Internet Marketing Coaching

An important part of product market research is setting up and implementing a market research survey. Now this is not just a time tested principle of offline marketing it is also one of the foundations of some very successful internet businesses.

Some of the major reasons why we believe you should do a market research survey are:

• Identify Market Opportunities

• Gain Competitive Insight

• Mould Your Product

• Build A Database Of Prospects

In doing this there are a few things that you need to consider in the structuring of your market research survey and they are:

13 Questions – In writing your survey research shows that 13 is the magic number, by doing more questions you will decrease response and the same by doing less questions.

2 Free Text Questions – You should not have more than 2 free text questions in your survey, by increasing this you will make the survey take longer to complete and therefore your potential respondent is less likely to complete it.

7 Multiple Choice Answers – The multiple choice questions must not contain more than 7 answers. This means the options to an answer must be categorised into less than 7 categories. Too many options will result in lower response rates.

First Name, Last Name Email – In structuring the survey in addition to the first 13 questions we always ask for the first name, last name and email address of the respondent. This will allow us to market to the potential customer post survey. The aim is to have these last few details at the end of the survey as the respondent is more likely to fill in their details after going into the “answer” mindset and committing time to the survey.

Now in relation to the questions that you ask, there is no broad stroke approach to this because different surveys have different outcomes. What I can say is that you need to set the intended outcome of your survey before writing every question. While writing each question you should be asking yourself:

“What Does This Tell Me About My Market and How Does It Help Me Achieve My Intended Outcome?”