Market Research Questionnaire

Market research questionnaires are essential if you want to grow your business, you have to know what your customers want. Even in this modern and mostly digital world, the best tool business owners and marketers have for collecting information about their targets – their customers, current and potential – is still the good old survey, albeit updated to meet current needs. Whatever the reason for undergoing a market research questionnaire, whether it's to understand the customers' buying habits, find out what they think of your products, see whether people are aware of the product or increase the customer base with some new target areas, the questionnaire has the power to provide the necessary knowledge.

There are many areas of information market research questionnaires can provide for the marketing or business professional willing to put them to use.

Working online, they can help with boosting conversions, sales growth and traffic increases. We provide questionnaire templates with a number of pertinent questions designed to obtain the information required, such as why the respondent visited the site and whether they found what they wanted (along with the necessary "if not, please tell us why not and what you wanted"). You can choose from our extensive library of certified standard questions, nicely balancing the user experience ones with those designed to obtain customer demographics, or you can create your own questionnaires if you prefer.

Ask questions to test branding and naming, and check positioning within the market place. Find out why the top brands are on top, with loyalty strong enough to withstand higher prices. A lot of this is due to good customer service, being willing to take notice of what the customers say and angling their marketing to these preferences; you can do the same by finding out what your customers feel about your naming and branding ideas, both existing and prospective, and how they match up to those of your competitors. It’s worth noting that we also offer help with this by way of customer satisfaction survey templates.

Measure how your customers feel over time, whether they are satisfied (and to what level), and if they remember you and come back repeatedly.

Come up with several ideas for marketing campaigns and test them out before committing to just one; find out whether a road-side advertising billboard is still going to be effective or if nowadays a simple online banner ad will have more effect; which wordings get the best reactions, should you spend more money on this aspect of the campaign or that ... online questionnaires are the perfect tool for capturing this information.

Be more specific; choose a section of your customer base that has something in common, something that you want to focus on – it could be anything from geographic location to lifestyle or preferred brands – and ask them to respond. If other customers don't use the right products or live in the right place, don't include them in the mailshot. These tightly-focused questionnaires are of most use in fine-tuning campaigns aimed at a very specific target groups.

Find out about possible new customers, or get more information on your current ones by surveying on subjects that will enable specific targeting, from the basic age, gender, marital status, and number of children, to which shops they prefer, how much they earn and what leisure activities they enjoy - everything can help identify new customers and organise the data on your current ones.

Asking questions about your products will gain helpful information on which ones could be improved and how, what new ones might be included in the range, whether your pricing structure is at the correct level – and how you can improve your products' standing against those of your competitors! Seemingly small changes can make surprisingly large differences to both customer satisfaction and sales.

Find out where to spend your marketing budget in order to get the most 'bang for your buck'! Market research can help with information on the possible market size, the best store locations, what's the optimal pricing level for the market and much more. More effort here will definitely reap greater rewards for the future.

Social media is coming to the fore more and more as a source of information for those willing dip into it and work out the best ways to use it. Posting on a Facebook newsfeed, hashtagging on Twitter, blogging the latest updates or adding questionnaire URLs to a LinkedIn profile are all possibilities, along with many more.

Doing It Yourself

When your start thinking about creating an online questionnaire, there are a number of things that you should consider:

• Know your target audience

  The person designing the questions should know the market they wish to target very well, so that they can define both demographic parameters and geographic ones. A popular starting point is to use the current best customers as a focus, based on quality sales, enabling the easier tracking of patterns within those sales. Another angle might be focussing on previous customers who no longer buy, or those who started to put together an online order but never finished it.

• Keep it short and straight to the point

  The fewer questions you use and the easier the language, the more likely the people filling in the survey will complete it, so keep your survey short and sweet. Simple wording in relatively short questions and breaking it over several widely-spaced short pages, rather than tightly filling fewer long ones, also has the same effect. Also, bearing this in mind as you work will help you to keep the questions focussed on the main points of interest. Our survey templates demonstrate the effective use of these principles.

• Professional Survey Templates

  Marketing survey questions are written by professionals in the field who know how to obtain the most useful responses via the wording of the questions, so a professional questionnaire template and customising it to fit your needs if necessary is the best way to get good results. The templates can be branded with your own colours, graphics, etc. to make them feel ‘yours’.

• Be transparent

  Make sure the customer is made to feel that they are an important part of the process, rather than just a guinea pig being pumped for information. Explain what you are intending to do with the results, let them know what you have found out so far and later, send out follow-up informational packs saying what you've done and perhaps asking for more details if required.

Work Smart, Not Hard

Getting the answers you need doesn't need to involve high overheads, if the various cost-effective and clever tools available are used to advantage. If you are not certain how to go about finding the right target demographic, we can supply access to millions of people happy to assist with answers through our Consumer Panel service, and we're always working on our technological methods in order to improve how they work. These two then combine to give you the information you need to make the best decisions for your business.

So, if your business needs information, don't waste any more time before getting it into your hands! With the assistance of our questionnaire templates you can get your first survey out there in just a couple of minutes, and the all-important information you need should start coming back to you in no time at all.

Market Research Templates

• Purchase Process And Evaluation
• Concept Evaluation And Pricing Study
• Advertising Effectiveness
• Online Retailer Evaluation

SmartSurvey offers a complete solution for conducting Market Research. Sign up now.