Ask And Ye Shall Receive!
One of the most powerful marketing tactics you can use is SURVEYING.
There are many different ways that you can use surveying in your marketing...
1. You can ask your customers what they want to BUY next.
Seriously! You can ask your customers what else they'd be interested in buying if you offered it. Many of them will tell you their "wish list" and give you great ideas for future products.
2. You can ask your customers WHY they bought from you.
By doing this you can pinpoint the most effective parts of your marketing and copy -- allowing you to improve those "buttons" even more.
3. You can ask your partners/affiliates if there's anything they need to help them sell more of your products and services.
By helping your partners sell more, you increase your business. Period. Too many marketers don't put enough focus on their partners.
4. You can ask prospects that are LEAVING your web site why they aren't buying! (Or taking your call-to-action.)
This is an extremely powerful method that not many people are using. My good friend, Alex Mandossian, pioneered such a method that asked web site abandoners to select from a group of reasons why they were leaving. This method allowed him to "recycle" visitors back into the site by sending them to a page that addressed whatever reason they chose. Brilliant stuff.
If you aren't using some of the above methods you should start right away -- especially #4. I highly recommend Alex Mandossian's ASKDatabase service. His service makes it very quick & easy to get surveys up and running. The service also makes managing the results a breeze, yet produces extremely valuable data. You can get a free trial and play around with it. I highly recommend it.
Alex's ASKDatabase web site also has a free audio course (you can go listen to it right now) that details 7 different techniques that can be used with the service. Just listening to this little audio course will give you tons of additional ideas for how you can use surveying to make more money. (Just click the link on the homepage next to the animated arrow icon.)
Comments
All good points, but a few comments:
When you ask people, they are often prone to tell you what they think you want to hear - even more so if there is something in it for them. And of course, what they say they want to buy and what they are willing to spend money on are often two different things.
Another option is to send them to one of these PPC's that track searches for you when they leave and find out where they really go. By their deeds, you will (truly) know them.
Paul
Posted by: Paul Colligan | June 19, 2004 12:30 PM
Point well taken, but if you do a proper job of surveying (there are several techniques to ensure accuracy) then what the majority of your customers tell you *IS* in fact what they are interesting in buying -- especially if it solves a problem they still feel they have. Does this mean everyone they responded to the survey will actually buy such a product if it's developed? Of course not. But it will give you some solid direction for what products to develop next.
I can tell you where people will go when they leave your site (and should they do other searches via a search engine) -- right back to queries related to the SAME KEYWORDS that brought them to your site in the first place. About 75% of visitors that come to your site after doing a search will end up leaving and doing the same search again. Others will search for 'similar' keyword phrases. If you've done your keyword research properly, you'll already have those terms covered.
Posted by: John Reese | June 19, 2004 12:42 PM
John, I took your advice and put up a survey for all ezine publishers - which is also a self-assessment tool to see where your ezine marketing is going.
http://www.EzineMarketingCenter.com/survey.htm
As an incentive to get people to respond, I've promised to offer all responders a copy of the compiled results from the survey - that should be pretty instructive.
Jay Abraham did it a year or so ago, and the results compilation was very educational.
Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian
Instant Niche Minisites
http://www.InstantNicheMinisites.com
Get Niche'd - NOW!
http://www.EzineMarketingCenter.com/niched.htm
Posted by: Dr.Mani | June 21, 2004 12:23 AM
Paul,
Nice to see another Paul keeping Johnny "The Brain" on his toes... ;)
The issue of getting the Real Truth out of people is more a matter of how you ask the questions than whether people want to lie.
Most people don't.
If you're going to ask non-buying exit traffic why they're non-buying exit traffic, rotate the questions. If you don't know how to phrase a page that gets accurate answers, do a multi-phase quiz. Like the pop-up quiz example in "Kick It Up."
This is a lot easier to get statistically significant samplings for than buyers. After all... even a HOT site has 18 or 19 non-buyers for every one buyer.
Paul
Posted by: Paul Myers | June 23, 2004 06:09 AM
John,
I agree with you that the Ask Database is a great tool. I've been using the Gold Package for a couple months now. In fact, your blog headline almost knocked me out of my chair, which says "Ask And Ye Shall Receive", which is the domain name I registered to use as my affiliate link for Alex's program.
I have been using a "Why didn't you buy" exit survey to non-buyers with a lot of interesting feedback. Many people angrily tell me I should be giving away my product for *fr-ee*, and tell me how I should rot in H-E-double-toothpicks... which I blow off. But others give good reasons for not buying, which can often be resolved and turned into a purchase with one clarifying email.
Joe
Posted by: Joe Barton | July 8, 2004 01:02 AM
John,
Ask and Ye shall receive.
I like the title of this article.
I also enjoy your article. From what you have written, you wrote about posting survey to your own list.
For those who does not have a list yet, or the list is very small, then one of the way to do a survey is to use the pay per click search engine.
By using your targeted keywords, you can advertise with for example goolge adwords. Then you channel the traffic to your survey page where you ask them a list of questions.
Once your desired number of response is achieved, you can stop the PPC campaign, and there you have it, your survey result.
Since these people have not known you or your company, their respond can be more impartial.
Raymond Imaican
http://www.247cleanair.com/
http://www.88dating.com/
Posted by: Raymond Imaican | October 13, 2004 12:33 AM