Letвs say youвve been embarking on a massive research campaign. You decided to print postcards with survey questions on them to send out to all of your customers on your mailing list. Maybe these postcards instead have a link to a website for them to go to in order to answer an internet survey. Maybe instead youвll still print postcards, but youвll hand them out in your store instead to be certain that the customers you want to target the most get them. Or you could set up a survey group of some kind to ask people more detailed questions.
These are all different ways you can go about researching, but all of them have certain risks to consider that might alter your end results, and affect your research. If you arenвt careful you might fall into a trap that leads to inadequate information that harms your future marketing.
Iвve seen a company before who decided that they wanted to expand their market base. In order to do this they decided that they were going to research their customer base to get a better feel for what was working and what they needed to improve on. So they used one of those approaches I listed above, they made up some color postcards with various questions on them, and they handed them out in their store.
From this information they formulated a marketing push and sent it to a new mailing list, but the results were lackluster. They had gathered plenty of information and they had followed it closely, but people just didnвt care about their new ads. Why was it? They interviewed the wrong people.
They spent their time focusing on their current customers and what those people thought rather than ask the people who werenвt shopping at their store. The thing about surveys is that your most loyal customers are the ones most likely to respond, and if you want to generate new customers, these people wonвt be the best ones to talk to.
Consider who youвre surveying along with what their answers are to the survey questions.
Something else to consider is how truthful people are going to be when answering your questions. Are they just telling you what they think you want to hear, or are they just throwing out an answer without much thought because they donвt care as much? These are hard to watch for, and require that you do a good analysis of your data in order to pick out those who werenвt taking things seriously.
Research is the life blood of marketing, but only good research is going to help improve your sales. You have to know how to research and what to consider in order to get the best results, and the most relevant data.
