5.05 – Pay For Market Research The Smart Way
Surveying your customers is straightforward: create a survey and email it to your customer database. However, surveying look-alike audiences or prospects with whom you’ve never engaged can be more complex and expensive. Thankfully, there are affordable options for reaching prospects and getting useful feedback, which are discussed in this lesson.
Getting Feedback from Prospects Without Purchasing Expensive Lists
Acquiring a list of prospects to survey is a significant challenge. Purchasing lists can lead to spamming and are often costly. An effective solution is to add questions to a survey conducted by an industry publication or research firm.
Survey or research panels allow you to pose questions to a group of people who reflect your target audience and have agreed to take surveys regularly. This approach provides affordable insights from potential customers you wouldn’t likely reach otherwise, and for a fraction of the cost of identifying and reaching them individually.
You can engage research panels multiple times and typically collect responses quickly. Participants in these panels are often compensated with cash, gift cards, or other rewards.
According to GreenBook, a data collection company, leading providers of research panels include Logit, CatalystMR, and OvationMR. You can also explore options at Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey. Browse the latest lists of survey panels through a search engine or sites like SurveyPolice, which ranks polls based on user feedback.
Most survey platforms offer monthly or annual subscriptions, and some provide limited access for free. Research panels give you access to national and global consumers, helping you determine where and when to expand.
If your website gets a good number of daily visitors, consider placing questions on your homepage, one at a time. Your CRM platform can link to surveys on your website to collect data similarly to how it collects and stores information from Contact Us form submissions. A question with general appeal might boost visitor engagement while generating useful data for your marketing decisions.
Don’t rely solely on online research. Make a point of talking to people face-to-face, in groups and individually. This habit encourages input from salespeople, employees, customers, and even strangers. Valuable suggestions can lead to new ideas.
Using Low-Cost and Free Ways to Build Knowledge
As a marketer, continuously gathering information is crucial. Assuming you know all there is to know about your market and customers can lead to losing your competitive edge and declining profits. An ongoing research and learning plan helps you stay up-to-date on all aspects of your market, brand, products, customers, and the opportunities and threats you face.
Some key insights your research should help you understand include:
- Who wants what?
- Which markets and consumer segments are projected to grow and which are not?
- What societal, political, and other influences drive choice among various customer segments?
- How do different generations react to different messages, themes, and promises?
- What functional alternatives exist to your offers, and how do they impact your goals?
- How do your target consumers view your competitors, and which of their promises and distinctions threaten your brand?
Without this information, businesses may stagnate by working hard but not smart. The following sections cover various low-cost and free methods to boost your marketing intelligence.
Observing Your Customers
Observation is a valuable yet often underrated method of gathering customer insights. Offline, observe customers at your place of business to see how they interact with products, displays, and pricing. Online, use social listening tools to observe customer attitudes and behaviours. These tools monitor what customers say, pin, and post online, providing reports about prevalent attitudes and opinions about your brand.
A useful site for this purpose is Mention, which allows you to search a topic and monitor interest. The site gives sentiment scores based on positive, neutral, and negative mentions, and calculates percentages for the passion and strength of mentions and comments about the topic.
Search for reviews of social listening platforms, read customer feedback on review sites, and pay attention to reviews and comments about service, information value, and pricing. Many of these services are offered through SaaS business models, requiring a commitment for a designated period. Before signing long-term contracts, look for services that offer free trials.
Whether you’re in the B2B or B2C sector, observing customers often in various settings can yield valuable insights. Integrating observation with other efforts and technologies can provide immediate new information and long-term understanding of customer values.
Doing Competitive Research
Knowing your competitors’ offerings and values is critical for attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. Monitor their websites and social media pages to see how they position themselves and compare it to your positioning. Create a grid to track competitors’ emotional and tangible values, referring to it as you craft your messaging and promotions.
Track competitors’ sales, promotions, and special offers to time yours accordingly. Monitor customer feedback on competitors’ offerings and position your brand as the better alternative.
Gather information on competitors’ marketing programs, especially their advertising channels. Tools like Pathmatics allow you to see where competitors are advertising and analyse your ad campaigns. Identifying and monitoring advertising campaigns of larger competitors can help spot new trends and opportunities.
Harnessing the Power of One-Question Surveys
One reason customers don’t complete surveys is their length. In a world of quick communication, brevity is effective. One-question surveys can yield high response rates. Determine the most critical information you need and ask only that question.
Use emails, websites, and social media assets to deliver one-question surveys. Asking one question at a time can allow for more frequent surveys. Questions with general appeal can boost engagement and generate useful data.
Ask questions that help understand customer perceptions and values. For example, if your company focuses on environmental issues, ask about values influencing purchase decisions.
Establishing a Trend Report
Set up a trend report to track changes in buying patterns, competitive moves, and other market changes. Email salespeople, distributors, customer service staff, repair staff, or friendly customers monthly to ask for important trends they notice.
Include tracking of larger competitors’ activities, as they may set trends affecting your industry. Monitor media coverage and read competitors’ press releases to stay informed about their actions.
Track changes on competitors’ websites using services like LXRMarketplace, Semrush, or WatchMyCompetitor. These tools also monitor social media mentions of competitors compared to your brand.
Probing Data Files
Regularly review your data files and models to stay updated on market trends and changes in customer segments. Identify trends in demographics, interests, and lifestyle to better align your resources.
Membership in industry associations can provide access to valuable market and consumer data. Reviewing data from verifiable research studies can guide future planning.
Testing Your Marketing Materials
Before launching publicly, get affordable insights by sending your email campaign or social media post to a handful of customers for feedback. Ask what intrigued them or made them ignore the ad. Fix identified issues for a more effective campaign launch.
Most CRM systems offer A/B testing features. A/B testing involves creating two versions of an ad with one or two variable changes, then running them simultaneously to see which performs better. Testing subject lines and email copy helps determine what appeals most to your audience.
Interviewing Lost Customers
Losing customers can be an opportunity to learn and improve. Following are ways to discover areas for improvement:
- Instead of just providing an opt-out button, ask why customers are opting out of your emails.
- When customers abandon a shopping cart, send an email to find out why.
- Stay in touch with lapsed customers to understand why they stopped engaging.
Understanding why customers leave can help rekindle relationships and increase loyalty.
Monitoring Your Web Analytics
Regularly check your web analytics for insights beyond traffic counts and sources. Monitor attributes like conversion rates, repeat visitors, lead quality, Contact Us form submissions, and revenue from web promotions. These metrics tell the story of your online marketing success and areas for improvement.
Keeping up with customer opinions and continuously asking questions is crucial for maintaining relevance and effectiveness in marketing.
