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Five types of surveys to give your customers

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Running a business is about more than just making a product or service and selling it. As an entrepreneur, you wear many hats, and there are always things to learn about how to run your business more effectively.

It’s especially important to learn how to receive feedback gracefully and implement that feedback in the operation of your business. It all starts by creating surveys that enable your customers to tell you things about your business that you may otherwise not have known.

Choice optimization survey

Are you considering the possibility of releasing a new product? Or maybe you want to make some changes to an existing product? Before you put all the time and money into creating, advertising, and selling these products, you should conduct a choice optimization survey.

This type of survey enables you to ask your customer base what kinds of features they would like to see in a new product, and what kinds of features they aren’t interested in. When crafted carefully, you can also narrow in on which features they would rather have compared to other features, enabling you to create a product with the types of features that most of your customers actively want.

Brand evaluation survey

Feel like you have some great products, but you’re still struggling to find customers? It could be that they simply don’t know you exist! That’s where a brand evaluation survey comes in.

When you cast a wide enough net, you can reach potential customers who may have never heard of your brand before, but you can also create surveys that determine exactly how people feel about your brand when they do know who you are.

A few types of questions you may want to ask include:

  • Screening questions, like whether they have bought a certain product within a specific timeframe
  • Ask them to list products and brands that come to mind in a certain category
  • Ask them to rate their satisfaction with the brands they are familiar with
  • Have them list the features of products they are aware of
  • Have them list words they associate with certain brands
  • Ask if they intend on purchasing from certain brands in the future

Lead generation survey

Lead generation is a huge challenge that many businesses face. If a brand evaluation survey reveals the fact that many people don’t know about your brand or your products, you may want to create a lead generation survey next.

This kind of survey enables you to gather contact information from your target market, enabling you to send out flyers in the mail, newsletters in email, and notifications on their mobile devices. Whether you’re collecting information on your website or you’re reaching out on social media, make sure you ask for just a few key pieces of information. For example, you may want to collect their name and their email address only. Usually, the less information you ask for, the better.

Customer satisfaction survey

Just because people are buying your products doesn’t mean they are satisfied with them. Those people might be more willing to purchase other products from your brand or recommend your products to friends and family with just a few tweaks to your business. You can uncover those small changes with a customer satisfaction survey.

This kind of survey is something you want to conduct regularly. Whether you decide to do it by email, text message, or through snail mail, gathering important information about how likely customers are to buy from you again can inform what kinds of changes you can make to increase customer satisfaction, and in turn, increase sales.

Event satisfaction survey

Your business isn’t all about selling products. Many businesses host a variety of events that include:

  • How-to classes
  • Gatherings to raise money for charity
  • VIP events
  • Grand openings

These events can help get the word out about your business, but there’s no point in hosting events that don’t boost your business the way you want! After you host an event, send out an event satisfaction survey to everyone who attended. Ask them what they enjoyed, what could be better, and if it’s an event they would like to attend again.

Although it can be a lot of work and it can take a lot of time, sending out the right kind of surveys to your customers can greatly enhance your business. Whether you want to know how customers feel about your products or you’re looking for the contact information of potential customers, there are many surveys you can conduct to learn things about your business that will help it grow.

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Contributors

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