Guesswork and gut instincts don’t cut it when it comes to launching successful products and crafting the right marketing messages. Without market research, it’s impossible to understand what motivates your customers, anticipate their needs and stand out from your competitors. You might have a general sense of the problems you solve for your target customer base, but without digging deep, you won’t set yourself up to earn longtime loyalty. 

To speak your target consumer base’s language and develop the types of products they crave, you must put in the time and groundwork to understand them and anticipate their needs. Audience research can be accomplished in many ways—from digging into your CRM and sales data to conducting keyword research into the types of things your target market searches for.  For real answers, the best place to start is by going straight to the source. Enter: surveys. 

The importance of customer surveys: 

Conducting research to gauge brand and product sentiment and deeply understand your target audience has rapidly become an industry standard. 

• According to Clay Christensen’s book, “Milkshake Marketing,” 19 out of every 20 new products fail. You need data backing your product development strategy to retain your existing customers and gain new business. 
• 9% of CMOs’ budgets go to marketing data and analytics, yet 26% still categorize this as a top three capability gap.
• Only 14% of organizations feel they have achieved a 360-degree view of their customer. 

What are ExpertVoice Survey Campaigns:

The ExpertVoice Advocacy Platform allows brands to create a custom survey, publish it to ExpertVoice and collect actionable insights from their target audience of industry insiders. No need to use a separate surveying tool or employ a third party to conduct your market research. Survey Campaigns allow you to prompt experts to share feedback on specifics about your products (from pricing to new features, get input on it all), gauge brand sentiment and more. Target specific groups of experts based on their member affiliation to refine your results or a broader audience to receive the most feedback possible.

Insights you can collect: 

• Net Promoter Score (NPS): Before and after you launch an Education Campaign on ExpertVoice, ask experts to rank their likelihood to recommend your brand on a scale from one to 10 to better understand your business health and the impact of your advocacy marketing program.
• Early product research: Conduct early product marketing research with a core group of experts to inform your company’s R&D, product positioning and messaging. 
• Post-launch feedback: Collect insights during your company’s peak-selling season to learn how your products are used or perceived in the market. Ask experts for personal feedback about your pricing and how to improve the product in the future.
• Competitive research: Gather valuable insights about how your company ranks compared to new and existing competitors in the industry.

The benefits of running surveys on ExpertVoice: 

• Access to a specialized pool of respondents: Members of the ExpertVoice platform are vetted and credentialed real-world experts. Unlike the average consumer, the ExpertVoice audience has already opted into engaging on a deeper level with brands, providing them with knowledgable feedback on their products and fostering partnerships with the brands they love.
  
• Simple, templatized process: Quickly collect insights at scale without hiring an expensive third-party marketing firm or adding a new survey software to your tech stack. The survey builder in the Campaign Manager makes launching surveys easier than ever before so that you can focus on what matters most, the results.

• Turn insights into action: Take customer surveys a step further with the Advocacy Platform. Additional on-demand campaigns are at your fingertips to deepen your relationship with survey respondents and turn them into lifelong advocates of your brand. 

6 tips for running successful customer surveys: 

Ready to get started? Create an effective survey on ExpertVoice with these simple tips. 

1. Keep it short and sweet—10 questions maximum.
2. Target a broad expert audience to collect data from various industries, locations and demographics.
3. Consider a promotional plan to get more experts’ eyes on your survey and boost your responses. 
4. Submit your email address to get notified when your survey reaches a specific number of responses.
5. Launch surveys throughout the year to capture regular insights from your target audience(s) and understand the impact of your advocacy marketing program
6. Consider re-engaging your survey respondents in future advocacy marketing campaigns on ExpertVoice. 

Whether you want to better understand the perception of your brand, collect industry insights or dig into product sentiment— ExpertVoice Survey Campaigns makes it easy to collect insights from an expert audience and conduct in-depth research tailored to meet your brand’s needs. 

Contact your Account Executive to get started with Survey Campaigns or learn more about ExpertVoice here.