When do you care enough to complete a survey? For me it’s when I believe giving my opinion will impact my life. If I get a survey about a product I don’t use, I wouldn’t think twice about not completing it. The same goes for getting a survey about a newsletter I don’t read or about a company I do very little business with.

The more you know about your audience, the more you can target your surveys and get a better response. Do they come to you for a particular product or service? Are they a regular customer or do they come to you only once in a great while? Maybe you have information on their buying behavior with you. If they only buy in the retail store, don’t bother sending them a survey that deals with their satisfaction for the online buying process. From what you know about your audience, bucket them into groups with similar interests. Then send your surveys only to those who will actually have knowledge and a stake in the survey topic. Take a look at this free online workshop to help you better understand how to segment your audience.

If you don’t know much about your audience, then use your first survey to find out a little bit about them. Not only will that help you bucket your audience so you can target your surveys to the right people, but it will also help you in many other aspects of your business. By knowing who your customers are, you will know how to best message your marketing efforts, what to put in your newsletter, what products to promote to who, etc.  Here are some sample survey questions that will help you get to know your audience.

From the results of this audience evaluation survey you can:

  1. Break your audience into lists with similar interests.
  2. Send your surveys and other communications only to people that will be interested in them.
  3. See your open rates, click rates, and number of completed surveys sky rocket.

Your customers deal with the same marketing overload you do, so don’t waste their time and you will have more of a response to your marketing efforts and a stronger relationship with them. Questions, comments, experiences, please share by clicking the comment link below. Until next time, happy growing!