Using Market Research Surveys to Gather Customer Information

in Forum: Marketing
Source of this discusssion: /media/episodes/1689/podcast-research-surveys.asp Page description: Market research has to be part of your planning process as you start and grow your business - listen in as we discuss online survey tools.
Nov. 02 2007 at 5:57 PM
albx Posted by: albx

ok, quick question. what if you don't have customers yet for a product or service, but you know the target market? how can we get survey respondents who are opt-in people that want to supply feedback and the survey responses.

-thanks!!

Nov. 02 2007 at 11:18 PM
RabbitMountain Posted by: RabbitMountain
Bribe them with entering their name to win some free goodie... iPods seem to get a lot of bribery mileage.

But I'm wondering, are you surveying them regarding your product? Not sure I understand how they could give useful feedback until they're on board as customers.....?

—paula
Rabbit Mountain, LLC, print and digital communications
• NEW! The Sustainable • Local Centre County Shopper's Guide
Sep. 17 2008 at 6:40 AM
No Photo Posted by: mstreffo
paula and albx,

i have the same challenge.  i have a new product i want to take to market, and i know my target market.  however, as my company is not trading yet, i do not have existing customers.  therefore, my current view is i need to go out to ask questions of people directly.  i'm trying to find a good uk company to do this, and this is currently challenging!  do you know of any, or the correct term to type into google?

kind regards

mark.

Sep. 23 2008 at 12:36 PM
No Photo Posted by: myasmine
There are a few approaches you can take to market test your idea:
  1. You can use Google's Keyword Tool and Google's Trends tool to figure out how popular the space is. It'll give you a good sense on whether or not a market exists. A good article on this is http://www.growthink.com/content/gain-valuable-market-insight-10-minutes-flat
  2. You can build a landing page and run a Google Adwords campaign to test out different messages, obtain feedback from your market. Check out http://www.teamandadream.com/willitwork/
  3. You can write a press release about your product/service and gauge it's viability by seeing how often it's picked up and/or how many people contact you. A PR service I like that I've tried before is www.businesswire.com
  4. Finally, another method is to create a 10-question survey on surveymonkey (free) and send it to bloggers, F&F, etc. to capture demographics, feature sets, etc.
Hope that helps!

Best,

Yasmine

Accelerate the launch of your Web business
http://www.teamandadream.com


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