Marketing Surveys That Maximise Your Decision Making

For marketers, knowing exactly how your customers view your brand and what improvements you need to keep them happy and buying more is crucial. Similarly, you need to know what your competitors are doing and keep up with what’s going on in your target market.

From interviews and focus groups to customer observation. There are a range of methods you can use to get this information. Yet, one of the most effective ways is to collect customer feedback directly through a survey. Not only this, but the detailed data it will provide will enable you to make more effective marketing decisions about your pricing, messaging and many other areas of your marketing strategy.

However, which surveys and questions should you use to best achieve your goals?

For more answers on this, read on to see our top ten of surveys you should consider running to improve your marketing.

Top ten marketing surveys

We appreciate that many of you will be looking to use these marketing surveys to better understand your customer experience and stay competitive.

So, to help you with this, we’ve provided a solid breakdown of each survey, so you can think about how you might incorporate them into your marketing strategy.

1. Customer research surveys

Given how important it is for marketers to find out more about who their customers are in order to drive growth, the research survey is an essential survey that we will cover off first on our list.

Why is it useful?

Unless you ask them directly, you’ll struggle to find out more about your customers, which can include, but is not limited to their job title, pain points and interests. Fortunately, the customer research survey provides an effective way to do this, with the data you get back enabling you to improve how you target and personalise your marketing efforts.

Examples of some customer research survey questions include:

• Which of the following best describes your role in the purchase process?
• What were your main reasons you choosing X?
• How are you primarily using X?
• What type of business do you represent? What is your role?
• What are the main problems you want to solve with X?
• What is your biggest everyday annoyance when communicating with leads?

2. Net Promoter Score (NPS)® surveys

As one of the most popular customer experience metrics, the NPS survey is next on our list.

Based on the question below, the NPS survey looks to identify how likely your customers will be to recommend your company to others, so you can use this information to more accurately gauge your likelihood of getting repurchases and referrals.

“On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”

Why is it useful?

The NPS helps you to identify your most loyal customers, which you can then reach out to for case studies, testimonials, quotes and reviews for marketing collateral.

3. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) surveys

While most people are likely to see CSAT as being more of a customer-support or experience type metric, it’s still a key area for marketers to monitor, as measuring customer satisfaction in relation to your marketing activities can still be hugely helpful.

Why is it useful?

The CSAT metric can allow you to measure customer satisfaction at specific touchpoints, such the closure of a support ticket. You can then use your CSAT scores to identify any areas that your customers are struggling with and target your marketing efforts to improve the customer experience at these touchpoints.

Examples of some customer satisfaction survey questions include:

• How satisfied are you with our product/service? Did we meet your expectations?
• How would you measure your satisfaction with our platform in general?
• How often do you use our products/services?
• How would you rate your most recent interaction with our support team?
• How likely are you to recommend our product/services to others?

4. Product research surveys

If you’re to effectively market a revised product or new features, you need to know more about how your customers use them. And for that you will need to ask some effective questions in a product research survey.

Why is it useful?

By issuing product research surveys you’ll be better able to understand users and their needs. Consequently, this will help you to market new features more effectively and drive better product adoption.

Examples of some product research survey questions include:

• How important do you find feature X?
• Are the new features simple for you to use?
• What new features would you like to see from us?
• How was your experience with the following aspects of the product?
• Why do you rarely use X?
• How would you rate our new app?

5. Content evaluation surveys

If you’re looking to accelerate and improve your content creation, then content evaluation surveys are a great way to move forward with this.

Why is it useful?

These surveys not only help you to evaluate the performance of your existing content, but they can help provide you with ideas about what content to produce next.

While Google Analytics can only really give you the raw data about how different pages are performing, you’ll be able to get the deeper insights you need to improve with a content evaluation survey.

Examples of some content evaluation survey questions include:

• What is your overall opinion of our webinar?
• Are there any topics you would like to read about next?
• Do you find our newsletter informative?
• How would you rate the blog article you’re reading?
• Can we do anything to improve our online events?

6. Market research surveys

If you’re looking to carry out your own market research, then using market research surveys will help you to learn a great deal about the customers in your target market.

Why is it useful?

With the more detailed and accurate data you can get from running your own survey, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions about messaging, campaigns, pricing and more.

Examples of some market research survey questions include:

• What tools would you use to complete task X?
• How many tools do you use to manage your operations and projects?
• Do you work with an agency that helps you with your website design, marketing strategy, or your social media presence?
• Are you able to discuss your experiences with sales tools?
• What's your main reasons for using social media?

7. Website feedback surveys

In today’s digital age, the website survey can be another valuable asset in the toolset of the marketer, helping you to see if you’re meeting your site users’ needs and identifying what you need to improve.

Why is it useful?

The flexibility of website surveys, means you can position them to pop up at key points on your website. This can enable you to get feedback on a range of issues, which could be anything from the testing of new design features to help improve navigation to new pages with fresh content and CTAs.

Another benefit of a website survey is that it provides you with real-time feedback, so you can potentially action changes much faster.

Examples of some website feedback survey questions include:

• Did you find our website easy to navigate around?
• Did you locate the information you were looking for on this page?
• What’s the one thing missing from this page?
• How simple was it to complete your purchase?
• In general, how satisfied are you with the website experience?
• Were you looking for anything today that you couldn’t find?

8. Brand awareness surveys

Given how much a company’s brand can influence consumer decisions about which competing products and services they should purchase, it’s vital to know how your own brand is perceived. That’s where a brand awareness survey can be extremely valuable.

Why is it useful?

Running a brand awareness survey can give you a more detailed picture of what customer’s think about your brand and how that compares with your competitors, so you can make the improvements needed to improve your market position.

Examples of some brand awareness survey questions include:

• How would you describe our brand in one word?
• How did you first become aware of our brand?
• When you think of our types of products which brands first come to your mind?
• When was the last time you used products in our category?
• What adjectives would you use to describe X, if it had a personality?
• How was your overall experience with our brand?

9. Reasons for churn surveys

A major challenge for most businesses, particularly those operating in the digital space is churn, which can be reduced with the feedback from a carefully crafted survey that helps get to the root of the problem.

Why is it useful?

There are many causes that can cause customers to churn. So, depending on your questions, it can help you to predict and reduce potential churn, before it starts to harm your business.

Examples of some survey questions to include to better gauge your customers’ churn status include:

• What was the primary reason for you to cancel or become inactive?
• What were your expectations that we couldn't meet?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague? (where 1 is extremely unlikely and 10 extremely likely)
• What could we have done differently to retain you as a customer?

10. Contact form question in your survey

Contact forms are great for getting people to sign up for your newsletter, gated content or any events you’re hosting. And you can use these contact forms on your website or issue them by email.

Why is it useful?

Incorporating some contact form questions in your survey is useful as besides updating your contact information, it can help you to collect new leads and create buyer personas. It can also be used to enhance data in other systems you may be using such as your CRM platform.

Examples of some questions to include in a contact form survey:

• What’s your current job role?
• Can you tell us how many employees work for your organisation?
• What’s your website address?
• What’s your biggest challenge with X?
• What are your preferences when it comes to Y?
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Final thoughts

We hope you enjoyed reading this blog. And whatever stage you’re at with your marketing we hope you found something you might like to incorporate in your activities.

The key thing to remember is that there is no better way to learn about your customers, than through hearing from them directly. Not only will this answer many of the questions you have been trying to get to grips with, but it will often provide you with ideas that you may never have otherwise considered.

Subsequently, to better understand your customers, and gauge their contentment and behaviour, you need to incorporate a programme of different surveys into your marketing activities. That way you’ll be more likely to receive the detailed and wide-ranging data you need to deliver more of what your customers want and need, and improve your customer retention and ongoing sales as a result.