Survey Market Research
Surveys are great for uncovering customer attitudes and market trends.
This makes them one of the most common market research methods. Since questions can cover diverse topics and be asked in various formats, surveys provide a versatile tool through which accurate market insights can be gleaned.
Importance of Conducting Surveys
Successful businesses run on data—accurate data. This is a key differentiating factor between thriving and surviving businesses.
With ever-shifting customer demands, surveys have become valuable for their relative simplicity and effectiveness in gathering market data.
Surveys help businesses to:
- Collect data on customer needs, behavior and opinions
- Measure and monitor customer satisfaction
- Evaluate the customer journey
- Collect customer feedback for products/services improvement
- Retain customers by showing them that their views are valued
- Measure brand awareness
- Gain insights on a current or planned product/service
When to Conduct Market Survey
While business owners and executives know the value of data collected through research, when can they consider surveys as the ideal market research tool?
Here are a few situations which businesses can easily handle with the help of surveys:
- There is need for insight into the customer experience
- The information needed is not available from secondary sources
- Accurate information from the market about the brand or products is required
- When researching the market before developing or launching a new product
- Determining which marketing channels and creative assets to use for a campaign
- Seeking to understand your market position in respect to the competition
Key Success Factors in Market Research Surveys
Before setting out to conduct a market survey, it’s important to keep in mind the below success factors.
1. Objective of the Market Survey
The market survey objective is what provides direction on how everything else should be done. As such, the survey should be viewed as a project with a clearly-stated objective, have a team appointed to run it and a project manager overseeing the progress.
Without a clear objective and direction, the survey might turn out to be a waste of time and resources.
2. Scope of the Project
It’s important to determine beforehand the actual or potential scope of the survey. How many people are you looking to survey? How many questions will you ask? Will the survey be done through mail, phone or online?
The answers to these and other important questions will determine how much work will go into the survey as well as the budget needed.
3. Market Survey Duration and Timing
The duration of the survey will be determined by factors such as the complexity of the project, the type of survey, and the available budget.
Different times of the day or days of the week will also impact response rates. Some survey topics can register high response rates in the morning hours while others will be best left for the weekend.
4. Respondents of the Market Survey
Survey respondents are a critical success factor in any market survey project. Getting your survey audience wrong will lead to the wrong information which in turns leads to the wrong business decisions.
There’s need to identify the demographic and psychographic traits of the respondents your survey is targeting. Everything from age, gender, location, income, hobbies, beliefs etc, should be specified.
5. Market Survey Questions
Since the questions asked determine the answers received, it’s important to understand that market research survey questions are central to the survey’s success.
Survey questions should be in the language and style which respondents understand and should not be biased. They should also flow logically and be the type that will elicit insightful responses.
Trends in Market Survey Research
Research teams and agencies are embracing technology and new tactics in the hope of collecting more valuable market insights. Here are some of the top trends in survey research.
1. Shorter and Smarter Surveys
To avoid survey fatigue, surveys are becoming shorter and smarter.
Smart surveys have well-thought-out questions and are administered at strategically-selected locations like the point of experience. With the experience fresh in the customers’ minds, response rates are increased, and honest, meaningful feedback is received.
2. Online Surveys
The world is becoming more and more integrated and businesses are signing up customers from across the globe.
To capture customer feedback and opinions, business are turning to online surveys where they can reach audiences from anywhere in the world. Apart from the convenience offered by the global reach, online surveys also take a short time to conduct and provide insights.
3. Personalization
Surveys are becoming personalized with everything from respondents’ names to the perfect timing—often, right after an experience with a brand.
Personalization also takes the form of asking relevant questions which sound like they’re coming from a real human and not a robot. Customers are also more willing to take surveys which they feel will lead to a real change and positive future experience.
4. Survey Logic
Survey logic is a recent trend that’s making surveys more engaging. It uses logic to determine which questions to present to respondents, further adding to the feel of personalization. Questions are also presented based on previous responses.
Survey logic is gaining traction and will be growing due to increased integration between systems, as well as advances in AI.
Benefits of Market Research Surveys
With the advantages of easy administration and wide reach, surveys provide businesses with valuable data which they can use to realize benefits like:
- Unbiased and data-backed decision making
- Helping marketers create highly-successful lead nurturing campaigns
- Uncovering issues which need to be immediately addressed for customer retention
- A deeper understanding of both prospects and buying customers
- Identifying new trends on which to base strategies for growth
- Market insights which businesses can capitalize on to edge out competition
- Enable the creation of benchmarks against which future results can be compared
- Validation of other research results and measuring change over time
About Survey Market Research
Having successfully conducted market research surveys for top global unicorns, our expertise and experience at SIS International Research helps us provide our clients with valuable and actionable insights.
Choosing from channels such as online surveys, in-depth interviews, focus groups, and more, we can carry out market surveys for your business. We will collect and analyze the data, present you with easy-to-understand market survey reports, share a market entry strategy and point out growth opportunities.