Frontline Perspectives

There’s an old saying that says you should never “assume” anything because it makes an “@$$ out of you and me.” While trite, this is particularly important for us marketing folks to remember. The best copy or the most powerful visuals won’t take the place of really understanding what your target market’s pain points are, and offering the solutions they need. And the best way to know this is to ask.

Many companies think they know what their customers want, and they design products, implement promotions and determine sales targets based on these “assumptions.” Then they wonder why things don’t go as planned? Why don’t customers seem to care that we  have added seven new features, that they can get 4 for the price of 3, or that the company just launched a really “cool” new product in September? I’ll argue that many of these product and marketing decisions were made in a vacuum, without customer (or target market) input.

We do hundreds of market surveys for clients each year: e-mail, telemarketing, direct mail and online banner ads being the most common. All methods can be successful but determining the best method depends on your target (market and title) and available list options. Sometimes we should survey current customers, and other times we need to talk to key contacts in the target markets.

Determining what information you want to get, and designing the questions and range of answers, will take some careful consideration. Are you looking for input on product features, pain points or your customer service? Do you want to gather more information about their demographics (titles, size of company, etc.)? Thinking through what information you need in order to help your team make decisions is extremely important when designing your survey.

A few other tips: Make questions short, and provide things like radio buttons and check boxes for answers to help the user complete the survey easily. Provide a status bar so the user knows where they are in the survey and how many more questions there are to answer. Keep your survey to less than 20 questions (in fact, keep it close to 10). Provide an offer to help encourage participation: a gift card or even a copy of the survey results will produce a higher response rate. And the most important tip: Conduct these surveys regularly to make sure you stay on top of market shifts.

While a survey may take some additional time for gathering the data, the resulting information provides powerful insight into what really matters to your customers and prospects. Having real data, and not just a gut feeling, will contribute to more successful marketing programs and a stronger top and bottom line.