey in a more narrow and targeted method.
2. You can deploy your survey to specific respondents and/or specific digital channels.
3. This requires a link you can drop wherever you please on the internet and to whom you want to send it.
4. You’ll need the Distribution link feature, which allows you to distribute your survey to specific people. You can do so by email or via social media.
5. In addition, you can send your survey to nonspecific people on specified digital platforms. Thus, in this method, the survey platform you use won’t be in charge of the places your survey will exist.
6. You’ll be able to choose where you place your link to your survey. This can be done through various digital channels:
  1. On the homepage
  2. Landing pages
  3. Emails
  4. Social media
  5. Newsletters
  6. Static web pages
  7. Partner sites

A strong online survey platform will offer both methods of survey distribution. This way, you are not tied to just one way to reach your desired audience. You can choose either or, or mix and match these methods.

This is why it is key to rely on custom research instead of syndicated research, as it ensures that the client company sets all the requirements of a research campaign, chooses the respondent qualifications and can access and filter the resultant data to their liking.

Thus, you have more options and control over your research campaigns when using a custom research platform, especially when using an advanced survey provider.

Make sure to ask about and peruse all the capabilities of your survey provider; this applies to how they distribute their surveys, along with how you can create a questionnaire and all the special features that are on offer.

Easing through all Your Research Campaigns

Distributing your survey is never difficult with a strong survey distribution system. That’s why you ought to look for a platform that offers top-tier survey distribution.

Such a platform would allow you to conduct both types of survey distribution methods. In doing so, it allows you to buy a survey audience. That’s essentially what you can expect from a robust distribution service, an easy means to connect with your target market.

We want to conclude by stating that a valuable market research platform will offer you all the functionalities necessary for your survey studies. You should therefore focus on a survey platform’s functionalities, the quality of the data and its distribution model.

Our survey software allows you to establish a thorough survey data collection, one you can customize as you see fit, view however you want and organize in any manner.

In addition, with our vast array of question types, you can create any survey type to aid any research campaign.

Researchers can reap a wide breadth of information on their respondents and access a wide pool of insights in their survey results dashboard.

In addition, there’s the advanced skip logic feature, which routes respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on their previous answers.

With a research platform offering all of these capabilities, performing market research is not only doable, but it is also easy and enjoyable.

by lorraine

The Guide on How to Get People to Take Your Survey

You're in the right place if you’ve ever wondered how to get people to take your survey.

Surveys have become an increasingly vital way to study your target market, as they are no longer obsolete pieces of paper that get snail-mailed and ignored.

Instead, surveys are currently distributed via polling software through an online survey platform (like Pollfish). Such a platform can include various capabilities to fine-tune and optimize your survey, from targeting to deployment, to analysis and beyond.

In addition, surveys are crucial, as they can be deployed at any stage of the customer buying journey. This extends what you can learn about your potential and current customers.

As such, you can study your customers before doing anything, thereby forming your marketing strategy from your survey. You can also survey people after you released a product or completed a campaign.

At any rate, surveys provide an invaluable means for understanding your target market so that you can serve it well and retain your customers.

This article explains how to get people to take your survey at length in the two major methods of survey deployment.

Two Major Ways to Deploy Surveys Digitally

While there are countless ways to send surveys digitally, your survey deployment method is entirely dependent on your online survey platform — unless you send surveys through other means, such as syndicated research.

This form of research isn’t as potent as using a DIY survey platform, since, in syndicated research, the direction of the survey campaign is entirely decided and owned by a research firm. With a DIY platform, you are in full control and have full ownership of your survey results.

With a market research platform, there are usually two main ways you can distribute your surveys:

A mass network of publishers
1. This method can deploy your survey to millions randomly.
2. This method works best via random organic sampling and Random Device Engagement (RDE).
3. Respondents are reached randomly, where they exist online voluntarily.
Distribution through chosen digital places / specific people
1. This involves sending your surveys or making them available on particular digital properties, often, the ones you choose.
2. These digital spaces can include:
  1. Website home page
  2. Landing pages
  3. Static site pages
  4. Carousels
  5. Checkout
  6. After a customer service session (ex: chat)
  7. Social media pages
  8. Emails
  9. Websites you’ve partnered with
  10. Mobile apps
3. With this method, you can reach people randomly, as well as prompt specific people to take your surveys. These can be customers whose contact information you already have.
4. This method requires using the Distribution link feature.

How to Get People to Take Your Survey

Now that we’ve established the two major ways to distribute your survey, it’s time to get to the crux of the matter: what you can do to get respondents to take your survey — and complete it.

While it may seem like you need to follow two separate sets of best practices to align with the two key ways of deploying your surveys, you don’t.

That’s because the tricks to get people to take and finish your survey are relatively the same throughout any means of distribution. The same things will continue to irk your respondents, much like the same best practices will quell their irritation and motivate them to complete their surveys.

Thus, you should heed the following advice and incorporate it into all your surveys, regardless if you deploy the surveys across a vast network of random users or send them to specific places or to specific respondents.

By doing so, you’ll get more responses, thereby increasing your survey completion rate and obtaining your responses sooner.

1. Keep your questionnaires short.

No matter how convoluted the topic is, it is always best to keep surveys short.

If you’ve won over respondents to fill out your survey, a feat in itself, don’t sabotage this by creating long-winded questionnaires.

Just because someone agreed to partake in your survey, doesn’t mean they’ll stay. They can drop out at any time they feel overwhelmed by too many questions or as though they are wasting tier time.

Or, they may simply get bored and abandon your survey.

Keeping your surveys short will stave off survey attrition. Ask no more than 10 questions, 15 at most. Any more will require an incentive to partake.

2. Lure respondents in with a strong introduction.

This exists as the first page respondents will see in their survey.It can also take the form of the title or call-out of your survey.

You’ll need to lure in respondents with something that sounds both interesting and easy for them to do.

As aforementioned, no one wants to waste time with lengthy surveys. As such, promise that the survey is short with language such as: “Take a quick, 5-minute survey” or “take a fast 5-question survey.”

This will entice potential respondents of a survey experience that won’t take too much time from them from the get-go.

3. Make your respondents feel special.

You can make respondents feel special by acknowledging the importance and usefulness of their participation.

No one has to take a survey and your respondents know that they are primarily for the benefit of your business.

Remind them of how important their responses are. You can mention the specific purpose of the survey, along with what and who it’s meant to help.

As such, you’ll partially reveal your survey campaign to them, but it’s okay, as you’re not revealing your exact goals. You’re simply going to state why it’s helpful for customers such as themselves.

4. Keep your questions highly relevant.

The advanced skip logic feature, which routes respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on their previous answers is key to this.

This feature directs respondents to different questions, specifically, a question that is most relevant to the respondent, based on the answer they had previously provided. That way, the experience is far more personalized and the questions make more sense.

You wouldn't want to ask a question that contradicts the answer that the respondent provided in a previous question. Not only will this annoy the respondent, but you’ll also be bogged down with data from question that you don’t need.

For example, if you asked if a respondent has heard of a particular brand and they haven’t, it would be irrelevant and useless to follow up with what they like or dislike about the brand in question.

5. Offer survey incentives.

There are a number of incentives you can use to create buy-in from your intended respondents. This is especially important if you’re sending surveys the second major way: to specific places or specific people.

In this case, respondents will know exactly who is reaching out to them. This is true even if they opt-in to take a survey themselves that they’ve found by visiting, say, your social media, (as opposed to you reaching out to them directly). They’ll still know the brand they’re working with.

Thus, it’s even more important to have your survey framed in the best possible light, as your respondents know it’s tied to your business.

A survey incentive will do just this. In addition, incentives are some of the biggest motivators to complete a survey or do virtually anything else. Even if it is a small incentive, it is useful in that respondents know that they’re somehow being rewarded for their participation.

Essentially, they’ll have something that's in it for them rather than simply knowing they’re helping others.

Remember, survey incentives can be monetary and nonmonetary alike.

6. Be mindful when you ask sensitive questions.

Some survey campaigns will deal with sensitive topics, the kind that not everyone is comfortable with sharing.

Most people aren’t willing to discuss private information, especially if it deals with heavy subject matters such as death or loss.

Many people will be hesitant to answer questions that simply mention the aspects of their lives they intend to never share. Thus, be careful in how you ask sensitive questions. Sometimes, you may want to omit them altogether.

Sensitive questions can include questions on the following topics: religion, politics, self-identification, unpopular ideas, illegal or frowned upon behaviors, as well as questions that seem to require socially acceptable responses.

As such, be as reassuring as possible and don’t make judgmental implications or use such a tone.

7. Assure respondents of their privacy.

Whether it’s in the call-out, the introductory page, the title or the thank you page, make sure you guarantee respondents their privacy.

It’s ideal to make this known as early in the survey as possible, because no matter how light-hearted or inconsequential the topic of the survey may seem, users will still want to remain anonymous.

As such, your respondents will be less hesitant to take your survey if they know their privacy is assured right off the bat.

Don’t forget to make your surveys adhere to digital privacy laws!

This cannot be overstated, especially when it comes to the GDPR. Although the GDPR is an EU regulation, it can also apply to the United States and other countries in certain conditions. The GDPR applies to the US when you’re dealing with European netizens.

This means U.S. businesses, nonprofits and universities that target or track the online activity of users in the EU must comply with the GDPR. There are various ways to do this, such as asking for respondent consent, including an opt-out button and using end-to-end encryption.

9. Ensure that all questions are straightforward.

Avoid confusion or questions that involve a lot of deep thought.

That’s why it’s critical to use simple and easy-to-understand language.

This will differ, of course, based on the target audience of the survey. Some audiences understand scientific jargon, some understand technical language, and some are perfectly familiar with literary language.

But not everyone is. Most people don’t care to put much thought into a survey, especially one they are taking for free. Thus, avoid any ambiguity in your questions and assure that they make sense to your target market.

If you need help constructing your survey questions, we offer various survey templates, which you can use for inspiration and edit them to your liking.

10. Make your survey lively and retain interest throughout the process.

This is where you get to flex your creative muscles.

There is no hard and fast rule to make your surveys interesting. However, we suggest doing the following to spruce your surveys up:

Ask questions that are not just relevant, but presented in a creative way, one that’s not common.
Depending on the subject matter, use humor to draw out laughter.
Add text that prompts respondents to continue the surveys. Ex: Ready to take a dive into [a cool ad, keys news of the day, the world of…]
Use multimedia elements, such as images, GIFs, videos and other files so that your survey isn’t as text-heavy and offers something pleasing to the eye.
Use a variety of questions (Matrix questions, stars and emoji scales, bipolar questions, drill-down questions and more. This too provides visual appeal and wards off boredom.

As you can see, there are various ways you can make your survey lively and retain respondents’ interest. With a strong online survey question, it should be easy to do all of the above and more.

Remember to mix and match questions. And yes, surveys can be visually appealing too.

11. Provide access to results.

This does not have to be immediate and likely won’t be. After all, you’ll need to have collected all required survey responses before you even have any results to share.

Thus, provide them with the option of having the results sent to them. This can be in the form of a link or asking respondents to share an email address.

The latter is even more useful, in that it gives you access to your customers’ emails. But bear in mind that not everyone will be willing to share their emails.

As such, it’s useful to have a webpage with survey results that you can create before you’ve gathered data. This page should mention that it will be updated with the results, once they are ready.

Doing so will not simply make your survey more appealing to take part in, but it will also build brand trust, a must to retain customers and attract new ones. When it comes to the latter, it’s important to build credibility, as that is key to the onset of your relationship with new customers.

Attracting Everyone in Your Target Market

When it comes to getting people to take your survey, there are various approaches you can take. From simplifying language, to offering different question formats, this can all be executed well with a strong online survey platform.

A valuable survey provider will grant you all the functionalities necessary to build a good survey, one that draws in interest and gets respondents to complete the survey.

Our survey software allows you to establish a thorough survey data collection, one you can customize to your liking, view however you please and organize to the max.

In addition, with our vast array of question types, you can create any survey type to aid any research campaign.

Researchers can reap a wide breadth of information on their respondents and access a wide pool of insights in their survey results dashboard.

In addition, there’s the advanced skip logic feature, which routes respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on their previous answers.

Needless to say, our survey platform is optimized for both the respondent and the researcher. Thus, everybody wins!

With a research platform offering all of these capabilities, you’ll be able to easily lure and retain a survey target audience, one that will work through your surveys until they’re complete.

by lorraine

Excelling with a Fiverr Market Research Alternative

For small businesses, market research can seem expensive.

Sometimes they turn to low-cost freelancers on Fiverr or Upwork to conduct their market research because they don’t know how easy and cheap it is to do it themselves with Pollfish.

Fiverr market research is yet another research option many businesses can leverage. Given that you can choose from a variety of market research techniques, it’s easy to see why Fiverr may appear to be an appealing platform for conducting such research.

After all, more and more businesses have been using this platform, owing to its 57% year-over-year increase in 2021 alone.

It achieved a 20.59% annual growth spend in 2022, while maintaining over 3 million active buyers. Many more use the site as casual patrons, along with its high concentration of freelancers.

While these statistics and facts prove the popularity of the website, how useful is it for conducting market research? — an absolute must for understanding and catering to your customers.

Is there a better way to conduct market research and study your target market?

We’re here to show you that there is.

This article delves into how Pollfish is an excellent Fiverr market research alternative, comparing it with the Fiverr platform and explaining how it provides a superior experience.

Understanding Fiverr Market Research

Before diving into the market research factor, it’s important to first understand what exactly is the Fiverr platform and what it does for businesses.

What is Fiverr?

Like Amazon, Fiverr is a global online marketplace, except rather than selling physical goods, this platform puts freelancers on offer for various services. Businesses and various other entities use it to find and connect with freelancers for a variety of digital services.

Although businesses of all sizes can use Fiverr, it is especially pertinent for businesses that seek to outsource workers, rather than hiring full-time staff.

Thus, businesses hire freelancers on this platform to perform what’s known as "micro-tasks," which are assignments that are relatively small and quick. These assignments are usually one-off tasks which are called "gigs" on the site.

These gigs can range from $5 to $995 per task, depending on the pricing that the freelancers set for their work.

The platform offers a wide range of digital gigs, including odd tasks (think silly videos) and professional services that require specific skills. The latter is where market research comes into the mix.

What is Fiverr Market Research?

Fiverr market research is composed of a breadth of users offering their research services to buyers on the Fiverr platform. These users are the freelancers that put their services on offer on this website.

The platform offers both primary and secondary market research. The latter involves conducting internet research, which does not contain the full picture when it comes to studying your target market (more on this in the following section).

While secondary research can be extremely limiting on Fiverr, the platform also hosts primary market research services. The following sections allow you to get fully acquainted with Fiverr market research. You’ll learn of its capabilities and drawbacks.

These are both important to consider before we compare them with Pollfish, a Fiverr market research alternative.

Secondary Market Research on Fiverr

The platform offers the following secondary market research services:

General Online Research
Domain Name Research
Consultation
Full Package Qual & Quant

Although secondary research is important to conduct, and it’s often used in the early stages of survey studies, it is far from complete. You would need to conduct both primary and secondary research to paint a full picture of your target market, or a specific campaign geared towards it.

Let’s first examine secondary research on this platform. It includes sections under its top navigation of market research for different services (the bulleted list above).

General Online Research

The first is called General Online Research. This can be useful but has various deficiencies.

That’s because the scope of the online research, that is, the sources that the freelancers use, is entirely up to the freelancers. That means, they may use sources that bear little relevance to your research needs; they also may include outdated information.

Or they lack the specific sources you seek for your secondary research needs, such as a particular report or trade association literature, etc.

You won’t know this, as it is the freelancers that are conducting this research.

Domain Name Research

Another secondary market research section is called Domain Name Research. This provides researchers with lists of expired domain names. This can be useful if you are starting a new business ( or a new subsidiary of a business) and seek a strong domain name before you build its website.

It’s also of use for website name brainstorming and can be used as a supporting document for your business plan.

As such, it is not very useful for established businesses — or any that have already built out their websites/ have a domain name.

Consultation

The Consultation services section provides a miscellaneous swath of research-related offerings.

This includes guidance, expertise-sharing and advice, especially in relation to a specific industry.

It also includes services such as corporate strategy, ideas for product and business growth, trend forecasting, mood boards and more.

In essence, this is another section for gathering secondary market research, but more randomized and broader in services and their accompanying documents.

It can be useful if you’re looking for something specific in your secondary research sources and findings.

Full Package Qual & Quant

This section offers “quality and quantitative market data.”

It is yet another section with mostly secondary research services. Unlike the General Online Research and Consultation sections, this section has a greater focus on reports.

It also promises to provide both qualitative and quantitative market research, as its name suggests.

Many of the services in this section are focused on specific industries. You’ll need to look at each service provided to see all the details.

You’ll find services that offer competitive analyses, market segmentation, a SWOT analysis and more.

Some of the services claim to include reports on an industry at large, providing more of a market analysis offering than market research.

The Setbacks of Secondary Fiverr Market Research

No research platform is absolutely foolproof, but there are weaknesses and drawbacks specific to the Fiverr market research approach. First, we’ll explore the weaknesses of Fiverr’s secondary research offerings.

The biggest setback with this kind of research is that while the freelancers may offer a wide range of services, they don’t provide the source of the research — not for the secondary research, that is. (In the Fiverr primary market research section, freelancers may mention the source of their survey provider).

This means that you won’t know any of the following:

Where the data is coming from
Who and what entities created the information
How old the data is and when a study was performed
If there have been any changes since the research was performed
Who the respondents are (no info on specific targeting)
If there was specific targeting of respondents at all
How the research was performed

Because of all these setbacks, as a researcher (or a business owner, marketer or other employee), you won’t have any way to validate the research.

Many of the freelancers claim to have years of market research experience. This may be true, but again, most freelancers do not explain or provide any information on how, where or who they derive their research from.

As such, it may be better to conduct the secondary research yourself, or have an employee do so. With this route, at least you’ll know where and what is providing you with data.

Your employees aren’t going to lie to you, especially if you ask them to provide the source of all the secondary research they’ve conducted.

Primary Market Research on Fiverr

The platform offers the following primary market research solutions:

Surveys
Interviews and focus groups

And now, we get to the heart of market research, or virtually any type of research: primary research. This is important, as it allows you to be in more control of your study, as you get to come up with the specific research subject, along with the questions.

Primary research on this platform also includes sections under the top navigation of the different services offered (the bulleted list above).

Let’s see exactly what primary research is like on this platform.

Surveys

Freelancers offer a variety of survey-based tasks. Unlike the secondary market research services, the services here almost always reference a source. In the case of surveys, freelancers usually mention the kinds of survey providers they use upfront.

However, even in this section, some freelancers don’t mention the source of their surveys; this means, they don’t mention the survey platform that the freelancers use, nor any info on where the surveys are coming from.

The survey platforms that freelancers on Fiverr use often include a mix of the following:

Google Forms
Jotform
Typeform
SurveyMonkey

This list isn’t comprehensive, as freelancers are free to use whichever survey platform they choose.

Interviews and Focus Groups

In this section, freelancers offer focus groups and interviews, the latter of which is conducted through different methods.

When it comes to focus groups, freelancers most often offer moderating a focus group. Although this section is called Interviews and Focus Groups, interviews make up most of the services on offer.

The interviews are varied: some consist of user discovery interviews, some services offer interview protocols, some claim to find your ideal customers, while others offer interviews via survey panels.

In regards to the panels, some freelancers claim they have a specific number of panelists that will take part in an interview.

The Setbacks of Primary Fiverr Market Research

As with secondary research services sold on this platform, the primary research offerings also have certain drawbacks. These prove that this platform may not be the best for your market research needs.

The first major setback is that in both surveys and the focus groups/interviews sections, not all surveys mention the source of the research. This is less common in the surveys section, as most gigs mention the survey platforms the freelancers use.

However, many if not most of the services in the focus groups/ interviews section, once again, do not provide the specific source or method of gathering the research.

For example, a freelancer may tout the fact that they have a research panel and even provide a specific number of panelists that it comprises. However, they don’t mention any other key facts, such as: where the panelists are from, how they put together the panel, what product and/or firm they used (also called syndicated research) to form the panel and more.

Thus, you are once again not privy to where your research is coming from, who it's coming from, who its participants are and how it is being conducted. Because of this, you won’t be able to cite your sources properly, should you choose to create content assets from your research.

Another major setback in using Fiverr for survey research is that it essentially deprives you of many of the benefits of conducting a survey yourself.

By using Fiverr for survey research, you’re giving up and missing out on the following benefits:

Advanced, hyper-granular audience targeting
Setting quotas and multiple audiences
Forming specific questions and question logic
Do any editing of your questionnaire
Being able to pause, stop or edit your survey as it is running (collecting responses)
Multiple methods of survey distribution that you can choose
A wide variety of survey templates
Customer support on technical issues and more

Another major weakness of survey research on this platform is that none of the survey platforms that the freelancers use measure up to Pollfish. That’s because Pollfish has higher customer satisfaction ratings and greater capabilities (more on this in the next section).

Most importantly, by outsourcing survey research to Fiverr freelancers, you’re giving up your rights to your own data, as the freelancers will be the primary owners.

When you conduct primary research yourself (as you should, hence its name), you have full control over your research project and will get to wield all the benefits of conducting primary research.

Pollfish: A Fiverr Market Research Alternative

And now, let’s discuss a strong alternative to Fiverr market research. And yes, we’re talking about our own market research platform, Pollfish.

Objectively speaking, Pollfish offers a greater amount of functionalities, as it is a kind of polling software that consistently gets updated with new features and advanced capabilities. As such, you can rest assured that you're getting one of the most if not the most robust survey platforms on the market.

And we’re not the only ones lauding them.

You’ll find plenty of review sites that posit us as potent survey providers. For example, Pollfish has higher customer satisfaction ratings than Google Forms and Alchemer.

Granular Survey Audience Targeting

Pollfish also has a unique value in its wide swath of survey functionalities. We particularly excel at granular respondent targeting and question types.

That’s because when setting up your audience on our platform, you can qualify respondents from a wide variety of demographic, location and psychographic criteria, as well as set up screener questions to qualify or disqualify respondents.

As such, you can target anyone around the world. Pollfish doesn’t charge more to conduct global market research. That means researching customers abroad has never been easier.

Wide Variety of Question Types & Predefined Answers

There’s also a wide variety of question types you can choose to customize your survey to the fullest and keep respondents engaged throughout, thereby lowering survey attrition.

You’ll find the following question types and many more on the Pollfish platform that you can choose as you please:

Single-selection questions
Multiple selection questions
Open-ended questions
Slider questions
Matrix tables
Drill down questions
Rating stars

In addition, Pollfish makes it easy to set up your questionnaire, as we run the gamut when it comes to predefined answers.

Rather than entering rows of multiple-choice answers, you can just choose a predefined answer set, such as ineffective-effective, disagree-agree, satisfied-dissatisfied and many more.

Large Batch of (Growing) Survey Templates

Don’t fret if you ever get survey writer’s blog.

Or, perhaps, you need some additional ideas. Not to worry.

That’s because, at Pollfish, we offer a growing list of survey templates for various usages. Some even go beyond business purposes and include templates for educational facilities, such as our University Instructor Evaluation Template.

We currently offer 19 survey templates on a wide variety of topics, including customer satisfaction, employee engagement, brand awareness, advertising testing and much more.

You can take full control by editing the templated questionnaires to your liking. You can thus add or delete questions or answers. It’s easy and grants you full sway over your market research surveys and projects at large.

After all, questions form the crux of the surveys.

Potent Market Research Capabilities

Pollfish is not just a survey platform; it provides a large scope of market research capabilities. That’s because you’ll find more than just survey creation on this platform.

You’ll find the following market research methods on the Pollfish platform:

A/B testing
1. We offer Monadic A/B testing and sequential A/B testing.
2. Monadic A/B testing enables respondents to choose their preferences for one concept or product they randomly get out of the many that the researcher wants to test and compare, instead of being exposed to two or more at once.
3. Focusing participants’ attention on just one concept at a time grants researchers a deep dive into making product, pricing and various marketing decisions.
4. Monadic testing is typically used for gathering independent findings for each stimulus — a contrast to comparison testing, where several stimuli are tested side-by-side.
5. Sequential A/B testing uses concepts with a specific distribution: all possible combinations are derived from the concepts that are selected to be shown.
6. This way, each concept is evenly distributed and presented to the respondents at equal times at the first position.
7. This reduces biases that may occur from serving a concept always at the first position of a combination.
Conjoint Analysis
1. A conjoint analysis allows researchers to measure the value that consumers place on various aspects of a product or service.
2. It shows how your customers perceive the makeup of your offerings.
3. As such, it unveils the distinct advantages and shortcomings of your product/service features.
4. This method breaks a product or service down by its various components, called attributes and levels. Researchers can test different combinations of the components to identify consumer preferences.
5. You’ll get a rich appraisal of how your customers rate the unique features of a product, rather than passing a general judgment on it.
Maxdiff Analysis
1. Also called the Best-Worst Scale, a Maxdiff Analysis is a mechanism for prioritizing new product ideas and tailoring them to consumer preferences.
2. This is a kind of conjoint analysis that helps brands determine the value that their customers place on different parts and features of a product.
3. Respondents choose the best and the worst option from a given set of options, which relate to a product and its feature(s).
4. Respondents rate a list of items by selecting only two of them — the complete opposite of each other, labeling one as the best of the list and one as the worst.
5. This technique helps to identify what your target market values and what it despises.
The Van Westendorp Pricing Model
1. The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter is a pricing model that provides data for decision-making in regards to consumer price preferences.
2. The meter is a visualization in the form of a graph, with ratings on price and value, presented as responses to survey questions that focus on the prices of different products and services.
3. It is used to determine customers’ willingness to pay a range of prices.
4. It allows businesses of different sizes and industries to set the proper prices of their offerings, to be in line with customer expectations.
5. It helps conclude the prices that your target market deems acceptable, too high, too low and optimal.

Random Device Engagement (RDE) and Organic Sampling

Pollfish operates via random organic sampling in our primary survey distribution model.

The other method prompts specific people to take your surveys.

With the second method, respondents can be customers whose contact information you already have. It also can involve random users but is sent to specific digital channels. This is done via our Distribution link feature.

Organic sampling allows you to reach non-professional survey takers and gain a far larger reach than you otherwise would have.

This is because organic sampling involves what’s known as Random Device Engagement (RDE), a kind of polling that relies on advertising networks and other digital portals on devices, to engage random people where they are, voluntarily.

Additionally, in Random Device Engagement, the surveys are delivered to users in their natural digital environments, capturing them where they prefer to be. They were not pre-recruited and thus do not face the same pressures and conditioning that they would in a research panel.

What’s also incredibly important and beneficial is that our survey distribution network reaches over 250 million customers worldwide. Thus, there will always be the respondents whom you seek and that fit your niche.

Our extensive reach involves a network of 140,000 app partners, in over 160 countries.

We don’t charge extra for conducting global surveys.

Only the Finest Quality Data with Quality Checks

Given that we reach over 250 million consumers across the wild wild west, known as the Internet, we understand the possible effects on the quality of the survey data in such an environment.

In an effort to curb survey bias, survey fraud and other below-par data, Pollfish performs a wide range of technical quality checks to ensure you obtain the highest quality of data.

Our quality checks vary as a means to be as comprehensive as possible so that you reap only the most quality pool of data.

Our quality checks include the following:

Respondent verification
Bot detection
VPN disqualification
Disqualification of gibberish answers
Carrier consistency
A strong adherence to targeting
Same IP Participation
1. This checks if a survey has been completed before within a certain time from the same IP address of the respondent’s device.
Trap questions, red herring questions, quality questions
Reset ID Check
1. This check occurs when the responder answered the same survey previously, but with a different device to avoid the same respondent from partaking more than once.
Other verifications
1. These involve checking ahead for duplicated IDs via IP or MAC addresses, Google Advertising and mobile device identifiers.

All of these checks are critical to providing quality data for your survey campaigns. But what else do quality checks do?

These checks are a mechanism for bypassing survey fraud, a major issue for many survey platforms.

Survey fraud, also called market research fraud, is the adverse phenomenon that occurs when survey respondents submit fraudulent or bogus responses. This can occur accidentally, such as when responders undergo survey fatigue, or purposefully.

In any case, it is critical to use a research platform that avoids this issue and grants you accurate, bias-free data. This may appear to be a challenging demand, as no platform is perfect and fraudsters will always find a way to do their dirty deeds.

However, it is possible to get around this problem with a robust system of quality checks.

Luckily, at Pollfish, we offer such a system, along with 24/7 customer support, so that if you ever come across any stumbling blocks or just need some help running your surveys, our support team is always here to help.

24/7 customer support means that you can contact our agents regardless of where you are in the world and thus, which time zone you’re in.

Full Command and Ownership of the Data

Since Pollfish is a DIY market research platform, you don’t have to rely on any party outside of your organization to carry out your market research. Instead, you have full control over the direction of your study, its respondent qualifications, timing, questions and most importantly: the resultant data.

As such, you are at liberty to conduct your research in any way you please, at your own pace. If you decide to pause your survey for whatever reason, you are free to do so. You can also edit them before relaunching them.

You can customize your surveys as you please and you’ll never be left in the dark on any step in the process: it’s your dashboard and your data.

Since it's your data, you will dictate how you use it and where or not you share it. If you do decide to share it, it will frame your business as a thought leader in your niche.

That’s because you’ll be providing your own, unique and original insights, rather than recycling information that is already available on the internet.

Reeling in the Best Research Campaigns

This article is not comprehensive when it comes to explaining why Pollfish is the best Fiverr market research alternative. We can go on and on.

You yourself will notice how our platform excels over others, by simply visiting our website, or checking out the Pollfish blog or our rich market research resources section.

We want to conclude by stating that a valuable survey provider will grant you all the functionalities necessary to build a valuable survey, one that draws in interest and gets respondents to complete it.

Our survey software allows you to establish a thorough survey data collection, one you can customize as you see fit, view however you please and organize to the maximum.

In addition, with our vast array of question types, you can create any survey type to aid any research campaign.

Researchers can reap a wide breadth of information on their respondents and access a wide pool of insights in their survey results dashboard.

In addition, there’s the advanced skip logic feature, which routes respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on their previous answers.

As such, the Pollfish survey platform is optimized for both the respondent and the researcher.

With a research platform offering all of these capabilities, it’s clear that Pollfish is the best Fiverr market research alternative for all your needs.

by lorraine

What to Expect and Look for in Survey Data Collection

There’s far more involved in survey data collection than you may think. That’s because this data contains factors that go beyond mere questions and geographies.

But all survey data collection methods and their resultant data aren’t the same. They will differ based on the method you use to gather the data, along with your market research service provider.

There are lots of ways to go about this and thus, various types of survey data you can collect, depending on your approach.

93.4% of respondents will not give out their personal details in the surveys they take. While this may sound concerning, there are solutions to get around this, which, in turn, allows you to gain key details without violating respondents’ privacy.

This article delves into survey data collection, including its importance, popular collection methods and the actual data you should expect and look for in your research campaigns.

Understanding Survey Data Collection

Survey data collection refers to the practice of collecting various information about your target population through the use of survey research.

Survey data collection involves obtaining various kind of information from your target group: their opinions, sentiments, behaviors, needs, aversions and knowledge. In market research specifically, this data largely comes from your customers, or your target market — those most likely to buy from your business.

Survey data is defined as the resultant data you gather from a sample of respondents that took a survey. This respondent pool is called a survey sample. This data must exist as a fair representation of the opinions and perceptions of your audience.

This is possible to achieve if you use the proper method of collecting survey data. There are different methods and approaches to gathering this data.

You should opt for the method and provider that grants you the most timely and accurate results. Price and provider capabilities are also important considerations.

Survey data collection ought to be as comprehensive as possible about your target audience and also must be specific to the topics related to your research campaign.

Survey data collection can be applied in a vast number of industries and applications. It can be used within the following industries and for different purposes:

Scientific research
- This includes performing experimental research.
- It also involves all fields of medicine.
Politics and political polling
Sports and sporting events
Socioeconomic research
Demographics research
- This includes censuses.
Real estate research

This list is not exhaustive, as collecting survey data is useful for anyone who seeks answers from a target audience. However, survey data is most commonly used in market research and its various sub-practices.

Thus, any business can and should conduct market research and this is feasible using the market research survey and the myriads of other surveys.

Methods of Survey Data Collection

There are many methods used for survey data collection and its various ensuing analyses. Consider the efficacy and drawbacks of each method before you decide on the best for your research needs.

Some researchers prefer using multiple sources to gather their data collection.

While doing so may help you research certain demographics (e.g., elderly respondents who are more prone to responding to snail mail), it is best to opt for one robust survey data collection method.

That’s because survey data should not just be exhaustive, it should also be well-organized so you can draw accurate conclusions without referring to various sources and trying to make sense of them all.

Data collection involves the following methods:

In-person interviews
1. Businesses and other organizations can conduct in-person interviews with their target market to obtain the data they need. This often involves a pre-agreement to partake.
Telephone surveys
1. Like other surveys, telephone interviews can be conducted with the masses, but they have a major vulnerability: most people don’t want to spend their time taking a phone survey.
2. These are also not ideal as they don’t provide as much anonymity as do other surveys, as the respondents’ voices, names and contact information is known.
Mailed questionnaires
1. These take the most time out of any method to get results.
2. However, older demographics who spend less time digitally may be optimal for this kind of survey method.
Focus groups
1. A focus group is a small group of people selected based on shared characteristics to take part in a group discussion for market research.
Syndicated research
1. This kind of survey research involves relying on a research firm that conducts the surveys.
2. The firm owns all the data and sells it to interested parties.
Online surveys
1. These can take many forms and have different methods of deployment.
2. For example, in the Random Device Engagement (RDE) method, surveys are sent to a massive network of over 250 million+ websites and apps, prompting users that exist in their natural digital environments to take the surveys.
3. You can also send surveys to specific people and through specific digital channels, like your homepage, landing pages, emails, newsletters, etc. This requires using the Distribution link feature.

The Importance of Survey Data Collection

A collection of survey data is extremely important for businesses that want to not merely survive, but remain competitive.

That’s because the data from surveys is used to form the basis of informed decision-making in different contexts. Everything from product development to product satisfaction, consumer needs and post-serivce sentiments about your brand can be studied through surveys.

This means you form a survey data collection at any part of your customers’ customer buying journey.

Whether your customers are just getting acquainted with your brand, have just made a purchase or are longtime buyers, gathering survey data will fortify all of your marketing and business campaigns.

As such, survey data won’t merely inform you on post-campaign activities. For example, you can conduct surveys for more than just asking respondents about their thoughts about a already launched product or an advertising campaign that’s already in effect.

Instead, you can survey your target market on their needs, problems and frustrations before you innovate your products or come up with an ad or marketing campaign. You can also survey them on current products in your industry and discover their weaknesses, allowing you to better innovate your own.

Because of this, a strong survey data collection will help you form or consolidate a marketing strategy or product idea. This essentially means that surveys help you throughout any stage of your business and, to reiterate, any point in the customer lifecycle.

Thus, surveys thoroughly serve your market research needs and can be used as the final (or beginning) touch to using any sort of behavioral data analytics. In fact, some of the most reknown companies of the world like Apple adn Verizon rely on a survey data collection.

Having a solid survey data collection is also important when it comes to making decisions — particularly, looking for answers. That’s why your collection should be well-organized. No matter how adept of a researcher you are, surely you won’t want to parse through mountains of onorganized or loosely related data.

That’s why we suggest forming your data collection via one source. This source should allow you to target anyone and gain granular insights.

A potent online survey platform can provide this, as it uses technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to remove low-quality data, provide a broad range of survey and question types and can fully customize your surveys.

The Actual Data You Should Expect and Look for

Collecting survey data is far more than just creating questionnaires and gathering them. Instead, there is particular data you ought to expect from your survey provider.

Here is what you should keep your eyes peeled for to create a well-built survey data collection:

The ability to opt-in only the respondents you need for your survey campaign.
1. This should include a screening section, allowing you to ask screening questions and target respondents as granularly as possible.
Set quotas so that your survey gets the number of respondents you desire.
1. This is not just for preferential reasons, but to reduce biases like the margin of error and sampling errors from your research.
Create multiple audiences per survey or survey campaign.
1. Some providers, like Pollfish, allow you to create separate audiences in one survey and achieve any targeting combination you like.
2. This feature allows researchers to create quotas within quotas and set multiple conditions for granular targeting.
Having various types of survey questions on hand to enrich your campaign and data collection.
Have a wide range of survey templates as you prepare a survey.
Route respondents to certain questions based on their answer to a previous question.
1. This can be done via advanced skip logic, which automatically directs respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on a previous answer tey provided.
The ability to filter data.
1. This includes data at the questionnaire level and results section (a dashboard in a survey platform).
2. On the survey results dashboard, you should be able to filter data based on demographic and location information. For example, you should be able to filter data by gender, age, location, and any other targetting you set to understand how each demographic group answers your questions.
Various ways to view and organize your data:
1. The ability to see and analyze your survey data as you please is crucial to you and your team, as no one works in the same way.
2. As such, you should be able to view your survey data collection in various formats:
  1. Charts
  2. Graphs
  3. Tables
3. This involves having access to different visualizations of both the questionnaire (survey answer) data and the respondent data.
Various access points to your data via exports:
1. PDF: A visual document that can easily be shared with stakeholders and saved as reference docs. A Pollfish PDF is laid out similarly to a PowerPoint presentation.
2. Excel Spreadsheet: Recognizable to most businesses, with a Pollfish spreadsheet export, researchers have full access to all Pollfish survey results. They can add pivot tables, graphs and get deeper insights.
3. Crosstabs Report: Crosstabs are a matrix-style data visualization format for analyzing data. This report allows researchers to look into individual insights and organize their data in different ways, opening different consumer insights that wouldn’t be readily available from the initial results.
4. SPSS Report: This allows you to add your Pollfish results to various kinds of complex data analyses. Ideal for combining varied, complex data sets, researchers use it to make connections, find correlations and graph results from various data exports at once.
5. CSV file: A Comma Separated Values file is a plain text file containing a list of data. This kind of file is often used to exchange data between different applications.
Pause, stop and change your survey while it is still running.
1. This can only be done via a digital means, such as an online survey platform.
2. You should be able to alter your survey to get only the most relevant and necessary information.
3. A strong platform will allow you to pause and alter your survey before it reaches all quotas. This way, you can modify the targeting or the questionnaire itself.

Build the Best Market Research Campaigns

The Pollfish team is constantly making upgrades to our online survey platform to provide you with a comprehensive market research experience.

Our survey software allows you to establish a thorough survey data collection, one you can customize to your liking, view however you please and organize to the max.

In addition, with our vast array of question types, you can create any survey type to aid any research campaign.

Our survey platform is optimized for both the respondent and the researcher. Thus, it is a win for all parties involved.

Researchers can reap a wide breadth of information on their respondents and access a wide pool of insights in their survey results dashboard.

In addition, there’s the advanced skip logic feature, which routes respondents to relevant follow-up questions based on their previous answers.

With a research platform containing all of these capabilities, you’ll constantly have a strong survey data collection on hand, there for you for all your business ventures.

by lorraine

How to Avoid Order Cancellation with Market Research

All businesses contend with the negative outcome of order cancellation, some at far higher rates than others.

Aside from canceling orders, some orders that go through wind up being canceled post-purchase, as 30% of all products ordered online are returned, compared to 8.89% in brick-and-mortar stores.

Although it is expected for customers to return products, incurring this rate of cancellation is worrisome, as it represents almost a third of lost revenue.

Unfortunately, order cancellation doesn’t merely occur within products, as it also rears its head in subscriptions. Nearly 40% of subscribers of any service type cancel in less than three months; over half of all subscribers cancel within six.

You can find the root cause of order cancellation, which almost always includes some customer dissatisfaction by conducting market research.

This article lays out order cancellation in its various contexts, its causes, how to reduce it through best practices and market research.

Understanding the Contexts of Order Cancellation

As the introduction briefly touched upon, order cancellation doesn’t simply occur among product purchases. Instead, order cancellation refers to the abandonment of all products and services that your target market was in the process of buying, along with the reversal of already purchased products and services.

In the case of the latter scenario, customers cancel an order they’ve already purchased or received, or in some cases, have already used for a certain amount of time, which often is determined by a business’ return window.

Customers cancel their orders for many reasons. The root source of order cancellation is customer dissatisfaction, as the number one reason customers cancel an order is due to changing their minds. Customers can change their minds for several reasons and due to various situations.

The key is to discover the causes of unhappiness among customers when interacting with your business, whether it stems from the products/services themselves, communication issues with your customer service team, or a lack of catering to other consumer preferences.

To avoid order cancellation, you ought to fully understand the contexts and causes of it.

The Causes of Order Cancellation

As aforementioned, order cancellation often occurs when customers experience dissatisfaction and unhappiness. These sentiments do not merely occur after customers have used a product or service, as various factors affect customer satisfaction and customer expectations.

The following addresses common causes behind canceled orders, whether they are products, subscriptions, or other services:

Longer Deliveries
1. 38% of online shoppers will cancel their order if the delivery will take longer than a week.
2. This rate declines when fewer days are required to wait for the delivery.
3. For example, 16% of customers will drop their order if the delivery takes 6-7 days; 15% will cancel their order if the delivery takes 4-5 days and 8% will abandon their order if delivery arrives in 3 days or fewer.
No mention of a delivery date
1. 24% of shoppers would cancel their order if the business they’re patronizing provides no delivery date.
2. Customers don’t appreciate being kept in the dark about when they’ll receive their purchases.
Unexpected Shipping costs
1. 25% of online shoppers will cancel their order due to unexpected shipping costs added to the order just before the checkout.
2. In this respect, transparency is key, especially since it involves prices.
High Shipping costs
1. 63% of shoppers abandon their orders due to excessive shipping costs.
2. When customers abandon their carts, they often turn to competitors who offer the same or similar products or services, but at lower or no-cost shipping.
Over-purchasing
1. 30% of shoppers deliberately over-purchase and subsequently return unwanted items.
2. 19% of shoppers order multiple versions of the same item, which they use to decide once they’re delivered.
3. Certain customer personas are prone to purchase more due to income, lifestyle or simply to later compare products.
Loss of interest or need
1. This can occur among products or subscriptions, whether they are of the physical or digital kind.
2. An example of the former includes subscriptions to items, such as hobby items (arts and crafts, toiletries, etc.) and food deliveries.
3. An example of the latter can include SaaS subscriptions or content websites, such as news sites, trade publications, statistics sites and market research publications.

How to Avoid Order Cancellation with Market Research

Despite the many sources of order cancellation, you can reduce it by conducting market research. This kind of consumer research allows businesses to understand their target market in greater depth.

By understanding all your customers’ wants, needs, interests, aversions and customer behavior, you’ll be in sync with your customers, allowing you to properly meet all of their needs. After all, the most ideal way to innovate, market and communicate with your customers is by knowing what they want and expect in the first place.

There are various market research techniques that you can apply to understand your customers in greater detail. This involves researching their preferences surrounding checkout, shipping and all other topics that involve their placement of an order, whether it is digital or physical.

Given that many cancellations occur before a customer receives or uses their purchases, many of these topics involve your customers’ UX, as they include the usability of placing an order and navigating your website and other digital properties. As such, you can conduct research on this aspect with the UX survey by using the proper UX survey questions.

To better understand how easy or difficult it is for your customers to interact with your company at any touchpoint, you should use the CES survey, aka the Customer Effort Score survey. This survey involves using its titular score, which measures the degree or amount of effort that a customer puts into a certain interaction with a business.

To reduce order cancellation, use it to study your customers’ at any touchpoint that involves an order, whether it leads up to it, or occurs post-purchase. As such, you can ask questions that inquire into ordering something online, over the phone, changing an order, dealing with customer service and more.

Given that most order cancellations — especially those that involve customers changing their minds — involve customer satisfaction, particularly a lack thereof, you should conduct the customer satisfaction survey and its varieties.

This survey allows you to dig deep into various aspects of the customer experience in which customers can rate their satisfaction, as well as sound off on what went amiss, what they liked and didn’t like, along with the possibility of providing a recommendation. As for the latter, the best bet is to send an NPS survey (Net Promoter Score Survey), which uses a scale of 1-10, in which customers rate the likeness of their recommending the company to others.

There are various other kinds of surveys you can use to reduce order cancellation, such as the customer experience survey, which addresses various aspects of the CX. You can use it to zoom in on purchases, orders and customer buying behavior.

When to Apply Surveys to Reduce Order Cancellation

Don’t forget to survey various customers at various points in their customer buying journey to retain them. When you retain customers, you’ll in turn build loyalty and stamp out customer attrition, therefore lowering the chances of order cancellation.

The following lists when to survey customers and which points in the customer journey you should pay particular attention to minimize cancellations:

Customers who have saved items in their cart or wish list.
Customers who have abandoned their cart.
Customers who subscribed to a newsletter or other email messaging service.
Those who have interacted with your UI or other digital properties.
Those who have interacted with customer service, whether in-store, over email, phone, or chat.
Those who made a recent purchase.
Those who went back to change anything in their order, whether it is its quantity, a new item, change of address, delivery method, etc.
Customers who are waiting on a purchase delivery.
Customers who have canceled orders before they’ve arrived or have used them (includes both physical and digital subscriptions).
Customers who have received and used their purchases for some time (ranging from a week to months, depending on their purchase).

Best Practices to Use in the CX to Stamp Out Order Cancellation

Aside from carrying out market research, you should follow several best practices to minimize order cancellations. These will allow you to build loyalty by retaining your customers and therefore, the order that they make.

The following list displays the best practices to use to curb order cancellation. It addresses the causes of canceled orders that were highlighted in the previous section. Once you use these practices hand-in-hand with market research, you’ll be on the right track to fostering retention.

Avoid long delivery times.
1. Offer quicker delivery options, such as two-day shipping, next-day and even same-day delivery if possible.
2. This will give customers various delivery choices which they can choose based on their spending power and the urgency of their purchase.
3. Today’s customers have grown accustomed to rapid delivery options in e-commerce.
4. If a business cannot meet that demand, customers will turn elsewhere to buy from a business that can.
Always include delivery dates.
1. Never leave customers wondering when they’ll receive their items or subscriptions.
2. Creating uncertainty will only taint their perception and trust in your business.
3. If you’re not sure because if the delivery service you use isn’t certain either, offer an estimated delivery time.
Be upfront with all shipping and delivery costs.
1. Aside from hiding the date of delivery, omitting shipping and delivery costs is a major mistake.
2. Customers want to be in the know of how much they’ll be charged.
3. Whether you offer a few, a single, or various delivery options, always include all the fees involved.
Keep shipping and handling costs low.
1. Consider the fact that most customers are investing in your products and services. As such, they will want to keep shipping fees to a minimum.
2. Additionally, customers have become accustomed to free or discounted shipping fees that many companies offer.
Offer as many details of each product and service to avoid over-purchasing.
1. Avoid customers who purposely over-purchase for comparisons by providing detailed product and service copy.
2. Never allow your end-users to wonder how one item differs from another.
3. Accentuate all the benefits of each product and service.
Constantly survey your target market to understand their needs and interests better.
1. This will allow you to innovate appropriately and use data for decision-making properly.
2. Study your customers by breaking them down into distinct segments via market segmentation.
3. Study them further by analyzing and catering specifically to customer personas.
Personalize the customer experience.
1. Build marketing personalization campaigns, as this is a known method for retaining customers.
2. No one likes to be marketed to; instead, personalize the CX via market research efforts.
Implement various customer retention strategies.
1. Retention is far more important than customer acquisition, as it costs less and reaps more value.
2. Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%.
3. Conduct the customer retention survey to understand customers better and retain them.

Retaining All Your Business

You’ll need to work towards retaining your customers to minimize order cancellation significantly. Conducting market research plays a major role in both matters, as it allows you to informatively serve your customers by understanding all of their wants, needs, dislikes and sentiments.

Each customer segment is different, both in terms of its demographic and psychographic makeup. To hyper-target your customers, both as a means of researching them and satisfying them, you’ll need to use a strong market research platform.

Use an online survey platform that makes it easy to create various consumer surveys. It should offer random device engagement (RDE) sampling to reach customers in their natural digital environments, instead of pre-recruiting them. This removes social pressures in their responses, cutting back on survey bias.

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

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

Additionally, it should also allow you to survey anyone. As such, you’ll need a platform with a reach to millions of consumers, along with one that offers the Distribution Link feature. This feature will allow you to send your survey to specific customers, such as those who placed a recent order, instead of only deploying them across a vast network.

With an online survey platform with all of these capabilities, you’ll be able to reduce order cancellations and retain all of your customers.

by lorraine

Share Your Survey on Digital Spaces

Advertise a Survey through Advertising Platforms

Perform A/B Testing to Advertise a Survey

Offer Survey Incentives

Bring Referral and Influencer Marketing to the Mix

Rely on a Survey Platform to Attract Your Survey Audience

Getting the Right Audience for Your Survey

Let's get real

Company

Company

How it works

How it works

Features

Features

Researchers

Researchers

Respondents

Respondents

Publishers

Publishers

Follow

Follow

Accomplishing All Your Research Goals with Self-Service Market Research

Understanding Self-Service Market Research

Self-Service Vs Syndicated Market Research

Self-Service Market Research in Full Depth

The Importance of Self-Service Market Research

What You Can Do with Self-Service Market Research

Making the Most of Your Research Projects

What to Look for In All Kinds of Market Research Companies

The Importance of Market Research Companies

The Two Main Types of Market Research Companies

What to Look for In Market Research Companies

Global Market Research

Organic Sampling and Random Device Engagement

A Variety of Question Types, Templates and Functions

Customer Support

A Multitude of Market Research Functionalities

Satisfying All Your Research Endeavors

Everything You Can Do with Market Research Online Surveys

Understanding Market Research Online Surveys

What You Can Do with a Market Research Online Survey Platform

The Importance of Market Research Online Surveys

What You Can Study with Market Research Online Surveys

Specific Market Research Endeavors to Study with Market Research Online Surveys

What You Can Set Up with Market Research Online Surveys

What Research Capabilities Online Market Research Surveys Include

Conducting Thorough Market Research

Understanding Offline Market Research and Determining if You Need It

Understanding Offline Market Research

The Main Types and Methods of Offline Market Research

In-Person Surveys

Snail-Mail Surveys

Phone Surveys

Focus Groups

Observations

Live Events

The Pros and Cons of Offline Market Research

The Advantages:

The Disadvantages:

Offline Vs Online Market Research: The Verdict

Aiding All Your Market Research Projects

How to Advertise a Survey to Maximize Campaign Awareness Via 6 Key Methods

How to Advertise a Survey

Share Your Survey on Digital Spaces

Where and How to Advertise Your Surveys Across Digital Spaces

Advertise a Survey through Advertising Platforms

Perform A/B Testing to Advertise a Survey

Offer Survey Incentives

Bring Referral and Influencer Marketing to the Mix

<img decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-88914 aligncenter" src="https://resources.pollfish.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/How-to-Advertise-a-Survey-to-Maximize-Campaign-Awareness-Via-6-Key-Methods_In-Post-Image-3-1024x512.png" alt="referral marketing" width="840" height="420" />

Referral marketing

Influencer Marketing

Partner Marketing

Rely on a Survey Platform to Attract Your Survey Audience

Organic Sampling and Random Device Engagement (RDE)

Getting the Right Audience for Your Survey

Understanding and Using a Survey Distribution Service for all Your Research Needs

<img decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-88900 size-full" src="https://resources.pollfish.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Understanding-and-Using-a-Survey-Distribution-Service-for-all-Your-Research-Needs_Hero.png" alt="survey distribution service" width="3321" height="1873" />

Understanding What a Survey Distribution Service Is

The Importance of a Survey Distribution Service

Main Types of a Survey Distribution Service

The Main Types of Survey Distribution Service Providers

The Main Types of Survey Distribution Methods

Easing through all Your Research Campaigns

The Guide on How to Get People to Take Your Survey

Two Major Ways to Deploy Surveys Digitally

How to Get People to Take Your Survey

1. Keep your questionnaires short.

2. Lure respondents in with a strong introduction.

3. Make your respondents feel special.

4. Keep your questions highly relevant.

5. Offer survey incentives.

6. Be mindful when you ask sensitive questions.

7. Assure respondents of their privacy.

9. Ensure that all questions are straightforward.

10. Make your survey lively and retain interest throughout the process.

11. Provide access to results.

Attracting Everyone in Your Target Market

Excelling with a Fiverr Market Research Alternative

Understanding Fiverr Market Research

What is Fiverr?