Marketing is built on the opinion of the masses. Without the public’s approval and buy-in, getting a concept or product off the ground is nearly impossible. Today, there are many options to choose from with gathering these opinions. Marketers can set up complex systems to examine behavioral data or work with a research company and conduct surveys.

Surveys are important for various research efforts. The collection of survey data online is very popular and can be the difference in the success or failure of a brand.

How Can Surveys Help Small Businesses?

Surveys and data collection can help small businesses in myriad ways.

1. Build Your Brand Identity

With surveys, you can collect valuable consumer feedback and utilize it to give your brand authenticity. Knowing what consumers think of your business can help guide important branding decisions and give you ideas on how to appeal to your target market in the most effective way.

When using a survey to gauge perceptions about your brand, you can also learn what your business is doing well and what you can work on. The data gleaned from surveys can help you improve your customer experience, as well as influence your marketing decisions.

2. Use Surveys to Further Engage Your Customers

Every business wants to engage their customers and followers. A great engagement tool is sending surveys directly to customers to learn more about their experience with your business. Not only does this give customers the chance to share their thoughts, but it also shows that your business values their opinions.

Use your website, marketing emails, end of blog posts and email signature to advertise your survey. If you create your survey efficiently with fewer questions, your customers will be more willing to spend a greater amount of time per question.

3. Get Market Insights with Social Media Surveys

For small and large businesses alike, social media can drive a lot of website traffic. When crafted carefully, a social media survey can be a cost-effective marketing tool, generating more vital information than other data collection methods. Conducting surveys regularly can help small businesses gain valuable market insights.

Through social media, you can captivate prospects and reach a multi-generational audience, allowing you to devise marketing strategies for the future. When you interact with your customers and prospects through an online survey, you’ll learn what your audience prefers and collect a wealth of information about how your customers view your brand and what changes, if any, they want to see from you.

For multivariate audiences, survey your audience across all your social media platforms and use the same survey, as this provides consistency in your results.

4. Enhance Your Customer Profiles

With surveys, audiences may also choose to share first-party data like age, demographics and contact information by offering an incentive in exchange. With an incentive attached, customers are more likely to complete a survey and provide these important details.

By gathering and analyzing insights from your customers, you can think of ways to improve your business to better serve these groups or appeal to their specific needs and interests. Surveys are also an excellent tool for creating customer personas for marketing purposes.

5. Use Surveys to Generate Leads

Quizzes are popular among people of all ages, especially when the quiz is relevant to their shopping experience. When you make your survey a fun quiz, you can keep your customers engaged and answering questions until the end.

Once you know who your target audience is and you’ve created customer profiles, you can use the available data to create knowledge or personality quizzes, depending on what you’re planning for your future marketing strategies. You can also use quiz-like surveys to educate your audience about your services and products.

6. Create a Product Based on Consumer Feedback

Surveys let you know what customers are thinking about your business and products or services. Your brand’s quality and reputation are essential, especially if you’re an entrepreneur, so you want to focus on developing and marketing products that appeal to your customers. Online surveys can help you determine what your customers need and prefer.

Asking open-ended questions about what your customers think about a service or what features they would like to see in a product can help you analyze whether you’re meeting all of your customers’ needs and what you can do to improve your offerings.

When you survey your customers, you’re no longer developing products in a vacuum or offering services people might not want. Instead, you’re using customer feedback as a guide throughout the product development process and establishing an interactive communication loop. You can also use this feedback to generate ideas for marketing campaigns early, such as for a holiday marketing campaign.

7. Improve Customer Service by Monitoring Customer Satisfaction

Every business needs to know how customers perceive their brand. As such, your business should focus on improving your customer service by gathering feedback following a successful sale. One of the best ways to improve your sales is by sending out a post-sale survey after a purchase or including a survey link on your customer receipt.

With this approach, your survey link will be sent out automatically, so no added effort is required on your part. Include questions about customer satisfaction that can help you identify the problem areas in your customer service. These questions allow you to examine your customer service and improve your customer handling and products.

Benefits of Online Surveys for Small Businesses

Everyone benefits from knowledge-driven by data, especially small businesses. The following are the advantages of surveys for small businesses:

• Test products
• Track sentiments
• Increase brand loyalty
• Get customer feedback
• Predict intent to purchase
• Inform product development
• Conduct demographic research
• Understand consumer behaviors
• Gauge the opinions of the audience
• Improve employee satisfaction and retention

Types of Surveys Small Businesses Can Use

You can use several types of surveys in your small business:

Online: The best available option for small businesses is the online survey, which customers can complete from home in just minutes. At Lucid, we make it possible for your business to reach millions of survey respondents via our Lucid Marketplace and a direct connection to the most trusted sample providers in the world. To date, we’ve had more than 437 million unique respondents and 135 billion questions answered across 110 countries.

Paper: Another option is a paper survey that you can give your customers, especially if the questions are related to personal topics. Paper surveys are a bit outdated and inconvenient, however, especially in comparison to online surveys.

Mobile: You can also administer a survey via your customers’ smartphones. Customers can conveniently answer questions through a mobile app.

Phone: If you have an older audience, you may want to target your customers with phone surveys. Older generations tend to be more likely to have landlines than mobile devices, so the best way to reach them may be with a phone call rather than texting or an app.

How Lucid Can Help

At Lucid, we understand the importance of online surveys for small businesses. We are a research technology company powered by our sample marketplace. On the Lucid Marketplace, you can access communities of millions of online survey respondents. Our solutions offer clarity and speed, and we deliver them at a great value price in the market. This means that we provide the solutions that you need more quickly and more cost-effectively.

If you are interested in our Lucid Marketplace software, contact us at Lucid today to enjoy the pros of online surveys for small businesses, get a quote or schedule a demo. Let’s get knowing.