Diving into the Concept Testing Survey for Marketing and Product Development

Using a concept testing survey to inform marketing and product development is like giving your target audience a seat at the table. 

Concept testing refers to the market research practice you should perform early in the marketing and product development process. It helps you find out how your products will resonate with your customers. 

While traditional market research requires respondents to choose from pre-existing criteria, concept testing requires them to provide unique feedback. 

With a concept testing survey, your business can assure that it is putting out products that your customers will be fond of. Use this article as a guide to get started.

Defining a Concept Test Survey

A concept test is a research method wherein your business accrues customer feedback about a new product before it launches. 

A concept test survey, as its name implies, is a survey that utilizes a concept test.

Surveys are tools with questionnaires designed to elicit unique responses from your target audience in reference to your business’s new product or product feature idea.

Concept surveys differ from other surveys, in that they help your business to evaluate concepts before they go to market to understand how your customers will react. The concepts include anything that can be tested for marketing purposes, such as an advertisement, a slogan, imagery, emails, a particular service, and more. 

Surveys act as a safety net for new products, helping your company predict whether they will succeed or fail. 

Why Your Business Needs a Concept Testing Survey 

A concept testing survey is important, as it provides insight into how products will be received. With proper concept testing, your business can avoid investing in concepts that won’t succeed (saving you a lot of money). On the flip side, you can increase investment in concepts where testing predicts success. 

Basically, a good concept testing survey system can help your business save money and resources, while earning money at the same time.

Concept Testing Survey Methods

The first step to a successful concept test is choosing the right method. Here are the most common methods: 

1. Single Concept Evaluation (Monadic testing) – a full evaluation is given on one concept. Participants are made aware of features and prompted to discuss whether they approve or disapprove as their survey response.
2. Multiple Concept Evaluation (Sequential Monadic) – full evaluations are completed for multiple concepts.
3. Concept Selection (Comparative) – Respondents choose their most preferred concept.
4. Concept Selection and Evaluation (Comparative Monadic) – Respondents choose their most preferred concept and provide a full evaluation of that concept.

Each product testing method has its advantages and setbacks. As a business, you should choose the one that best fits your specific needs, based on the concepts you want to test and the results you seek.

You should use survey software to ask questions about your products. Survey software is also helpful in pushing your surveys to your target audience.

The survey questions should include the following:

• What do you like most about this product?
• What do you like least about this product? 
• How likely is it that you’d buy this product?

You can use more specific questions, just make sure they are relevant to your products for the most useful feedback. 

Concept Testing Survey Use Cases

Concept testing can be used at almost every stage of the marketing and product development process. Here are some common use cases:

Logo Testing

A concept testing survey is an asset when conducting branding market research. For example, logo testing is a great way to see how your customers will perceive your business’s new logo. 

You can use concept testing surveys to identify what your logo communicates to customers. Ultimately, logo testing is the best way to discover the logo that best embodies your brand.

Website Design 

Concept testing surveys also come in handy when you redesign a site or launch a new one. Through concept testing, your brand can see how its design concepts will be perceived by a selection of people who will one day interact with your website. This gives you an inside look at how the sample of your target population thinks, guiding their design decisions for the best possible outcome.

Ads, Landing Pages, and Conversions

Split-testing is a popular way to test headers, images, and other website content to see which resonates most with an audience. Also called A/B testing, split testing is a random experiment where two versions of a piece of content are shown to your target audience. Whether customers see version A or version B occurs completely at random.

Through analytics, this method helps you identify which ad, landing page, or other pieces of content is most compelling for their audience. You can see which customers convert. 

Concept testing takes this method to the next level by allowing your business to hear from your audience directly. As such, you won’t simply obtain numbers, as concept testing gives you qualitative feedback about the “why” behind the numbers. 

Beyond just validating the numbers, this inside look into the minds of your audience could lead businesses in new directions and even spark new ideas. 

Pricing and Upgrades

Concept testing is also a great way to project how upgrading products and services or altering your pricing system will be perceived. The best way to do this is by using migration path tests to gauge your customers’ initial thoughts and see what features and benefits they crave. Migration path tests compare migrated data with original data. Your business can create upgrade tests to predict how the new product will affect your sales.

Name Testing

Deciding on a name can be rather difficult when forming a new company or creating a new product. The impact a name has on overall success can be paralyzing, especially since it’s usually composed of only a few words. 

Those few words have to convey what your business offers, its benefits, and how your brand should make customers feel to your audience. 

By using concept testing surveys, your business will be able to test potential names and request evaluations on what your customers believe the names convey. This feedback will guide you on the correct track to choosing the perfect name for your business.

Price Testing 

Have you ever considered how your customers feel about the value of your products? You can use concept testing to find out whether or not your customers are satisfied. You can also use price testing when you alter the prices of your products. This is an effective way to find out how your customers will receive any new redesigns or product innovations. 

Package Testing 

Packaging matters more than many a business may think. Do you know what your customers think about your current packaging? Using a concept testing survey for package testing is a strong method to discover if your customers are impressed or irritated by your business’s packaging. 

Messaging

When your business is unsure about how its target audience will perceive your messaging, you can apply a concept testing survey to learn more. This shows them if your messaging resonates with your audience. As such, you can gather how it communicates the value of what you offer. You can use the insights from concept testing to create a style guide that informs future messaging. 

Product and Concept Development

This might be the most obvious use case of them all. A concept testing survey is an essential part of transferring products and concepts from ideas to reality. Concept testing can reveal missing product features as well as features that offer no benefit and can be removed entirely. Your business can discover what its customers think about your new product’s quality and usability. Overall, product concept and usability tests are the ultimate way to make sure every product your business releases is up to par. 

Step Up Your Product Development with Concept Testing Surveys

All businesses should use a concept testing survey at virtually any level of the marketing and product development process. Listening to direct customer feedback gives you an edge over your competition by equipping your business with key information about the specific wants, needs, aversions, and sentiments of your target audience.