Page 132 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

62 RESEARCH YOUR
CUSTOMERS

Knowing your customers is basic to planning to meet their
needs. Yet many companies rely on gut instinct, occasional
chats with customers, or unreliable and non-specific advice from
trade magazines.

Running a survey is often regarded as far too difficult to undertake.
Analyzing survey responses involves all kinds of mathematical
and statistical expertise, for example: in fact, designing the actual
questions is a much harder task, since there are too many ways in
which questions can lead a respondent to the desired response. Even
selecting respondents can be problematical—many people refuse
to participate, for various reasons, but the researcher has to assume
that those who refuse are the same in every respect as those who
participate, despite the fact that we already know they differ in one
important respect: they don’t do surveys!

There is, however, a solution at hand.

The idea

Survey Monkey is an online survey design system. The system
allows its users to set up a survey using pre-prepared question
templates, choosing from more than 20 different kinds of question.
Surveys are conducted entirely online, so respondents experience
the minimum inconvenience and can participate at any time they
find convenient.

Simple surveys can be conducted for free, but larger or more complex
surveys need to be paid for (at reasonable rates). Survey Monkey will

100 GREAT MARKETING IDEAS • 123