Using Questionnaires

Questionnaires are a great way to gather information about a market, target clients and customers.

The uses of questionnaires are numerous !

Here are some examples:

• gathering information about customers and target clients – their characteristics, buying behaviors, wants, problems, preferences. This enables you to better communicate with them and provide the products and services that meet their needs. It can also help with market profiling / segmentation.

• tracking surveys help you to discover where is the customer in the adoption process. The information gathered shows their market awareness, knowledge, intention to buy, or repurchase of the product for example

• customer intention surveys look at what motivates someone to move from interest in a product to buying it. This gives you an understanding of customer conversion, commitment and loyalty.

• customer attitudes and expectations surveys help you discover whether your product meets their expectations; what opinions have they formed about the product / your company / your brand. This can be useful for advertising; to improve conversion rates and their loyalty to your company.

• getting feedback on people’s needs before developing a product or service – including before you develop an information product!

• getting feedback on new product concepts; discovering target clients’ likes and dislikes; evaluating pricepoints; likelihood of purchase and of course these serve to create anticipation for your new product or service. They can also enable you to estimate the demand for new products/services

• habits and uses – to understand how, when and where a product is used. A simple example – a toothbrush can also be used to clean around taps, those awkward cracks on cookers. I buy the cheap ones for that – ones that I would never use to clean my teeth.

• obtaining feedback on your products and services

• product positioning or competitive market position i.e. how the market views your company/products/services relative to the competition

• customer service surveys about the customer service received, the process involved and how those involved performed

• brand equity surveys – brand awareness, brand quality, brand associations, brand loyalty

• measuring the effectiveness of advertising messages
• price setting surveys to estimate demand elasticity and discover optimal price points

And of course …. while you’re gathering information you’re also communicating with customers and target clients. When you use a  survey to solicit feedback from customers, this lets them know that their opinions and the information they can provide is of value to you and to your business. When a survey is used to gather information from target clients it can be the mechanism for starting a relationship with them that could result in them feeling that they know, like and trust you and want to buy from you. It keeps your company and your products/services top of mind. It can also help in building a list if you have an online business or use online marketing to promote your business.