How to Survey Your Audience
Episode 034: Show Notes
Today you are going to learn all about how to do a survey, why it’s important, how to actually create the thing, and a few of our tips and tricks. We’ll also talk about some of the questions that you should consider asking inside of this bubbly delicious thing that’s going to give you so much information that you will be exploding with ideas by the end of it.
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Surveys have gotten a bad rap, but they can seriously do so much for you and your business. If you can incentivize and make it seem easy to do, you’ll be surprised by how many people will actually give you really valuable feedback. It reminds your readers and your audience that they are literally helping shape the content that you create. Instead of just making up things that you think your audience wants, give them a platform to tell you what they actually need from you. Ready to learn how to create a badass survey? Listen in!
Why You Should Create A Survey
One of the main reasons to do a survey is if you are at a point in your business where you feel like you are at a crossroads and you lack crucial information to make a decision and move forward. Although you can use data from the Internet or Google Analytics to learn more about your audience, you won’t be able to tell why they have become faithful readers of your content and visitors to your website. A survey asks your readers directly, and can help shed some light on exactly where they first found you, and what continues to bring them back. So if you are thinking of bringing out a new product or service, your readers are the ones who will be able to help shape it. Another great time to do a survey is after the launch of a new product or service, to get helpful feedback from your customers on how you can adapt and change it in the future.
How Often Should You Send One Out
For us at TCC, we send out a non-anonymous survey at the end of every single program we sell, even if the program is free! When clients finish the content, the very last module is going to be a survey in which they tell us how that program changed their lives. The survey could also be sent out in an email after they made the purchase, and then again once the program was completed. We can then turn around and use those answers to market the programs or make them better based off of the feedback. You can also send out reader surveys every quarter to try to get to know the audience better. We typically send them out once a year, either in the beginning or the end.
Our Favorite Tools to Capture Survey Information
When it comes to creating surveys, our top tools to use are the Squarespace survey forms, or either of SurveyMonkey or Typeform. If you already have a Squarespace site, perhaps just start one there. They have beautiful forms that will look great and they will be branded because it is created through your own site. With SurveyMonkey and Typeform, it is free to create up to 10 questions, including name, email, and any other personal information. You can also opt to use one of their templates that are already pre-populated with questions. The great thing about both SurveyMonkey and Typeform is that they automatically give you some analytic data. Of course there are pros and cons to both options, so it just depends on what works best for you and your business.
Questions to Ask in a Survey
As the creator of the survey, you need to try to structure your questions in a way that’s going to get the answers that you need. Make sure not to go so broad with a question that no one knows how to answer it. Of course, you should also avoid structuring questions in a way that will simply get you the answers you want. But if the answers to your questions are not specific to what you want to teach or help with, then they’re not going to be useful to you. For example, instead of asking, “What are you struggling most with when it comes to blogging?” ask, “What prevents you from putting out the amount of blog content that you want to?” The key is to ask the question in a way that is in your zone of genius.
Our Top Tips For Making Surveys Fun!
The first tip we have is try to not ask too many “yes or no” questions, but instead, break questions down to asking which apply to them, and why. This helps you identify the readers whose responses you should pull out. Another big trick is not to make every question a fill-in-the-blank. You need to mix it up. You need to have some that are “check all that apply”, “rate this zero to 10”, “give me yes, no, maybe”. Or you can have a few short answers, and maybe one or two, where you are getting longer feedback and you might even make those optional. Another quick tip is to make it a little funny or quirky so that you can use that information later.
How to Send Out Surveys that People Will Actually Answer
Sending out your survey does NOT have to complicated. Oftentimes people make it out to be this big, giant thing that they have to launch like it’s the next Mona Lisa. But guess what? It doesn’t have to be that crazy. Make the link easy to remember, and pop it in everywhere. Put it on Instagram, post it on Facebook, send an email to your people, write a blog post about it, or perhaps even go live about it and ask people to fill it out. Don’t make it complicated. If you are feeling icky about it all, you can always incentivize the survey by giving something fun away and collecting email addresses as part of the giveaway process. Remember to set a deadline for answers to be collected so you can know when to start analyzing the data.
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Please, for the love of all things bacon flavored, please make it a little funny.
Highlights
Discover why you would want to create a survey and how it can help your business to evolve. [0:04:52.6]
Understand how often to send out surveys and when they best apply. [0:07:05.1]
Learn how to capture survey information and our top survey tools. [0:09:36.9]
Find out exactly what to ask in your surveys in order to get the most value out of them. [0:12:58.6]
How to create a survey that is fun, accurate, and easy for your readers to complete. [0:16:13.1]
Learn how to send out send out surveys and actually get your audience to answer them. [0:27:31.8]
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:37:02.3]
Decide whether it is a survey for a product you are selling or a general feedback survey, then choose your platform.
Share your survey in three different places.
Go through the results and pick three to five action items that you can work through in the next 30 days.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
KEY TOPICS
Creating audience surveys, Frequency of sending out surveys, Top tools for creating surveys, Which questions to include in your surveys, Making your surveys more fun, Getting your readers to answer the survey
