Market research surveys are an important tool in a modern company’s business strategy. Online market surveys can help you quickly and cost-effectively gather information about the company, target customers, target market and the competition. Whether your company is large or small, performing a market survey is important. Common types of market research includes:

• Customer research (e.g. satisfaction, demographics, attitudes, expectations)
• Brand awareness and reach (e.g. brand recognition, quality, associations, loyalty)
• Product research (e.g. offerings, pricing, new product concepts)
• Target market research (e.g. market size, growth, competitive positioning)

The information that is gathered about potential customers or target markets can be used as input for a marketing plan. Customer expectations and needs can be used to improve or adapt the company’s products and services. The results can be very helpful in satisfying existing customers and attracting new ones.

It is important to know why you want to perform a market survey. You should start by defining clear goals for the survey. What do you want to achieve and what will the information be used for? What information would be relevant to collect to help achieve your goal? Only questions that help achieve the goals of the market research survey should be included in the questionnaire.

The next step is to determine your target audience. It is very helpfull for the process to clearly identify the customer and competition. It’s not always easy to identify the target audience, but it is very important to have a clear idea about it. If your product targets women in their twenties, for example, then you should make sure that a product research survey is aimed at them. There is little point in asking men over forty about a product or service that will be offered to women in their twenties. The target audience may differ depending on the type of resarch you are doing.

Once you have clear goals and a defined target audience, you can start to create the online market survey. Here are some general tips for a successful survey:

• Write a brief introduction and state how long the survey will take
• Make sure the questions are clear and specific
• Are all the questions relevant? Don’t make the survey too long
• Avoid leading questions
• Only ask about one thing in each question
• Always double-check the possible responses and correct any spelling mistakes
• Test the survey before you publish it

If you would like more information on how to create better questionnaires, you’ll find some good advice in this article.

If your company is active on social media, you could find participants for the market survey by sharing it via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and any other channels you use. If you wish to broaden the target audience to include participants who do not already follow the company, targeted paid advertising could reach more potential respondents in the target audience. Participation can be increased even more by offering a prize. Which of the many social media you might find your customers on is not always obvious. Facebook is a very good choice for some types of products and services, while Pinterest or Twitter may be better for others.

Markets are usually in a constant state of flux and customer group preferences will also change. What might have been popular a year ago may no longer be of interest to the customer group. That is why it’s important to perform market surveys regularly, in order to keep up. Perhaps a new customer group has emerged? You may want to change the survey from one year to the next and continually try to improve it, but remember that this could make it difficult to compare the information gathered from different periods. Regular market surveys will help you to uncover customer needs and interests, putting you a step ahead of the competition.

Online market surveys are a quick and cost-effective way of collecting information. Try EasyQuest today - free of charge! We’re confident you’ll be happily surprised at just how easy it is to perform a market survey using our tool.