One of the best ways to learn about a market is by directly speaking to the relevant audience. Secondary research can tell us a lot about the big picture, but nothing helps us answer specific questions like being able to simply ask them.
One of the easiest ways to engage with an audience is through a survey. Not only can a business scale a survey to suit its audience or market size, but surveys are easy for the respondents to engage with and answer.
What kinds of surveys are there?
Market researchers are experts at gathering information to build market intelligence, and a major part of this process is surveying the target market.
There are several options for survey methodology:
- Face-to-face surveys
- Telephone surveys
- Self-administered paper and pencil surveys
- Self-administered online surveys
How to choose a survey method
To choose the right survey method, you need to know what information you’re looking for.
Face-to-face surveys and telephone surveys can take longer to conduct and require more energy, as you need to have someone physically present to ask the questions face-to-face or on the phone. However, because of the direct interaction, you can also easily ask follow-up questions to get more detailed information.
Self-administered surveys are a lot more automated. You can write a survey, send it to your audience, and wait for your responses to roll in. The trade-off is that you cannot easily ask follow-up questions. You can work around this by asking contact details for further questions, but not all respondents will want to do so.
What to ask
Before you can begin a survey, you need to define your goals and objectives. With that, you can decide what you will ask your respondents. Your survey questions should always feed into your goals and what you are looking to learn.
If you were looking to see which colours are most popular, you might ask, “what is your favourite colour?” But it wouldn’t make sense to ask “how tall are you?” unless you wanted to see if there was any correlation between height and colour preferences.
Where to begin?
Building a research survey, finding the right audience, connecting with them, and then analysing the data from your survey is a lot of work to do, so it can feel overwhelming when you’re not sure where to begin. Fortunately, you can collaborate with experts, like the team at Agile Market Intelligence, to start asking the right people the right questions. Book a free 30-minute consultation and discover how you can connect with your market.
