Marketing 101 has taught us that getting input from target audiences is important to developing sound marketing strategy. (At MB Piland, understanding the target audience is a key part Audience Intel™ that we conduct.) But like anything else, if you want quality results, do your due diligence as you plan and develop your instrument. Put another way: garbage in, garbage out. So make it good in order to make it count.

Since anyone can create a survey now with tools like Google Docs and Survey Monkey, we all see a lot of surveys. More often than not, they are woefully flawed. Effective research requires skill. Here's a starter list of DOs and Don'ts to keep in mind if you decide to conduct your own survey. Better yet, if you need help getting to know your customers or prospects, give us a call.

1) Give them a reason.
Think about your target audience. You're asking them a favor: you want their point of view on something that might be very important to you, but not very important to them. Give them a stake in the outcome. If they are a customer, will it help improve your service to them? Better yet, if they give you their time, will you give them 10% off their next purchase or some other incentive?

2) Respect their time.
Along with a brief statement of objective or reason to take the survey, state upfront how much time will be needed to complete the survey. And build your survey with this in mind. The shorter, the better. If your survey is too long, people will abandon the survey and you'll be left with only partial input at best.

3) Set a deadline.
A short deadline will help ensure that your survey is given immediate attention, instead of shuffled aside only to be forgotten. This is another reason to make the survey short. If they can do it now and it won't take much time, you'll get better response.

4) Second chance.
It's ok to send out your survey a second time as a reminder. Just don't abuse your list with more than one reminder. If after two asks they haven't taken your survey, then they probably won't.

5) Make it easy.
Make your survey easy to take by providing multiple choice answers for most questions, and limiting the number of opened ended questions. Make sure though that respondents have the ability to express a custom answer somewhere on the survey, so that if you don't have their response listed, they can tell you what you're missing.

6) Test.
Before launching your survey to your entire mailing list, test it out with a small group. Find out if they're able to give the information you want to find out—and they want to tell you. If the survey yields weird results or a lot of incompletes, it's time to take another look before unleashing it on the masses.  —Alex