Survey Marketing -Increase Your Sales By Using Surveys And Giveaways And Gain Valuable Knowledge About Your Target Market

Survey-Marketing

As business owners and internet marketers, we often struggle with the challenge to fulfill a need in a market. Wherever there is a desperate buyer, there is an opportunity to make a sale. That is, if the right offer is presented.Survey marketing can help you find the perfect offer.

The problem is that you can’t really know what your potential buyer is looking for. You know the problem they have, but you don’t know which solution they would choose if they are presented with a number of different solutions.

You can measure your conversion rate, tweak your sales copy, add a few bonuses and so on… anything to increase the conversion and get more sales. But what if you’re just optimizing the marketing of a solution that isn’t the best option for the buyer to start with? Wouldn’t it be better to optimize the value of your offer?

Let me give you an example.

Imagine that you are trying to sell a course where you help people to lose weight by using a low calorie diet.  You’ve researched your target market and defined it as “overweight men with a passion for food looking for a way to get slim”. Simply put: gourmands.

You probably already see the mismatch here. In theory, the product does solve the problem they have, going from overweight to slim. But, as a gourmand, they are not interested to sacrifice their passion for food. There is a conflict of interest.

Now, imagine that you go back to that same target market and promote another product which is an exercise program put together by a chef who managed to lose 40kg’s while managing a French restaurant. Think about all the wine, the sauces, the goose livers that this chef has consumed… all while following a simple program, increase his daily physical activity and as a result… lost weight.

Obviously this is much more appealing to your target market. However, there is another problem. The problem of not knowing what kind of solution your buyers are actually looking for.

Survey Marketing Helps You Find The Precise Type Of Solution Your Buyers Are Actually Looking For

You don’t want to waste your time and money trying out ten different products for your market. That would be like running a “hit or miss” operation. Even some of the biggest corporations of today have products that completely miss its target and ends up as case studies of marketing disasters in the history books. This is where survey marketing comes in.

So what should you do? Well, it’s easier than you think it is. You simply have to ask your potential buyers about the problem they have and how they would like to solve that problem. Every buyer is unique and will have a different story to tell. Some will say they’re on a budget and want a low cost solution, others will say they are willing to make a huge effort as long as the results are long lasting.

Basically, when you start asking your buyers how they want to solve their problems… you will not only gain in-depth knowledge about your market, you will also get the material for creating dozens of new, targeted products. This is called survey marketing.

The more you know about your potential buyers, the more products you can create and the more sales each product will make. As a business owner and internet marketer, that sounds like the “holy grail of marketing”.

The More You Know About Your Potential Buyers, The More Products You Can Create And The More Sales Each Product Will Make

Well, there is a science behind market research. You need to know what questions to ask, how to find the people to answer it and so on. And of course, you need a tool.

One of the quickest ways to get started with in depth market research is to use surveys. Google has a free survey tool built in to their Google Docs, the Forms. You just create a new form inside your Google Docs account and you can start creating the questions for your survey. They support a wide range of types of questions such as multiple choice, scale, and basic text and so on.

The surveys created in Google Docs are not only easy to make, they look good to the user also. The user interface is clean and simple and it will remind the visitor about required field.

Now all you need to do is to get people to take your survey. You can send people to it by posting a link on Facebook, in your email signature or embed it on your blog. One of the best ways to get people to take a survey is to offer something for free, just like you would do on a squeeze page. One problem with the surveys in Google Docs is that they don’t support custom ThankYou-pages.

Fortunately, there is a plugin for WordPress that takes care of that for you. It both embeds the survey on your WordPress blog and lets you redirect visitors to any ThankYou-page of your choice once the survey is completed by the visitor.

You can find more information, including a demo video, about the GForm Control plugin and some other smart plugins as well over at PluginsForPros.com. Remember, using surveys is a great way to gain new, in-depth knowledge about your target market and ultimately increase your sales.

Manfred Ekblad, Bandung, Indonesia
16/1 2012