Surveys are a powerful tool for gaining direct insights into what your audience wants, needs, and values.  

This article describes how you can effectively use surveys to understand your audience’s preferences and tailor your offerings.

Step 1 – Define Your Goals:  Every survey question will be oriented around the objective of what you are trying to discover.  Starting the out the process, write down in once sentence what you want to learn from the survey.  Are you seeking feedback on a specific product, service, content, or overall brand perception?

Step 2 – Choose a Survey Platform:  Use a reputable survey platform such as SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, Typeform, or Qualtrics to create and distribute your survey.

Step 3 – Choose a Survey Type:  Common types include multiple-choice, open-ended questions, rating scales, and Likert scales (opinions on a spectrum of 5 points).  Exploratory surveys, where you are looking for depth of insight, would use more open-ended (short answer or long paragraphs) questions, and where your audience may be small.  Statistical sampling can be done with a large population of responses, but will require questions to be written with precision, and answer choices which cover the universe of possibilities in order for the results to provide meaning.   

Step 4 – Craft Clear and Concise Questions:  Create questions that are easy to understand and avoid ambiguity. Use simple language and avoid leading questions.

How to write good questions for an online survey

Question Development Guidelines: 

• Focus on Relevant Topics:  Keep your survey focused on topics that are directly relevant to your audience and your goals. Avoid asking unrelated or unnecessary questions. 
• Use a Mix of Question Types:  Include a variety of question types to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. This can provide a more comprehensive understanding.
• Keep Surveys Short:  Respect your audience’s time by keeping surveys concise. Long surveys can lead to survey fatigue and incomplete responses.
• Ask the Right Questions: The quality of your survey data depends on the quality of the questions you ask. Craft your questions carefully to gather actionable insights that can help you better understand your audience and tailor your offerings to meet their needs and preferences.

Step 5 – Test Your Survey and Initiate:  Test the survey on a small group to identify any issues with question clarity, formatting, or technical glitches.  After making adjustments based on testing, you may initiate your survey and watch the results roll in.

Difficult Step 1 – Promote Your Survey:  Share your survey through various channels, including email, social media, your website, and relevant online communities.  Getting responsiveness on your survey invitation may be a challenge, but underscoring a greater good or specific benefit to your customer will increase responsiveness. 

• Convey a greater purpose to your audience.  The messaging behind the survey will be key to encouraging participation.  From an audience perspective, surveys can be quite a hassle.  They always take more time than advertised, and the longer the survey, the more nonsensical the questions become.  Who wants to waste their time with a set of meaningless questions?  The user should feel that by taking the survey, they are a part of something greater, and contributing to the good of society.  That kind of messaging gives motivation and meaning to the user in exchange for the 5 (or 10) minutes they will take out of their day to finish the question list.
• Offer Incentives such as discounts, freebies, or entry into a giveaway to encourage participation.  The key question here to answer is, “what benefit is there to the customer for taking the survey?”
• Use Engaging Survey Titles:  Craft a compelling and concise survey title that captures attention and conveys the importance of participating.
• Personalize Invitations:  Personalize survey invitations with the recipient’s name and relevant details. Personalization can increase response rates.
• Maximize Social Media:  Share the survey link on your social media platforms, and encourage your followers to share it with their networks. Use paid social media advertising for wider reach.
• Engage Online Communities:  Share your survey in online communities, forums, and groups that are relevant to your target audience. Ensure you’re following community guidelines.
• Collaborate with Influencers:  Partner with influencers or individuals with a strong online presence who can help promote your survey to their followers.
• Use Visuals:  Eye-catching visuals or graphics can help to highlight key aspects of the survey and make your promotion more appealing.
• Highlight Previous Survey Insights:  If you’ve conducted surveys before, share insights or improvements you’ve made based on participant feedback.
• Simplify the Survey Process:  Ensure that the survey is easy to access, navigate, and complete. A user-friendly experience can reduce drop-offs.
• Ask for Referrals:  Encourage survey participants to refer the survey to their contacts.
• Transparent Data Use:  Assure participants that their data will be used responsibly and confidentially, addressing potential privacy concerns.
• Thank Participants:  Express gratitude to participants for taking the time to complete the survey. A thank-you message can leave a positive impression.

Difficult Step 2 – Extract Actionable Meaning:  Analyzing the results is easy.  Once you’ve collected responses, analyze the data to identify trends, patterns, and insights.  Look at both quantitative data (numbers) and qualitative data (comments).  Knowing what to do about what you see is the hard part. 

• Segment Your Audience:  If you have a diverse audience, consider segmenting your survey to tailor questions to specific groups.  What are the common preferences, pain points, or suggestions from your audience?
• Adjust Your Strategy:  Use the insights gained from the survey to inform your content, product development, marketing strategies, and customer service efforts.  Ask the following questions: Does the survey indicate any surprises?  Is there something new you learned about your audience that you didn’t expect to see? Specifically what about the marketing strategy is validated through the survey?
• Set up for a future survey:  Test the same or similar survey format in the future to determine if your changes had an impact. 
• Know your audience: What kind of person has taken the survey?  Inversely, who did not take the survey, and what does this mean to the results?

Leverage survey results to gain audience insights

Surveying your audience is just one approach to learning.  One-on-one engagement, responding to comments, and researching publicly available information about your line of business will help to bring greater insights and depth of understanding to your survey analysis.