The proof of a good online marketing strategy is in the ROI you receive in exchange. The ROI can be in the form of increased sales or more brand awareness/user engagement, and so on. Effective marketing strategies cannot rely on assumptions and conjectures – it needs scientific data.
Extensive market research has to be conducted on your target audience to understand their pain points before you can provide them with actionable content that will benefit your business. Researching customer behavior will not only help you at the production level but also aid your marketing exercise.
Surveys are an indispensable tool for learning about your customers’ likes and dislikes. Often analyzing customer behavior data from the number of hits your advertisement or marketing content has received fails to provide you with the whole picture.
Many marketers tend to leave out surveys when conducting market research as they believe that customer opinion and customer behavior are contradictory. Surveys are also criticized for being qualitative and unable to provide statistical data.
Both of these assumptions are mostly incorrect. It is true that surveys might not be able to determine future customer behavior correctly in terms of purchases. Still, it makes the marketing team aware of the specific demographics of your target audience. It also enables you to learn about the impression that your company has left on them.
How to use customer satisfaction surveys to get customer feedback
Your first step would obviously be creating customer satisfaction surveys using a customer feedback form. The following step requires you to decide where to place the form. This is the all-important step.
Well-placed surveys can offer you access to a wealth of information about your customers, both past and present. You only have to keep in mind that your surveys fit in aesthetically and do not seem disruptive to your audience. They will not wish to participate in your survey if you catch them off-guard with it.
If you spring a survey onto your customers when they are least expecting it, you can risk frustrating them and even losing out on their business. So, where can you place your customer satisfaction survey to yield the best results?
- You can include them in your blog or digital magazine
- You can leave them at the end of your whitepaper or product/service content
- You can request customers to participate in your survey via an email newsletter
Such a survey can help you, the marketer, gain insight into the reputation of your brand and the results received from your content marketing. It allows you to understand whether your content is effective in positioning your brand the way you intend and if it is influencing the purchase decisions of your customers.
Tips on creating reliable and effective customer satisfaction surveys
Now that you have a basic idea of how customer satisfaction surveys can help you obtain necessary customer feedback, we share how you can encourage customers to engage with your surveys –
1. Ask close-ended or MCQ questions
You don’t want to ask your customers open-ended questions in a survey. It will not help you with any quantitative data. Try to have set parameters when you ask them any question. It will aid your efforts in obtaining actionable information.2.
2. Try not to ask about future purchasing decisions
You’ve brought out a new product, and you want to know if the customer will be interested in buying the same, so you ask them. What could be the harm, right? Wrong. If you ask your customers about future purchasing decisions, the data you will receive is likely to be unreliable. Neither they, and in turn, nor you can tell what they might/might not buy in the future. A better approach is to ask them about the products currently available in the market that they do find interesting and may have purchased.
3. Pay attention to timing
As already discussed, your survey needs to be well-placed and well-timed if it is online. If you have crafted content for the audience, give an opportunity to consume the same first before asking them to enter your survey. When you do this, instead of bombarding your customer with an ill-timed survey, you show that you value and respect your customer’s time and your own content.
So, the next time you find that your content marketing strategy might need a shot in the arm, you know what to do. Better still, include periodic customer satisfaction surveys into your content marketing endeavor, and you will be able to witness measurable gains.
