Ten Reasons to Market to the Online Generation Using Surveys and Questionnaires

Your customers are demanding. They’re extremely media aware and increasingly cynical – it’s a clever marketeer who can get through to them. Online surveys reinvent the traditional format – bringing all the benefits of the Internet without the programming. Here are ten reasons why they may be the silver bullet marketeers’ need, complete with examples supplied by Martin Day, managing director of online survey website Survey Galaxy – one of a new breed of websites making online surveys quicker and cheaper

1. It’s cheap
Select the right survey website and creating surveys can be free of any charge and the cost to publish is minimal.
Useful information harvested from surveys can be reused and repackaged in other marketing and PR for use in press outlets making it a very efficient form of information gathering.

2. It’s very easy
Anyone can create and design an online survey. Survey sites allow people who are interested in the benefits of surveys, rather than technicalities, to side-step the required programming skills and create relevant up-to-the-minute surveys, instantly – surveys that are even easier to complete than they are to make.

3. Canvas the world
Once the survey is online it is a simple step to promote it the most popular methods being either through email (with a link enclosed) or via a link from a website. Anyone who has the URL can be connected instantly to the survey, at a time that’s convenient to them, 24×7.

4. Everyone has got an opinion – and likes to give it
The majority of customers do not view surveys as spam and will in fact welcome the opportunity to voice their opinion and have the chance to make an impact on a brand. Online survey’s are an ideal way for broaching sensitive subjects with concerned employees; a survey asking a workforce on their opinion of change allows the key issues to be raised in a positive manner and encourages employee participation. Deliver a message to individuals and then have the feedback collated in a manageable form.

5. Get inside your respondent’s head
You can lead a customer to an advertisement but you can’t make them read it. Surveys actively engage the respondent, who read and then think about the question before giving their response.

6. Building relationships
It needn’t all end at the end of the survey – while you have the respondent’s attention and they are in the mood you can ask if they want to sign up for more information or a regular newsletter – making the most of the window of opportunity where you have their interest.

7. If you like this, you’ll love…
One of the most important benefits of a survey is the ability to make inspired or useful connections instantly to other areas. By embedding links within the survey to other websites that offer more detailed information you are able to reinforce the marketing message.

8. The soft sell
Surveys can be used to associate a product with positive attributes. By listing the many features of a product and then asking the respondent to say how important the features are to them, regardless of their response, the respondent will associate the product with the features.

9. Not just marketing
A survey is an effective, quick and easy method to promote and gain acceptance for a difficult proposal; maybe a public body trying to gain acceptance and support for a particular scheme.
For example take a city trying to gain support from the general public for their bid to host a future Olympic Games. A survey can explain each benefit putting the respondent in a much better position to appreciate what the real advantages are that might just combat any negative headlines. Using the feedback that is received the overall marketing strategy can be fine tuned.

10. Fresh topics engage interest
Think laterally and a lively and imaginative approach to surveys can provide a ‘hook’ to engage respondents. The survey subject can be targeted towards a particular group on a subject close to theirs hearts. The survey’s marketing message can take the form of a simple brand awareness message by stating that ‘the survey is being sponsored by brand name’, or by finding a link from the subject matter to the product – something that is surprisingly easy to do and that is highly effective.

Attract traffic by providing a Public Survey section as many people who enjoy completing crosswords and doing word puzzles enjoy completing questionnaires. Having a public survey notice board as part of a website is a cost effective and automated method that will help increase traffic and establish a loyal and returning following. No need for moderators as unlike discussion boards there is no opportunity for people to disrupt the site by inappropriate remarks as the survey results can be displayed in summary form.

Customers do not often view surveys as spam and the majority welcome the opportunity to voice their opinion and the chance to have an impact on a brand.

Many of the techniques and a few more are contained in the following sample survey created using Survey Galaxy’s survey software tool.

Getting Paid and Paid Well for Surveys

In these days of high unemployment and economic uncertainty, many are looking for ways to make extra money. One place people turn to is the Internet, looking for ways to get involved and make extra cash.

There are many, many ways to gain income on the Internet. Most of these ways are only possible if you have technical and marketing skills, special tools and training that can cost money and take a long time to acquire. Most require a lot of preparation and investment. There are, however, a few exceptions.

An exception in point is to use a paid surveys review to locate online surveys that pay.

Large companies in the U.S. and around the world spend many billions of dollars on promoting and advertising their products and services. The developed world is comprised of consumer-driven economies. To develop new products, improve old ones and measure advertising effectiveness, they must know what consumers prefer, what they like and don’t like, what they look for.

To get this info they hire skilled experts in marketing research. These skilled marketing professionals use various tools, including surveys to measure consumer opinion. They use the Internet to get these surveys answered, because it is cheap and fast; they can get answers back in hours or days instead of weeks or months.

Opinion surveys are a large business activity on the Net. There are literally thousands of surveys being made every week, on every conceivable subject! To get people to actually sit down and fill out the survey questionnaires, the market researchers compensate them for their time. Short surveys (5-8 minutes) would typically pay $10. A longer one (15-20 minutes) might pay $25. that’s not a lot of money, but it adds up. Take a $10 and a $25 survey every day and you’ll receive more than a thousand dollars in checks in the mail and/or deposits in your PayPal account every month!

To start making extra money, you just need to find online surveys that pay.

It’s a lot of fun and quite profitable to boot, to get paid taking surveys!

By – Eduardo Sanchez

Step by Step Guide to Employee Satisfaction Surveys

The benefit of running an annual employee survey has for a long time been widely accepted but many organizations have been put off by the amount of effort that is required.

Many organizations who have conducted their own internal employee satisfaction surveys use word-processors to design and compile a survey, then go through the effort of printing and distributing the survey and invest time chasing and collecting the completed surveys and then more time transferring the survey response information into a meaningful management report.

Fortunately with the introduction of the Internet and hosted survey websites what was once a time consuming, resource hungry, long winded and cumbersome process is now slick, quick and easy.

This document provides a step by step guide to help implement a survey that will bring considerable benefits to any organization.

Step 1 – Identifying The Need

The reasons an organization would need a survey are as wide and they are long. Listed below are a few of the common reason why employee satisfaction surveys are conducted.

Event Driven

If your organization is about to embark, or is going through, a change management program employee surveys can assist in managing the change, measuring the effectiveness of the change, help to deliver a ‘message’ and gather valuable feedback throughout the change cycle.

For organizations that are experiencing rapid growth employee surveys can monitor internal communications and management structures to ensure that employees are aware of their reporting and management responsibilities.

If an organization is suffering from poor moral stemming from either internal or external influences an employee survey can be used to identify what the specific concerns of employees are so that those concerns can be properly addressed.

Where there is an increase in turnover of staff employee surveys can help an organization identify the underlying cause of employee unrest and through their findings help find solutions.

Periodically

As part of a periodic assessment, surveys will assist an organization in regularly reviewing their employees and monitoring an individual’s job satisfaction, training and career development.

Employee surveys will allow the senior management team the opportunity to look at what makes their organisation tick and confirm, or not, that their ‘top down’ view matches the reality and ‘bottom up’ perspective of their employees.

With the help of employee surveys an organization can establish good employer/employee communication that will in turn bring both direct and indirect benefits.

Step 2 – Management Support

Although having management buy-in to a survey is always desirable and in some cases may be essential to ensure it is a success, in some instances the results of a survey that may be all that is required to kick-start a management that has grown complacent and detached from their employees.

Some senior management teams will recognize and drive the need for employee surveys, while other management teams may need to be convinced of the direct and indirect benefits an employee survey will bring.

The degree that management commit to an employee survey will have a bearing on the nature of the survey and to some extent will help determine what questions.

A management that is supportive of the initiative may require feedback on specific areas of the business or they may give the go ahead because they feel confident that the results will only confirm that the level of employee satisfaction throughout the organization is high.

Step 3 – Designing the Survey

Good surveys will take some time and effort to write but providing the basic rules of survey design are followed and a concerted effort is made to include the ‘need to know’ questions and omit the ‘nice to know’ an effective survey will begin to take shape.

Determining the exact questions that should be asked will be entirely dependent on the individual organization, its structure and the previously identified primary need and objectives of the employee survey.

At the same time as considering what questions to ask consider how the results are to be analyzed. As an example you may be tempted to ask for individual comments but these types of answer formats can be very cumbersome and time consuming to analyze and it is recommended that they be avoided or at least used sparingly.

Online surveys make it practical to conduct multiple smaller surveys than one very long survey and avoid the higher the drop out rate that are associate with longer surveys.

Step 4 – Checking And Testing

Grammar, Spelling And Clarity

Before the survey is published carefully check that there are no spelling and typing mistakes or incorrect grammar. It is recommended that you always have a colleague who has not been involved in the survey design to proof read the survey with clean eyes before the survey goes live, if no colleague is available try to take a break before checking through the survey again.

Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say

When checking the survey consider the survey from the respondent’s viewpoint, you may know what you mean by each question but will the employee?

Allow the Respondent to Answer Truthfully

Check that for closed questions where the employee will be required to choose from a number of available responses; have allowed the employee to answer accurately? Make use of responses like ‘No Comment’, ‘Not Applicable’ or ‘Don’t know’ where you want to make the question mandatory so that it is not accidentally missed out but the employee may not be able to answer.

Give consideration to allowing the employee to include an ‘Other’ answer but be mindful that ‘Other’ answers add to the complexity when analyzing the survey results.

Don’t Insist on a Response to Questions that may not have one

Check that for questions that have been made mandatory that you definitely do require an answer, for example open questions that ask for additional comments should be made optional unless you really do require the respondent to write a comment.

Check You Will Be Able To Analyze The Data

Make another check of the survey but this time examine how the results of the survey will be analyzed. Give consideration as to how you will want to analyze the survey data, have you asked the right questions to be able to perform the detailed analysis that you desire? For example if you want to be able to view the detailed response data from the perspective of the different departments, or maybe length of service, check you have asked the employee to indicate their own department and/or length of service.

Don’t Ask More Questions than you Need to

Consider all the questions in the survey and look for questions that are not ‘need to know’.

Test The Link And Try Completing The Survey

Publish the survey and then send the survey’s link to a number of people who will be willing to test the survey. By completing you own survey yourself you will get a feel for how the respondent will view the survey. From your own and others feedback stop and make adjustments to the survey as required.

Repeat this process until you are happy with the survey.

Check the data

Take time to view the online summary results of the test data and confirm that the data is being collected in a manner that can be properly analyzed and that will give meaningful results.

Step 5 – Promoting And Deploying The Survey

Where all or the majority of employees have access to the Internet or company intranet deploying the online survey is as easy as falling off a log, either via email or by establishing a link to the survey from your own website or the Intranet.

If there are employees that do not have direct access to the Internet there may be a number of alternatives that can be used such as issuing the survey in printed form, providing access through a shared terminal or giving them an incentive to complete the survey at home.

Step 6 – Monitoring

You are able to view in real-time the results online and the number of surveys that have been both started and completed.

After a few days if the number of completed surveys falls short of that expected it is recommended that one or more reminders are sent to employees asking them to complete the survey.

Step 7 – Analyzing the Results

There are no hard and fast rules for analyzing the data. Much will depend on the specific survey, the questions that are asked and the number of responses that are received.

On the proviso that the right questions have been asked when the survey data is first analyzed a number of ‘headline’ results will often stand out that can provide you with an overview and an assessment of the general mood of the organization.

In areas where the results indicate areas of concern a more detailed analysis may be advisable. For example if employees were asked if they felt the organization provided equal opportunities to both genders it would be useful to have a gender split and if say 25% gave a negative response the ability to drill down further to see what the gender split was of the 25% that answered negatively. Was any negative view shared by employees of both genders, is it a view held throughout the organization, or is it one that is limited to a particular gender and/or a particular department?

Step 8 – Post Survey Action

The most important step is more likely to be the last. The results of an employee survey will either confirm that the perfect organization really does exist or, and more likely, it will by the individual and common concerns that are raised identify the areas that are less than perfect.

It may be that further more detailed surveys are required that target specific areas. For example the survey may reveal that negative responses are received from employees working in a particular department but the reasons for their negativity may not be clear. A highly focused follow-up survey may help reveal the root causes.

When employee surveys are run on a regular basis an organization that has a track record of addressing the issues highlighted by surveys will see their efforts rewarded in the results of subsequent surveys. Almost all organizations have problems and it helps an organization’s moral to see that a channel exists that will identify problems that can then be addressed and resolved.

Summary

These guidelines are intended to help an organization conduct successful employee satisfaction surveys, they are however, only a guide.

By utilizing existing technology and conducting surveys online you are now able to monitor the heart beat of an organization, quickly, easily and at minimal cost.

Take Online Surveys for Money

The world economy is not in very good shape about now. Lots of people are out of work, many are looking for ways to make extra money to help out. People turn to the Internet, searching for ways to increase their income.

You can certainly make money on the Internet, but where to start? Most ways of making money demand certain skills and training. There is a learning curve involved, long study and substantial cash investment. There are exceptions, however…

One way of making extra money that requires little investment or know-how is to get paid for surveys.

Here is how the surveys business works: Large companies need feedback from the consumers of their products and services in order to plan new products and improve existing ones. They also need that feedback to measure the effectiveness of their advertising.

Consumer spending makes up 2/3 of the economies of developed countries. Most large companies have little or no direct contact with the people who actually buy their products. Look around you the next time you go to a department store or supermarket. Thousands of products are being sold by middlemen. The actual producers are nowhere to be seen.

Companies contract with market researcher to measure consumer preferences and opinions. Market researchers use mostly surveys to measure consumer opinion. Almost all of these surveys are now done over the internet, online.

Surveys are a very big business on the Net. Thousands of surveys are being made each and every week. So how do they get people to take the time to fill out those surveys? They pay them. Surveys pay from $5 to $150 each. Most are in the $10 to $25 range. Not a lot of money per survey, but they don’t take much time and they add up quickly.

Many survey takers report incomes of over $1,000 per month! If you want to make extra money, you should seriously consider finding some good legitimate paid surveys that will pay you cash for surveys.

Payment is by checks in the mail or deposits into your PayPal account. Millions of dollars are going to survey participants every month. Some of that could be coming to you!

By J.R.Watson

Take Online Surveys for Money

Pity the thousands of companies that sell products and never meet the buyers! Look at all the stuff in a supermarket. Thousands of products and the producers are miles away. How can they plan what they produce without feedback from their ultimate customers, the consumers?!

The producers of products and services have to know what their ultimate buyers are thinking; what do they like? What don’t they like? To find out they hire market researchers to tell them. The market researchers use surveys to measure public opinion. The fastest cheapest way to do surveys is over the Internet.

Literally thousands of surveys are being made weekly. So how in the world do they find people to take all those surveys? The answer is simple. They pay survey participants to fill out the survey forms.

Those payments to survey participants is what makes it possible for you an me to take surveys for money at home and make extra cash.

It’s a great arrangement. You can sit at your computer, supply your much-needed opinion and actually get paid for surveys!

To take surveys for money you need to first get invited to participate in paid surveys. The way you do this is to volunteer with some good survey makers. There are lots of survey makers, but 20% are good, 40% so-so and 40% are bad news.

Your problem is how to get a good list of survey makers to sign up with. The problem is that the lower 40%, the no-pay/low-pay time wasters do 90% of the advertising, trying to recruit new survey participants to replace those that just quit.

To learn more about how to get money for surveys, just follow any of the links in this posting.

Most serious survey-takers report incomes of $200-$600 a month. Some make over $1,000 a month. You can work your own hours and no special skills are required.

By – Jonathan J. Jones

You Can Earn Money Taking Online Surveys

Statistical surveys are used to collect quantitative information about items in a population. Surveys of human populations and institutions are common in political polling and government, health, social science and marketing research. A survey may focus on opinions or factual information depending on its purpose, and many surveys involve administering questions to individuals.

A paid or incentivized survey is a type of statistical survey where the participant is rewarded through an incentive program, generally entry into a sweepstakes program or a small cash reward, for completing one or more surveys.

A paid survey is used to collect quantitative information about the participants’ personal and economic habits set against their particular demographic. Incentivized surveys are considered to be more likely to catch a wider and more representative range of respondents compared to unincentivised surveys.

You’ve probably already had an experience where a company has phoned you up or stopped you in the street asking you to take part in a quick survey? Smart companies do this all the time, in fact they spend BILLIONS every year conducting this kind of research.

Why?

Its simple, they need to get the opinion of the people on the street, regular people like you and me so they don’t waste money on products and advertising campaigns that people don’t want!

More and more companies are turning to the internet to collect this essential research. And they’re willing to PAY YOU for your opinion! People in the know are taking advantage of this to easily earn money taking online surveys

If you can type your name and click a mouse, you can do it too!

If earning an easy part time extra income doesn’t interest you, how about learning some simple ways you can fool your friends and family performing mind blowing card tricks you can learn today?