One of the best ways for those in online marketing to find out about current demands of the market and what your customers or potential customers are looking for is through a well designed survey. Forget the once popular method of one question surveys. Those types of surveys are not going to help you really understand your customer base. Keep in mind at all times that the purpose of the survey is to get a better understanding of your customers and potential customers in a concise and effective manner.

Right now you need to put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Don't make the same mistake that many marketers do by thinking that if you just find out the most important reason behind the customer's search you are going to make a sale. Maybe the customer tells you the most important reason behind the search is to see if Yorkies are kid friendly. Simply telling them yes is not going to make a sale. What you need to do is understand the customer, learn about their fears and frustrations. What are their concerns and problems? You need to be able to address those issues, convincingly to make a sale. To do this you need a properly constructed survey.

What is the best way to survey your list? The best way to survey your list is to personally invite them. Pick up the phone and tell you them are conducting a survey and would like to email them the link for that survey. They can fill it out at their leisure. The survey is completely anonymous and shouldn't take them more then 5 or 10 minutes. Let them know the benefit the survey will provide them.

How many questions should be asked in a survey? Take the time to think about your questions. Choose your words carefully. Make sure you are using both closed ended and open ended questions. Use more closed ended questions then open ended so that your customers don't get bogged down answering questions and then get out of the survey. You aren't going to want to have more then 25 questions in your survey. About 75% of the questions should be closed ended questions.

How do you get customers to respond to requests for information? The best way to get people to take your survey is to offer them something for taking the time to fill out the survey. Yes it's only 5 or 10 minutes, but how likely are you to take that time out of your day just to help someone that wants you to continue to buy from them? Offer them a discount coupon on their next purchase, or you may consider paying them for taking the survey. But be sure to offer them something for their time and input if you want to increase the response rate. With those surveys in-hand your online marketing business is one step closer to success!

To Your Online Marketing Success!

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Bob Hamilton is an entrepreneur, author, writer, business consultant and trainer. http://www.OpeningADollarStore.com