Know Exactly What Your Customers Want
Wouldn’t it be great if we knew exactly what our subscribers and customers wanted? Well, you can 
Many of us know how this can be done, yet we don’t do it.
Have you ever heard of a thing called a survey? I am sure a lot of us have thought about using surveys to ask our subscribers what they want, but we never get around to it. If you are one of those people… are can be leaving A LOT of money on the table.
How else can you ask your subscribers what they want with such ease?
I have surveyed my subscribers a few times now, and have always understood their needs a lot better after seeing the results of the surveys.
Here are a few survey tips which I have learned that may help you;
- Do not have too many questions. I like using about 10 questions.
- Try to use many “click” answer questions. What I mean by this is to use questions that they can answer by simply clicking. Example: “Yes” or “No”, or selecting a scale “1″ through “10″.
- Take time writing the questions.
- If you have multiple answers, make sure to offer an “Other” answer field.
- Allowing essay style answers is great. But, it will take A LOT longer to compile those answers. A survey script can not compile the answers to questions that allow custom written answers.
One more thing… people like free gifts
I released a few surveys last year, each mentioning that if they filled out the survey that they would be able to download a free gift. These surveys resulted in quite a few subscribers answering them.
However, I recently released a new survey. I did not mention anywhere about a free gift that they would download after filling out the survey (I did offer a gift though, I just didn’t mention it up front). For this survey, I received 1/4 of the number of results that I did with the other surveys.
In all surveys, there will be those that for some reason do not want to spend 5 minutes properly filling it out. You will find that you will get a lot of quick answers, like “yes” and “no” (in the essay type answers). This will happen a lot more if you mention about a free gift up front, since many people will not care about your survey, just the free gift. People are just like that… and that’s all I’m saying about that for now
As for what type of survey script I use;
Right now I am using one that was included in my web host’s fantastico package. It is called “PHPESP”, and you can get it from within your cpanel fantastico package (if you have that), or you can get it from here.
I have also used “SurveyMonkey” in the past, and I liked it then. I haven’t used it recently, so I can not comment much more on it. However it is a web based survey site, so you do not need to install it on your own web site. You can check it out here.
So how can you know exactly what your customers want? Ask them!
January 18th, 2008 09:02
Good comments Joel. I have a silly example, but James Brausch made a tool called Glyphius which lets you test headlines to see what will work. I need the same tool for figuring out what bonus a client would like best, to make sure that the one I choose is THAT ONE THING.
What I see these days is people don’t sign up more often when something is offered free before the signup, but if you send a link to a bonus after the signing up is complete. nearly everyone DL’s it.
January 20th, 2008 06:26
Here’s a surprising thought - you may have more success offering the free gift BEFORE the survey!
That might sound counter-intuitive, but I wrote a blog post on this a while back, where a company achieved a 76% response rate to a survey, simply by offering a free gift with their survey - it utilized the principle of reciprocity.
I also gather anonymous feedback throughout my sales letter by using my own program called Feedback Seeker (add a .com to find). This helps me find any weaknesses in my own sales letters.
The only way to find out what’s on a visitor’s or customer’s mind is to ask!
Paul Hancox
ConversionBlogger | Converting Visitors Into Customers