Social Media For Businesses – How Surveys Can Help!

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Photo Credit: iStock.com/Artist's jurgenfr

There’s no excuse why your business shouldn’t be using an online survey application nowadays. They are so easy to set up and use, not to mention an intuitive and simple means to gather mission-critical data for your business. Would you like to know what the customer wants? Go ahead and design a poll for them. That way you can get some pretty nifty and popular surveys that can end up enhancing your business appeal and authenticity.

Since time immemorial (OK, maybe not immemorial but for as long as business and commerce has been around), marketers have relied on market research to gain a foothold in their industry. Things in this respect used to be pretty hard for small businesses, since the cost of carrying out an expansive market research was prohibitive. But now, thanks to the proliferation of social media technologies, it’s easy and economical to know the customer’s opinion. You can now get information about how to improve your products and services. You can now know what the people are craving for.

Types of Surveys that can help you gain exposure over social media:

• Market Analysis – Find Out What The People Want

Starting a business is risky. Before you embark on this journey, you need to know what products or services the market is clamoring for. Online surveys can be structured in such a way that you can ask people questions about their choices, what features they are willing to pay for, etc. This way you can design a solid business strategy for your startup.

Market Analysis

• Tracking Performance – Ensuring Continuity And Consistency

This kind of survey can help your company keep a check-and-balance approach to operations. You can gauge the response of customers regarding your products and services, and whether your staff is doing an admirable job of keeping the clientele satisfied or not?

• Customer Follow-Up – Hands-On And Personalized Customer Support

Social media is, by nature, an open platform. A happy clientele can become brand advocates whereas a disgruntled customer can air their grievances publicly. The good thing about social media is that it gives businesses a means to show how thoroughly they can look after the needs of their customers. In the event of a successful sale, a business can ask a customer to rate the experience via a simple survey. This experience can be shared on social media, giving businesses a powerful tool to enhance their credibility as a result. You can show how grateful you are for their support and that you can improve continually.

• Demographics – Expanding And Targeting Your Core Audience More Effectively

You have a target demographic. And now you want people who share some or more of the traits that your target audience does. In other words, you want to grow your market share by broadening your customer base. A survey can help you achieve those goals by asking your core audience about their lives, their tastes, their issues and challenges, etc. The questions can veer off in an unrelated territory but that can prove particularly advantageous if your brand enjoys a high degree of trust with your existing customers. All the data collected from demographical surveys can aid in product and service development. In fact, they can help you forge strategic partner relationships as well.

• Crowdsourcing – Let The Customers Decide For You

Want to name your new product? Ask the customers for suggestions. Want to change that logo? Again, ask your customers about what they think of the branding change. That’s the beauty of crowdsourcing. Customers like it when they feel like part of their favorite brands. It gives them a feeling of being a stakeholder.

These are some of the most popular ways that a survey can help you expand your business on social media. The costs are affordable and the benefits many. You can even improve the workings of your company via social HR by relying on employee feedback over social media. As you can see, the possibilities are limitless.

About The Author

Kelvin Stiles is a tech enthusiast and works as a marketing consultant at SurveyCrest – FREE online survey software and publishing tools for academic and business use. He is also an avid blogger and a comic book fanatic.