Surveying your community is a wonderful way to know exactly what your ideal audience wants, needs and (most importantly) what they will pay for.
We often ask our ideal clients if they would pay for XYZ product/service.
Most people, because they’re kind or want to be helpful, will say Yes. But when it’s time to pull out their pocketbooks the brakes screech to a halt.
If you’re taking the time to survey. Make it good!
Question to First Ask Yourself?
Please don’t just slap together some random questions and shoot out a survey. People are asked to be surveyed more regularly than in the past and if you’re able to capture their attention and to get them to fill it out – make sure the data you receive will be incredibly useful to you.
One of the most important things to ask is what problem/pain/challenge are they’re facing that they need a solution for.
What is your biggest challenge today?
If you ask them what they want or what they desire, you often don’t get what people will actually pay for.
But if you ask them what’s going on in their life that you can provide a solution for – that will give you some great fodder to work with.
If your product is an experience, beauty or something aspiration then ask them more about what types of experiences or items are missing from their lives. Or how they WANT to feel.
Finding out what they want that may be missing from their lives or what they want more of in their life will provide you with useful information.
Rules:
1 | Tell them what to expect
In the email/post requesting people to fill out a survey make sure you tell them exactly how much time it will take to fill it out. People won’t click if they assume it could take more than 10 minutes. Worse yet, if they open up the survey and it says, you’re 1 minute into a 30 minute survey. Click X, Goodbye. So…
2 | Keep it brief
If you’re thoughtful with the type of questions you plan to ask you can really extract a lot of info with just a handful of questions?
Ask yourself: “Do I really need to know how old they are?” or “Do I really need to know if they’re male or female?” Some questions may not be as important… save your respondents the click!
3 | Make it easy for them to fill it out.
I’ve taken surveys where I had to read the question three times to understand how to answer.
“Which of the following questions would you not want to be unsubscribed to. Please rank.” Wait, what? Huh?
Another trip up is: “Rank all the following from most desirable to least desirable” and then in the next question you ask “Rank the following from least interested to most interested.”
Don’t make your respondents have to stop and figure out what you’re asking for.
And please don’t use double-negatives and keep rankings clear.
4 | Doesn’t have to be pretty
Remember surveys are surveys. Don’t spend time trying to pretty it up with fancy fonts, colors or images. People don’t expect surveys to be fancy and you don’t want to spend your precious time fussing around.
Tools:
Survey Monkey (free is great and keeps you short with your survey since it only allows a certain amount of questions before you have to buy the paid version.)
Survey Gizmo
Timing:
A Survey Monkey study found the highest survey open and click-through rates occurred on Monday, Friday and Sunday respectively. Good thing to keep in mind when you’re scheduling.
Reminders:
Don’t just send it out once and hope for the best. Make sure you send it out and then a few reminders including a note that it will be closed on a certain date.
Multiple Channels:
Depending on your intention, you could send it to your social media followers as well.
I suggest duplicating the survey so that you can track where people come from. The people on your email list may be very different from the people you follow on different social media platforms and it’s good to know where they come from. (Alternatively you could also include this question on your survey itself as a question.)
Incentives:
To incentivize your audience or not, that is the question?
Many people say that you shouldn’t provide gifts to get people to fill out your surveys because it skews the results towards people who want freebies.
If you’d like to provide an offer… one idea is to provide a discount for the solution that you will create based on what the survey tells you. That way they feel apart of creating your next product or service and they get a nice discount as well.
Make sure you tie the discount/freebie to the potential problem you’re solving.
Don’t forget: Include a field with their name and email so you can follow up with them for the offer.
Introduction:
Always thank your respondents on the front end.
Ask them to be as honest and frank as possible because you really want to understand how to better serve your audience.
Questions:
Generally I find that it’s best to ask the easy, not-too-invasive questions first to get people warmed up.
Then you can move into your more delicate questions.
Tip:
Use your Yes/No questions early on.
Then mix up the questions
It’s great to mix up the types of questions you ask throughout the survey.
Some yes/no, some multiple choice or ranking.
Always include an open-ended question section. I find that this section where people can share their thoughts, concerns, ideas is where the real gems of information come from.
Demographics
These can be multiple choice questions.
You often don’t need to ask every demographic question possible. Again be thoughtful and intentional.
What do you really want to glean from the respondents?
For the sensitive questions always give the option, “prefer not to answer”
Age range: 19-24, 25-35, 35-45, 46+ (make sure that people don’t fit in two ranges. For example giving: 19-24, 24-35, 35-45).
Gender: How do you identify? M/F (be sensitive to this question depending on audience)
Race
Home ownership
Location (urban, suburbs, rural)
Income ranges
Full/part time/self/no employment
Married/Single/Divorced/Widowed
Kids
Education level
People living in your home
Pets
Activity Level
Exercise (daily, 3x a week, monthly, never)
Intensity of workouts
The list can go on and on and on!
Multiple Choice
Getting more specific and to the heart of what you want to learn …
Examples:
Which of the following best describes you?
Still dreaming in scheming mode, nothing firm yet
A product-based business (my own products)
A product-based business (affiliate sales)
A service-based business
How many years in business?
0-3
3-5
5-10
10+
Could also be how many years…
Practicing ___ ? Studying ___? Being involved with ____
You might even ask:
Of the following options which would you pay for?
10 hours of one-to-one spiritual guidance/month
25 minute massage/weekly
1/2 day at a spa
none of the above
Open-Ended Questions:
This is where you’ll receive the juicy nuggets of information. These particular questions are some of the best to ask to get out the pain points your customers and clients are suffering with. That way you can better serve them with your product or service.
What is the most difficult aspect of _____?
What is your single biggest challenge you’re facing today?
What one thing, if solved, would make the biggest difference in your life?
What is keeping you up at night?
Have you tried other solutions? (This could be a yes/no button or open-ended depending on how much information you want to obtain).
Examples:
Wrap Up
Optional: At the end you could add a statement that asks them if they’d be interested in discussing the survey further or if they’d be open to being contacted by you to answer a couple of follow up questions. Be sure to indicate that you won’t be selling them anything.
If you want to add that, spell out exactly what they can expect and add a survey fields for their name and email address (or phone number).
At the end, don’t forget to thank them for taking the time
Test it Out
- Take the test yourself and see if the questions make sense or if you’re missing anything.
- Ask a friend to test it out too.
- Double check if any questions could have useful follow up questions.
Example
Would you pay for a solution for XYZ?
Yes
No
If you answered no, please explain why?
(open ended comment box)
Having them answer Yes or No is ok but you may want to know why they wouldn’t pay for a solution.
Customer Surveys
Customer surveys are a very different beast.
These surveys are for the folks who have already purchased from you and have tested out the goods for themselves.
They can be a bit more meaty than the surveys we just talked about.
Here are some great questions to ask your customers in terms of feedback based on their experience:
“Where exactly did you first hear about us?”
“How best would you describe us to a friend?”
“How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?”
“Are you satisfied with what you received? Delighted, surprised, disappointed?
“If we weren’t available, what would you miss most about us?”
“What are we missing the mark on?”
“Please list the top 3 things that almost stopped you from choosing us.”
“Please list the top 3 things that convince you to choose us.”
“What could we do better in the future?”
Additional Resources:
Ask by Ryan Levesque
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