Page 133 - 100 Great Marketing Ideas (100 Great Ideas)

automatically analyze and collate responses, again all online, so that
results come back very quickly indeed.
All a researcher needs to do is direct respondents to the Survey
Monkey website and log in. This can be done by respondents at
home, or on the company’s premises: in the case of (say) a retail
service such as a fast-food takeaway or a hairdressing salon, the
company could set up a terminal and ask customers to complete the
survey while they are waiting. Surveys can be made engaging and
fun to do.

In practice

• Be careful when writing questions. It may be worth reading a

book on research approaches before setting up your survey—
after all, it’s a bit late to find out it’s wrong after you have run
the survey!

• Always pilot any survey. Let a few people fill in the survey first,

and see what problems come up—ambiguous questions, leading
questions, and questions that are impossible to answer will all be
flagged up by piloting.

• Get the design right and the results will follow.
• Remember that the more respondents you survey, the more

reliable the results—but the higher the cost. Around 200
respondents should be fine for most purposes.

124 • 100 GREAT MARKETING IDEAS