In this edition of ‘FAQs with Jenny’, our Founder and CEO, Jenny Karubian delves deep into the world of Survey Market Research. She explores how Surveys are conducted and what clients can expect to gain from Survey research compared to other types of Market Research methods.
As Surveys have taken top spot as the most popular form of Market Research, Jenny offers insights into why Surveys are such useful Market Research tools that are easily leverageable by any business or person for Market Research purposes.
Read on to find out all you need to know about our Survey Market Research methodology, its benefits and more.
WHAT IS A SURVEY?
At the risk of oversimplification, Surveys are essentially a way to collect information from a group of people by asking them questions. They can be conducted through numerous mediums including paper and pencil, online, in person, or over the phone.
Surveys provide faster actionable insights and can be extracted from a large population size when compared to other forms of Market Research, specifically Qualitative Market Research.
BENEFITS OF SURVEYS
Surveys offer a multitude of benefits for businesses looking to understand their market, employees, or customers better.
Jenny says, ‘Surveys are a wonderful tool for capturing research from a large population. If you want to get the opinions of 300 people, 500 people, even a thousand people, Surveys are really the way to go.’
Here’s an inexhaustive list of benefits that businesses can expect to gain by relying on Surveys as their Market Research method of choice:
- Scalability: Surveys allow you to gather data from a large number of people quickly and efficiently, providing a broad understanding of trends and opinions.
- Quantifiable Data: Surveys provide structured data that can be easily analyzed and quantified, offering clear metrics for decision-making.
- Versatility: Surveys can cover a vast array of topics, from Market Research to employee engagement, making them adaptable to diverse business needs.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Compared to other research methods, Surveys can often be a more cost-effective way to gather extensive data. Read our blog on ‘Market Research Pricing’ here to find out how Surveys can give you more bang for your buck when compared to other Market Research solutions.
- Actionable Insights: By identifying patterns and preferences across a large group, Surveys offer the power to pinpoint areas for improvement, highlight opportunities, and ultimately drive business transformation.
SURVEY INSIGHTS: A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY
Jenny, speaking about the types of insights that can be gleaned from Surveys, says ‘Surveys can be leveraged for a whole variety of different things. This can be for brand perception, it can be employee satisfaction, a whole variety of different topics can be covered in a Survey.’
She adds that ‘The best thing about Surveys is they are very flexible. They can be administered in a whole variety of ways. They can be done on mobile which is increasingly common now. On people’s desktop, they can be asked in person in the context of doing intercepts on site with the population that you’re serving, they can be done at events as part of an intercept. If you’re trying to capture information about an ongoing event as it’s happening and getting insights in the moment, Surveys are really good for that as well.’
Surveys can be done internally with your organization or they can be done externally using a panel and, as Jenny shares, Ready to Launch Research has a variety of different panel providers that they engage depending on the population that’s needed for your Survey. So if you want to survey young people who use social media or if you want something that’s a little bit more niche such as business people or IT decision makers or there’s a lot of different topics, a lot of different populations that you can use and we have panel companies to fulfill all of those needs depending on who you want to survey.’
OUR APPROACH TO EFFECTIVE SURVEYING
Jenny elaborates on our Survey Market Research process at Ready to Launch, lending insight into the client’s journey from our initial consultation to final delivery.
When we conduct a Survey, our approach is meticulous and client-focused:
- Define the Objective: The first thing we do is figure out the objective. We consult with our clients to understand what information they actually want to know. Do you want to know brand awareness? Employee satisfaction? What exactly are you trying to nail down?
- Integrate with Qualitative Research: Is the survey on its own, or is it in tandem with other qualitative research? If it's with qualitative research, we conduct the qualitative first. This allows us to use the survey to understand how applicable the qualitative findings are to a larger population. For example, in a typical qualitative study like Focus Groups, we might talk to 10 to 40 people. For a survey, we start with a sample of at least 100 and go up from there. If you talk to consumers and find that 10 of 20 people in your sample felt a certain way about your brand, and you want to know if that's true of the larger population, we'll then put that into a survey and send it out to 300-500 people. When the results come back, we'll have a clear understanding of how applicable the findings are to a larger population.
- Tailor to the Audience: We define the audience and ensure we're speaking to them in the correct voice. If we're surveying gamers about video game usage, we might use more casual language. For executives, we'd use professional and formal language. We tailor the questions to the audience, and we tailor the audience to the client. We work hard to ensure we're getting the right population for your survey. If you're trying to define or validate your target audience, surveys are perfect for that.
- Unbiased Questions and Optimal Length: We work to ensure our survey questions are written in an unbiased way to elicit the most truthful answers. We also make sure surveys aren't too long due to "survey fatigue." If a survey is too long, people stop paying close attention. We aim for surveys to be no more than 10 minutes long, as that's about the maximum time consumers will spend giving their full attention.
- Test Runs (Piloting): Before pushing a survey out to, say, a thousand respondents, we do a test run with just 50. We then analyze the initial responses. If there's any problem with the survey logic, if open-ended questions aren't getting the answers we want, or if there are any other issues, we can diagnose them with this smaller group. Once that data is clean, we send it out to the larger population. This piloting saves time and helps us foresee and solve any issues before they become a problem, ensuring a successful delivery of survey data with integrity.
- Final Delivery: Finally, we share what we've learned with your team. We dig deep into the data using complex data analytics, using "cross-tabs" or "banners." This helps us break down the results by different groups, for example, how people on the West Coast answered compared to the East Coast, or how men's opinions differed from women's, or young people's from older people's. This way, you get really specific, actionable insights tailored to each demographic. If it's purely number-based (Quantitative Research), you'll get one comprehensive report covering all the trends and segmented data. If we also did in-depth interviews (Qualitative Research), you'll receive a two-part report that presents both sets of findings side-by-side, comparing what we learned from the Focus Group or other Qualitative Market Research method with the Survey results.
As a proven Market Research methodology, Surveys are a great option for businesses or clients looking to invest in a cost-effective, quick and easy Market Research method. If this sounds like what you’re looking for, reach out to our team to set up a consultation and we’ll help you get started with all your Survey needs.
Direct connect:
+1 818 741 1281 (US)
+44 020 3239 3082 (UK)
info@readytolaunchresearch.com
