Business Strategies, marketing planning and consulting

For any organization that wants to offer products or services that are highly focused and well targeted market research is important. Business decisions that are based on good intelligence and good market research can minimise risk and pay dividends. By making market research part and parcel of the business process and conducting market research throughout the life cycle of a product or service market research will bring the following benefits:-

• Market research will help you better communicate – Your current customers experiences are a valuable information source, not only will they allow you to gauge how well you currently meet their expectations they can also tell you where you are getting things right and more importantly where you are getting things wrong. By asking you take the guesswork out of customer services and demonstrate to the customer that you care.
• Market research helps you identify opportunities – If you are planning to operate a new service and want to know the preconceived attitudes people have then market research can help, not only in evaluating the potential for a new idea, but also by identify the areas where a marketing message needs to be honed.
• Market research will minimise risk – Market research can help shape a new product or service, identifying what is needed and ensure that the development of a product is highly focused towards demand.
• Market research creates benchmarks and helps you measure your progress – You need to be able to measure so that you can ensure that your organization is always improving. Early research may highlight glaring holes in your service or short falls in your product, regular market research will show if improvements are being made and, if positive, will help motivate a team.

Market research brings considerable benefits and it is perhaps surprising how few businesses invest sufficient resources to gather good intelligence that will help them improve business. Many may think that market research takes too much time and effort but that is just not the case anymore as through the power of the Internet online survey software is readily available and vital market research data can now be gathered in a quick, simple and cost effective manner.

makieye Business client, customer, feedback, market research, Marketing, Online surveys, research data

What can you learn by conducting effective market research?

Know your customers – Market research will help you better understand your customers in a number of ways including demographic information such as their age, gender and geographic spread. The better you know your customer the easier it is to fine tune your product or service towards the target market.

Know your target market – Who exactly are your existing customers and where do they live? Does your service or product appeal to specific age group? Who are your potential customers and where do they live?

Know your competition – Market Research will help you measure your service compared to others. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and are you improving in the right areas?

Products and services – Do you have the products or services that people want? Are your products and services value for money? How do your company’s products and services match up to that of your competitors? If you have a product can you deliver, do you deliver, should you deliver?

Ease of doing business – Do your customers find it easy to deal with you and when they visit your store and/or website do they find what they want? Is there sufficient advice and assistance on hand? Do you make it easy for people to buy from you? Are all your employees properly trained, knowledgeable, helpful and available?

Marketing – Is your marketing reaching the right people and is the marketing message clear and effective. Which marketing channels are effective and which ones are ineffective?

Is the marketing message understood? Does your marketing properly embody your brand? Do you use the right channels to promote and advertise? Are you reaching your target audience?

With the power of the Internet it is now very easy to conduct market research using one of the many online survey software sites that make conducting surveys and collating good market research intelligence quick, easy and extremely cost effective.

makieye Business client, customer, feedback, market research, Marketing, Online surveys, research data

For a promoter starting out they have to work hard and on a budget to get an audience of a few hundred people to fill a venue. Flyers, word-of-mouth and social networks are just some of the tools promoters use to fill small venues or club nights. Building a loyal following from grassroots is no easy task. Considering the amount of effort that can be required to fill even the smallest of venues it is surprising that very few promoters capitalise on their efforts and use the actual event to maximise the opportunity to encourage further audience contact.

For a small outlay online surveys can be set up to provide the promoter with feedback and the opportunity to maintain an on going relationship with their audience. Using online Survey Software a promoter can now quickly and easily create an online survey.

With an online survey a promoter can find out exactly:-

• who attended;
• what persuaded them;
• what they thought of the event;
• would they expect to attend again;
• would they recommend future events to their friends.

A good way to ensure a good response is to have a supply of business sized cards that are marked clearly with a slogan like “Feedback”, “Your opinion counts”, “Tell us what you thought”. On each card a web address will point either directly to the survey or to a website where a link to the survey can be placed. Cards can be issued at the entrance along with the tickets, or handed out among the audience and if they are made the size of business cards they will be small enough to be stick in a pocket, purse or wallet. It may not even be necessary but a small incentive wouldn’t harm the response rate perhaps the chance to win a free guest pass for a future event, a signed CD or T shirt.

Using the results from online surveys the promoter is able to:

• Obtain a profile of the audience
• Gauge the overall success of the event;
• Measure the effectiveness of different promotion;
• Receive feedback on the venue and facilities;
• Receive feedback on the act;
• Promote on a one on one basis;
• Build a targeted database for future events;
• Build a loyal audience;
• Link to merchandise and other promotions.

Considering the effort that it takes to promote an event and the little extra effort required in using online surveys to encourage further contact and all the immediate and long term benefits that will bring – it really couldn’t be any easier.

The following sample survey shows the feedback that could be used for a breaking band. It not only gathers valuable feedback, but continues to promote the band, their CD and gives the opportunity to encourage further contact.

Sample Feedback Survey

To view the summary results of the survey: Sample Survey Results

makieye Business Advertising, audience, feedback, loyalty program, market research, Online surveys, promoter, promotion, public relations

Webmasters have access to free tools such as Google’s Analytics that will provide them with detailed information on the number of website visitors, what pages have been accessed and the length of time visitors have spent accessing the website.

However, despite the vast amount of detailed information that can be collected what will always be missing is information that will tell the webmaster exactly what the visitor was thinking. Did they like or dislike the site? Was the layout easy to understand or just plain confusing? Did they find it easy to navigate and maybe the most important thing, did they find the information they wanted?

A website may be generating sales but why are some people that visit the website not buying anything? Was it because they didn’t like what was being offered or they couldn’t find what they wanted?

Using online surveys webmasters have a simple and accurate method of answering these types of questions. Direct feedback from the website visitors cuts to the chase, no need to guess, just ask the visitors themselves how they found the site and if they found what they were looking for.

With an online survey webmasters can find out:-

• How often do people visit the website?
• How did they reach the website?
• Are they interested in the website for business or pleasure reasons?
• Was the information they were looking for found on the website?
• How easy did they find navigating the website?
• Would they recommend the website?

A good website survey will be concise and will collate information that once analyzed will provide valuable information to help improve the website.

Another alternative to a traditional survey is to embed one or two survey questions within the website after specific procedures. For example at the end of the registration process the visitor can be asked if they found the procedure quick and easy; after ordering an item they could be asked if they found the ordering procedure and payment methods to their liking. To ensure that the questions don’t become repetitive to regular visitors the website can be programmed so that the questions are only asked once per registered user.

Website surveys take the mystery out of working out what visitors think of a website and using Online Survey Software they are quick and easy to design and once implemented will really become the webmaster’s assistant.

To see a sample website survey please follow the link: Sample Website Survey

makieye Business customer survey, feedback, market research, Marketing, Online surveys, visitors, Web Design, web performance, webmaster

Many promoters starting out have to work hard and on a shoestring to get an audience of a few hundred people to fill a venue. Flyers, word-of-mouth and social networks are some of the methods promoters can use to try and attract people to venues or club nights. Building a loyal following from grassroots is no easy task. It can take a great deal of effort to attract enough people to fill even the smallest of venues and that effort should not be wasted and the actual event used to establish a relationship with the audience that will continue beyond the end of the evening.

For a small outlay online surveys can be set up to provide the promoter with feedback and the opportunity to maintain an on going relationship with their audience. Using online Survey Software a promoter can now quickly and easily create an online survey.

With an online survey a promoter can find out exactly:-

• who attended;
• what persuaded them;
• what they thought of the event;
• would they expect to attend again;
• would they recommend future events to their friends.

A way to ensure a good response is to have a number of business sized cards that are marked clearly with words like “Feedback”, “Your opinion counts”, “Tell us what you thought”. Each card would have a web address pointing either directly to the survey or to a website where a link to the survey can be placed. Cards can be issued at the entrance along with the tickets, or handed out among the audience and if they are made the size of business cards they will be small enough to be stick in a pocket, purse or wallet. It may not even be necessary but a small incentive wouldn’t harm the response rate perhaps the chance to win a free guest pass for a future event, a signed CD or T shirt.

Using the results from online surveys the promoter is able to:

• Obtain a profile of the audience
• Gauge the overall success of the event;
• Measure the effectiveness of different promotion;
• Receive feedback on the venue and facilities;
• Receive feedback on the act;
• Promote on a one on one basis;
• Build a targeted database for future events;
• Build a loyal audience;
• Link to merchandise and other promotions.

Considering the effort that it takes to promote an event and the little extra effort required in using online surveys to encourage further contact and all the immediate and long term benefits that will bring – it really couldn’t be any easier.

The following example shows the feedback that could be used for a breaking band. Not only does the process collate good feedback it also continues to promote the band, their CDs, downloads and gives the opportunity to encourage further contact.

Sample Feedback Survey

To view the summary results of the survey: Sample Survey Results

makieye Business Advertising, audience, feedback, loyalty program, market research, Online surveys, promoter, promotion, public relations