Mastering the Different Types of Consumer Surveys

Consumer surveys are critical tools for sharpening your market research efforts, but they go far beyond that. They also help inform your advertising, marketing, product and sales strategies — they’re that powerful.

However, choosing the right survey for your needs may prove to be difficult, as there aren’t merely many different insights your brand may target, but there are also so many survey types to choose from.

We’ve covered the three main types of survey research methods. These methods are mainly centered on the frequency of survey distribution, while some of them include thematically-oriented sub-types.

Luckily for researchers, marketers and business owners, there is a multitude of survey types and subtypes. Some of these survey types fall within the aforesaid three main survey research methods, while others can be categorized as methods of quantitative or qualitative research.

Let’s get familiar with the various types of surveys for consumer research and other avenues of research.

Brand Awareness Surveys

This type of survey is generally the first you should consider conducting before you undertake any other survey types about your customers.

It is most ideal to run a brand awareness survey when you’re well-acquainted with your target market. However, you can conduct this survey even before you’re fully aware of who makes up your target market.

That is because you want to ascertain who knows about your brand; sometimes this can be consumers who narrowly fit within your target audience and sometimes this can be those who are not potential customers.

The latter is important in that although those consumers may not be interested in your brand, they may pass it along to someone who is, since they know about it.

Band awareness, nonetheless, is so much more than whether customers know about your brand. It includes:

• Awareness of what your brand stands for
• What the company is trying to achieve (beyond just selling something)
• The meaning behind your company name or logo
• How you differ from your competitors

As such, this survey type doesn’t merely measure, as it largely seeks to market your brand and everything it has to offer (including style and experiences).

Here are a few considerations to concentrate on for your brand awareness survey:

1. Understanding whether your consumers acknowledge your company when they see it.
2. Gauging how well your target market can recall your business by way of memory.
3. Discovering how loyal your customers are loyal to your brand, especially in times of crisis.
4. Ascertaining what customers associate with your brand.
5. Bringing to light opinions on your logo and branding components.

When you’re in the midst of a marketing campaign and would like to work out how consumers are reacting to it, you can do so with this kind of survey. Here’s precisely what it can help you:

• Identify which strategies and investments are most effective and which are under-performing.
• Confirm if the opinions of your business are in accordance with how you intend on positioning your brand.
• Pinpoint sentiments and associations about your brand that can help uncover more business opportunities.
• See how your offering or experiences can improve.

Here are some useful questions to ask in brand awareness surveys:

1. When you think of this product, what brand comes to mind?
2. Which of the following have you tried? (Multiple selections)
3. When was the last time you used this product category?
4. How many of the brands have you heard of? (Select all that apply)
5. When you think of this product, what brand comes to mind?

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

The most commonly used types of surveys, customer satisfaction surveys, like their name implies, gauge customer satisfaction.

Businesses can use these surveys to measure how content their customers are about a number of their experiences. These experiences include a business’s:

• Product
• Service
• Online shopping
• UX
• Events

Since the participants’ responses are direct ratings of a range of offerings, businesses can make educated decisions on how to change their offerings or their overall CX. The responses can also show businesses which aspects of their business are profitable, so the businesses can, in turn, double down on those.

Customer satisfaction surveys are generally short and rely on several visual measurement tools as ratings. These include:

• Stars and other shapes to determine how good or bad an experience was
• Numbered scales
• Color-coded scales

Like other surveys, customer satisfaction surveys rely on questionnaires (if the above units weren’t adequate for research).

Understanding how pleased your customers are is crucial for innovating your product, service and customer experience (CX). It can also determine the following:

1. Whether or not a consumer intends to buy from you and is loyal to your business.
2. Negative feelings towards your product, service, employees or experience.
3. Knowing and making sure that customers are satisfied will reduce churn and increase customer lifetime value.
4. Efforts to retain happy customers.
5. Who to ask for (ex on social media) for good public reviews or testimonials.

Here are some examples of customer satisfaction questions to use in the questionnaire portion of your consumer survey:

1. How would you rate your shopping/web/service experience?
2. How likely are you to buy from this brand or this type of brand again?
3. Was your issue resolved today?
4. Did you find what you were looking for?
5. How do you generally feel about the service of [insert industry or specific brand]?
6. How would you rate the quality of [product, service, customer service representative experience]?
7. Did you have an overall positive or negative experience with [the service, company, etc]?

Event Evaluation Surveys

This type of survey relies on gaining a more specific understanding of a customer experience, which, in this case, is an event. This survey type is essential to use if your business hosts events, whether they’re grand-openings, marketing events, webinars, etc.

These surveys are also crucial to understanding your target market, even if you don’t host or take part in any events. This is because your customers’ opinions towards certain events can help you tweak your offering or your messaging more to their liking.

It can also allow you to see how your customer base spends their time and money, which is critical to market research.

Here are a few pointers on how to improve your event and business in general via event evaluation surveys:

1. Ensure your survey captures honest and in-the-moment perceptions from the attendees.
2. Keep these surveys short, as many people won’t want to answer a survey after participating in an event.
3. Find a way to tie the event with your product or service.
4. Put your customers’ needs in the questions.
5. Allow customers to discover your brand if you didn’t host/take part in the event.

As for the specific questions to ask in an event evaluation survey, we’re narrowed down a few effective ones:

1. What motivated you to come to this event?
2. What were your favorite aspects of the event?
3. What were your least favorite aspects of the event?
4. How likely are you to recommend this event to a friend or colleague?
5. Did the event answer your questions and concerns? (can be open-ended)
6. What did you think of the
   in the event?
7. Will you consider checking out [brands in the event or a similar brand not in the event]?

Lead Generation Surveys

The purpose of these surveys falls more within the confines of gathering contact information from your target market. They can also help reveal the types of people who make up your target market, as they deal with questions about your consumers’ job roles and preferences.

This survey method is a great way to both learn and reel in potential customers. As such, this type of survey should be used early on in your research. But it is not meant to be rigidly conducted at this point.

You can use it throughout your marketing and market research campaigns to build up a list of quality prospects.

Since the object behind lead generation surveys is to gain leads via their contact info, there are a few things to take into consideration.

• Use only a few form fields, as too many tend to be unfavorable among users, especially if they are C-level executives who deal with their company’s finances.
• The most important fields are names, job roles and email addresses, especially in the case of B2B businesses.
• An opt-in button to get their permission to be contacted through their email address.
• Questions that ask for their preferences within your industry about your offering
• Interactive content (GIFs, quizzes, etc.) to set your brand apart.

As for the questions, remember to ask questions that will help your brand determine whether the prospect is an MQL. The following lists a few question examples for lead generation surveys:

1. What is your role in the company?
2. Are you in charge of your team’s budget?
3. How do you intend on growing your business?[or gaining customers, questions that deal with growth/scaling]
4. Would you consider buying this [ex: software]  to improve your revenue and overall business goals?
5. How do you stay up-to-date on industry trends?

Job Satisfaction Survey

This type is an example of a survey delving into a specific topic or theme to better understand your personas and user base. Since employment is a major factor in the quality of life, it is wise to pick your consumers’ brains on this topic.

In fact, 51% of American workers have reported that they get a sense of identity from their jobs. Since jobs define who the public is, or at least a large percentage of it, your business can stand to create surveys centered on job satisfaction.

After all, participants more satisfied with their line of work and income are more likely to spend.

A job satisfaction survey is similar to an employee satisfaction survey, but offers a much more intimate view. That is because the latter deals with all members of an organization, whereas the former deals with the personal outlook of an employee to measure their satisfaction.

Here are a few questions designed for this survey type:

1. What does your job represent to you personally? (Answers can include: just a way to earn money, a way to be involved in something important, a way to better myself, etc.)
2. How would you rate your satisfaction with the work you do? (Can use a scale)
3. How meaningful is your job to you? (Can include a scale)
4. Do you feel empowered to make purchases?
5. If yes, on what kinds of items? (Answers can include media, travel tickets, products in your niche)

Choosing the Proper Type of Survey

While the above lists several fundamental survey types for your market research campaigns, these are just a drop in the bucket, in terms of quantity. There are various other survey methods, both based on survey research methods and on specific topics.

The true value in surveys comes from their ability to give you full control of the questions, thereby the topics for your consumers to answer. That’s why, before you settle on the types of surveys to use, you should first find a practical and user-friendly survey tool.

This way, you can be sure that you’re gaining the maximum satisfaction in your survey process. Once you find an exceptional survey solution, you can comb through the different survey types and choose the best one for your business.