There are two kinds of marketers!

There are two kinds of marketers!

There are two kinds of marketers. One, those who guess, and one those who do customer research. 

Doesn't matter which type you or I are. Humans are constantly evolving beings and we bring changes one step at a time.

In one of my previous articles, Why only knowing your customers won’t increase your sales?! I shared 5 ways that we marketers can use for understanding our visitors/customers better. 

If I go by the level of difficulty a beginner may face to implement any of the 5 methods, then using heatmaps and session recording is the easiest, and conducting customer interviews is the most intimidating. 

If you aren’t already using heatmap or session recording, start right away. It will take you only 15 minutes to set up HotJar. 

Next easiest way to understand your visitors is using on-site surveys or polls. And today, I’ll share why, how, and a few of the dos and don’t with you in a succinct way so that you start using the survey to your advantage. 

Let’s first understand what is the role of an on-site survey and why you should use it.

Are surveys useful to our marketing operations? 

I trust you know what surveys are. You must have come across one on LinkedIn where someone might have asked something and asked for your opinions. 

As a marketer, a survey is an important weapon in your arsenal. It’s your way to rich qualitative information to understand the opinions and behaviors of your visitors.

You can discover new problems that you should address first or initiatives you must prioritize.

Below are few answers you can get from the survey:

  1. What does a visitor think about my company/product?
  2. What made a visitor land on your website? 
  3. What s/he might be looking for?
  4. What frustrates/motivates a visitor to your website?
  5. How aware are they of other competitive solutions?
  6. What do they like/dislike about a particular page/feature?
  7. …. 

Now you might be thinking -- is a survey relevant to us? We are in operation for 20 years, so we don’t need to bother our customers/visitors with surveys. We know all answers to these questions. 

This is a valid line of reasoning. But even if that’s the case, and you’re getting good results, I’ll still encourage you to try surveys. You might take your results from good to great.

Now let’s move to the how part. 

The fabrics of a survey

The fabrics of a survey are the questions you ask. If you get your questions wrong, you’ll not get the results you’re expecting.

I can’t stress enough. It’s imperative to get your questions right.

Now how to get your question right? By keeping the goal (your + visitor’s) and awareness stage of your visitor/user in mind. 

Why so?  

Say you’re setting up a survey on one of the service pages of a B2B consultant. Say the call to action is booking a call. Should you ask all that land on that page-- What stopped you from scheduling a call right now?

In my opinion, you shouldn’t. Because both the goal and awareness level of a first-timer and someone who is on the same page for the 6th time will differ. 

Now you may say -yes we can. Both users could be on the same awareness stage ( maybe you say it won’t make much difference in their awareness on the 10th visit vs the first).

They are your users, you know them better. And you could be totally right. I’m not denying it. 

However, there is still one difference. The goal of the old visitor of your service page again would be different from the first-timer. Both want to find answers to different questions. Their intrinsic motivations could be totally different.

So I believe a good question to ask a first-timer on the same page could be -- What made you look for <your solution>?

Similarly, if you’re optimizing an eCommerce funnel, your questions will change depending on which page they are on -- add to cart, product, payment, etc -- and where they were earlier.

I hope this helps you understand the role of understanding your visitor’s goal and awareness level in designing questions.

Now the next thing that could confuse you is how to figure out what goal a user may have in mind?

Follow the one-page one-goal rule. If you are not clear what the goal of a page is, ask your higher-ups or find it on your own. 

Use JTBD as a guiding framework to know what a user wants to accomplish on your page. I first came across the JTBD principle while working on an R&D project. I had no clue it could be used in marketing. Here is a webinar explaining the use of JTBD in marketing

Moving on, to help you get started, these links have a list of questions you can use in your survey. But don’t be lazy and use them right away as is.

Use the list to get inspiration. Your visitors are unique. Give them a feeling that you know them. 

And if you want to understand surveys in more detail, consider enrolling in the User Research course by CXL Institute. Megan Kierstead dives deeper into the ins and outs of different qualitative and quantitative methods you can use to understand your prospects or customers. 

And finally, some sins to avoid while conducting surveys:

A not-to-do list for surveys

  1. Don’t use a single survey on every page for every visitor.
  2. Do not survey everyone that lands on your website. Consider their engagement level. Set a threshold. 
  3. Don’t ask a lot of questions in a single go.
  4. Do not try a comprehensive survey. It is akin to demanding the impossible. You’ll get discouraged. 
  5. Do not ask questions that smell your assumptions 
  6. Do not ask closed-ended questions. 
  7. And I shouldn’t mention this but I’ll -- don’t use jargon. Use your customer’s verbiage. 
  8. Don’t let your biases stop you from achieving greatness. Be objective while analyzing the survey responses. 


Navjyot Singh

Product @Policybazaar | Ex - Genpact (Lean Digital Transformation) | Intern @TCPL (PPI) | MBA-SIBM Pune Co’24 | Unstop Top 10 College Champions | AIR 8 PGDBA 2022 | Consulting & Strategy Club - Ex Senior Member

3 年

The article is really good and insightful. Looking forward to learn more and grow. :)

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