The Benefits of Good Market Research

What are the things you can learn if you conduct effective market research?

Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to target your marketing and fine tune your product or service.

Know your target market - Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? What age group does your product or service appeal to? Who are your potential customers and where do they live?

Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?

Products and services - Do you have the products or services that people want? Are your products and services value for money? How do your company’s services and products compare to those of your competitors? If you have a product can you, do you, should you deliver directly to your customer?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand be it in the form of notices, leaflets or human assistance? Do you make it easy for people to buy from you? Are your staff properly trained, knowledgeable, helpful and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which are the least effective marketing channels?

Do the right people understand your marketing message? Does the marketing material properly represent your brand? Do you use the correct advertising channels? Are you reaching the right people?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.

How to Write Effective Surveys

How to create a survey using Survey Galaxy

Designing surveys is considered easy; but is it? The truth is that writing surveys is easy but writing surveys that will be effective is more difficult. The following twenty tips will help you write more effective surveys.

1. What is the purpose of the survey?

Surveys are conducted for many reasons. By phrasing the questions and structuring the answers surveys can be used in a multitude of ways and for a variety of reasons. When compiling a survey don’t lose sight of the survey’s purpose.

2. Give the survey a good title

The survey title is a golden opportunity to instantly summarise a survey’s objective and grab the attention of invited respondents. Respondents are going to invest time in completing the survey so make them feel that their investment is worthwhile.

3. Keep the survey as short as possible

Every question that is asked should be asked for a reason. Focus on ‘need to know’ questions and minimise ‘nice to know’ information.

4. Use plain English, maintain consistency and avoid jargon, acronyms and asking questions that could result in ambiguous answers

Word the question carefully. There is every chance that if respondents can interpret any question that is not clearly written differently to that intended by the survey’s publisher then any analysis of the survey results may be worthless or at the very least misleading.

5. Avoid questions that are long

Where practical use short sentences. Long questions can lead to a higher level of incidents where respondents abandon a survey.

6. Ask only one question at a time

Avoid confusing the respondent with a question like ‘Do you like football and athletics?’

7. Do not influence the answer

Avoid loading the question. ‘Should irresponsible shop keepers who sell tobacco to children be prosecuted?’ is likely to have no value.

8. Make sure that the selected answer format allows the respondent to answer the question being asked

Ensure that the respondent is able to answer how they really feel or they may be less inclined to complete the survey. As a last resort consider the benefit of including a “Don’t know”, “No comment” or similar response option.

9. While you are compiling your survey consider how the survey results are going to be analysed when the survey is complete

When asking questions that allow for a free text open ended response appreciate that such information is likely to be difficult to score and/or summarised. Consider grouping answers. For example “Indicate your length of service?” - ‘less than 1 year’, ‘between 1 and 4 years’ and ‘more than 4′.

10. Ensure that the questionnaire flows

When asking questions group the questions into clear categories as this makes the task of completing the survey easier for the participants.

11. Target your respondents carefully

In some cases you will want to target a specific group, in others a cross section. If you can’t control who responds to your survey consider including questions/answers that will allow you to filter out respondents who don’t match your target profile.

12. Allow respondents to expand on their answers and/or make comments

By allowing respondents to make additional comments you will increase their satisfaction level and the comments will also give valuable feedback on the specific questions and/or the survey as a whole. Remember though for a large sample collection it may be difficult to analyse free text open ended responses.

13. If you are conducting a confidential survey ensure that your pledge for confidentiality is honoured

If you have guaranteed the respondents that the survey is confidential ensure that the individual data is not to be shared with anyone and the information is not going to be used for any other purpose. Confidentiality must be maintained at all times and any contact information destroyed once the survey has finished.

14. Weigh up the advantages of allowing respondents to be anonymous or identifiable

If your respondents are to be anonymous then you will be unable to follow up or match “pre” or “post” surveys. In some cases allowing people to remain anonymous will however allow people to respond without possible peer pressure.

15. Give careful consideration to the best response format

It is good practice to maintain a consistency in the format used for responses. When designing your survey keep in mind that when analysing the data radio buttons are easier to analyse than check boxes that offer the respondent multiple responses. If a radio response can be used do not use a check box.

16. Inform the respondent as to how much time the survey will take to complete

Respondent drop out can occur if the survey appears to be a stream of never ending questions. It is good practice to give an indication as to how long the survey is likely to take so the respondents can choose the best time to complete the survey.

17. Inform respondents of the survey end date

Encourage respondents to complete the survey as soon as possible but advise respondents as to the survey’s end date so that they have the opportunity to schedule the necessary time.

18. Pilot the survey

Before publishing a live survey publish a small pilot survey to check for questions that are ambiguous or confusing and to ensure that the survey is aesthetically pleasing.

19. Before publishing the survey proof read the survey several times

Check and then check again that a survey is grammatically correct and makes sense. If practical get a colleague to check the survey before you publish, if you are unable to do this then take a break before checking again.

20. Remember to thank the respondent

To complete surveys respondents need to invest their time and they should be thanked at the end of completing the survey or in a follow up letter. You may even want to consider an incentive such as a reward or entry into a prize draw.

For more information please visit Survey Galaxy

Why Aren't You Successful Online Yet? An Honest Look in the Mirror

Are you feeling furious at the frenzy of product launches and feeling it's all just a sham.

Practically every Internet Marketing “guru” and wanna-be keeps talking about how easy it is to make money online. The flashy sales pages showing how much money they’ve made in a day. All they had to do was sit back and let the checks roll in. You’ve heard all the sob stories of rags to riches, and admit it - you believed them all. You took the drug.

You decided to try it for yourself, and now you’re disillusioned and disappointed.  You keep thinking maybe this is all a sham. Except that you're reading this article, which means you have not given up.

Well, perhaps the problem isn’t with the training you’ve bought, or the PLR products you’ve bought…  perhaps the problem lies deeper within.

See if you’ve been making these common mistakes that are keeping you from making money online.

1. You picked the wrong product.

Either you picked a product that’s not selling, or you picked a product you know nothing about.  Both mistakes can almost guarantee that you will fail at making money online.

Solution: Do your market research, and make sure that you pick a product that is easy to sell online, and make sure that there are people who want to buy it.  As well, make sure that you know about it.  Even if guides about Betta Fish are selling like crazy, if you don’t know anything about them, it will show and people will choose to buy information from a more knowledgeable seller.

2. You haven’t really tried out or read the product before selling it to others.

If you don’t know how a product works, you’re never going to be able to sell it well.  And how can you answer questions about the product and solve possible problems if you don’t have a working knowledge of your product?  Your customers will lose faith in you and you’ll lose all chances of repeat business or referral sales.  At worst, you could also get bad press at review sites, making other customers choose to go elsewhere.

Solution: ALWAYS make sure you use the product you will be selling online (or offline). Know how it works, know what’s inside. Even better, come up with follow-up emails about how to use the product based on your own experience. If it’s an ebook or training, give them teasers on a topic, and tell them what page number or video they can learn more.

Does that sound like a lot of work? Maybe a bit of work, but your customers will think you are the real deal, and will learn to trust you, and will value what you have to say. This will lead to customer longevity and repeat buyers.

3. You thought casting a wide net would catch a lot of fish.

You may think that you know all you need to know about making money online, and that you can go straight to overseeing multiple products on a variety of sites.  Now you’ve got a multitude of eggs in too many baskets, and none of them are making any money.

Solution: Stop.  Sit back, and make a plan.  Start out with one or two products.  Make a cohesive business strategy that you can follow step-by-step.Once you finally find a product that is starting to make money, you can use your business plan as a blueprint to add more products and sites to make even more money online.

4. You are dreaming of all that money you're going to make overnight. Or maybe, you’re feeling desperate to get rich, so you’re throwing money at everything that is shiny and new.

It is possible to make money online.  Actually, it is possible to make a lot of money online. Thinking that you’re going to start making that kind of money right away, however, will only set you up for failure.  

Solution: Go back to your business strategy; work at your business and keep working until you start to gather momentum. Just because it’s online doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy or require no effort from you. You have to assume that you’re going to have to work hard and be smart to make your business into a success.

5. You gave up too soon.

This may seem counter intuitive to the last point, but it is just as valid.  Just as you can’t expect to start raking in the money instantly, you also can’t give up if things are a little slower than you expected. 

Solution: Remember who you are and your purpose! Slow and steady wins the race.  If you’ve done a solid business plan and started out with only a couple of products, and you stay consistent and put some effort into it, you’ll be making money online in no time.

There are several respectable, value-added communities online where people are coming together to explore ways of making money online. One community that I think is complete gold (inside and out) is Portal Feeder.

Portal Feeder is a pretty small, tightknit online community for web business builders. The training and tools they provide are far superior to many of the “shiny new” products promoted by the gurus. Portal Feeder provides you with everything you need to succeed and make money online: training, custom tools, resources and support.

If you are serious about making money online, and you want to keep your heart and soul intact, and protect your dollars from unscrupulous scammers, then at least check out Portal Feeder. Give it a try. They have a solid guarantee, so there is no risk.

Here’s the link:
http://pinnaclemediasolutions.com/recommends/portalfeeder.php

Please Note: if the doors are closed to new members when you visit, just make sure to sign up to their priority notification list so you can be informed as soon as their doors re-open.

Have a beautiful, beautiful day!

Sandy England, PMP
Pinnacle Media Solutions

« Previous Page