The process of conducting a survey starts with proper survey questions writing. It is the first step of any successful market research because it generates answers from respondents after being asked. The answers, obtained from the participants, will ultimately give your organization valuable information about the market size and value or other significant insights that can help you take better business decisions.
In this post, we will focus on tips and guidelines for writing survey questions that will enable you to gain actionable insights from the answers you gain after conducting a well-structured and properly designed survey.
Demographic Questions
- What is your line of business?
- Who are your key customers?
- What is your company’s gross revenue?
- How many people does your company employ?
- What is your job title?
Buying Pattern Questions
- Does your company ever purchase __________?
- If so, who is responsible for the buying decision?
- Where do you go when you are looking for __________?
- How often do you purchase __________?
- How long does it take you to make a buying decision?
- What is your typical budget for __________?
Benefits Questions
- What features do you look for when you purchase __________?
- What benefits do you look for when you purchase __________?
- What problems motivate you to purchase __________?
- What needs are you trying to meet when you purchase __________?
Marketing
- What percent of the buyer’s journey is marketing vs. sales (in our industry)?
- How do I merge social selling with social marketing?
- Should I change how we score leads?
- With all these changes do I have the right amount of staff?
- Do I have the right budget?
- I’m outspending the CIO, how do I prove it’s worth it?
- How do I benchmark my MarTech stack?
- What does the competitive landscape look like?
- How are we positioned in buyers’ minds?
- Do our buyer personas need updating?
- Is there a new buyer persona we need to consider?
- What channels should we invest in?
- Is email marketing dead or alive?
- How do we do more with video?
Sales
- Has there been a change in how competitors are pricing or discounting?
- How and when were partners involved in the sales process?
- How are free to paid conversations handled? What tactics are used to push up-sells?
- How big is our competitor’s sales team?
- How do our buyers educate themselves on offerings?
- How do our potential clients generate a short list?
- How is support handled by our competition? Are customers happy with the result?
- How is the competitor’s sales team structured – inside vs. outside, regional, etc.?
- How much does the customer want to pay for support and maintenance?
- How much of a factor was price in the purchasing decision?
- How often do we lose to do-it-yourself?
Product
- What are typical jobs that a customer needs to get done?
- What are the new jobs that a target organization needs to get done?
- Who is the primary audience for the product? Who is secondary?
- What features are going to lead to the most new customers?
- What features are “table stakes” for each buyer persona and industry segment?
- What metrics will organizations use to measure a successful deployment of the solution?
- Can we plug platform or product holes with solutions from our partners?
- What is our competitor’s roadmap?
- What kind of market opportunity does this product truly have?
- What is the expected lifespan of the product we are launching?
- Are their regulatory or compliance concerns that would affect the uptake of our product / service?
- Does our solution need to be heavily customized to meet the needs of every target industry?
- What should our API strategy be?
- How can we make onboarding easier?
Partner
- How do we keep partners appropriately informed?
- How do they want to keep us informed?
- How do we train partners on the solutions we have?
- Which partner(s) are driving the most revenue?
- How many of our partners are also running with the enemy?
- Do any of our partners seem ready to co-create with us?
- What should we beg, borrow, or steal from competing partner programs?
- Can we offer something other than $ or leads to our partners?
- How do competitors’ certification programs differ from ours? Harder, easier, differentiated?
- How do our partners want to access support?
- Are our partners more successful in certain parts of the world?
- How do our partners want to be informed about new opportunities (leads)?
- How good are we at pre-sales support for partner led deals?
Other Relevant Questions
What do they struggle with?
Another root set of data that market researchers are searching for within their ideal customer is “what they struggle with.” What are the 5 to 7 frustrations that they are dealing with when it comes to interacting with our product or service? If you are a golf accessories company and you ask your ideal customer what frustrates them about their golfing experience, you might get responses such as “expensive golf clubs getting wet during a rainstorm.” If you get enough of those responses, you may think about developing a golf accessory that protects golf clubs in the rain.
What does your ideal customer really WANT?
No matter how you phrase the market research questions (and there are countless creative formats) all we really want to know is what our customer will actually purchase as a solution. What is it that they WANT? Of course, they’re NOT going to say that they want something that doesn’t exist yet — in the 1960’s the average person would NOT have known that they wanted a microwave. They wanted hot food fast. One good way to get at these wants is to give your respondents some examples of product offerings and combinations and see how they rate them.
What sets you apart from your competition?
Competitive analysis and bench-marking is critical if you want to increase the profitability of your product and build your brand. An effective way to measure or identify differentiators or competitive advantage is to ask Customer Satisfaction questions. The key to asking these kinds of market research questions is getting the attributes just right. For example “How important is it that your tires have a run-flat safety feature?” instead of asking “How important is it that your car has tires.”For example: A survey can be conducted by either Apple or Samsung to find out how satisfied are the customers with their products and what are the other features that the consumer prefers from the competitive brand. Using such data a company can incorporate features based on the demand and can also benchmark their features which the customers prefer. An Apple vs Samsung Survey Questions template can help to achieve the data required to compare their products with the competition and strategize accordingly.What benefits do your customers perceive?
Because we all choose and purchase based on emotion — it’s important to understand specifically, what emotional benefits our customers receive from our products and services. The more we connect with our customers on an emotional level and provide that benefit — the more likely they are to choose us. This is an ideal place to use matrix questions that rate the degree to which customers agree or disagree with a variety of “benefit” statements. Here is an example “I can count on Service X to pull me out of a bind.”
Who is currently buying from us?
A very important research metric to track is the “who” is currently buying a product or a service from you. Deriving a pattern from the current purchasing population, helps you target and market to a similar potential demographic. This also is an ideal place to use demographic questions extensively but it also helps if other factors like geographical metrics are tracked. You don’t want to be ignoring your existing customer base and also be smart and agile in attracting new business to your brand.
Why are other people not buying from us?
Whilst it is imperative to know who is your potential customer or map your existing customer base, it is very important for you to find out who is not buying from you. This information is important to understand if there are shortcomings in a product or service and at what milestone do customers drop out of the purchasing process. This also helps to identify in the way your business is conducted, if additional training is required to make a sale or if your product or service lacks in quality. By understanding why people are not buying from you also helps monitor if there is something fundamentally wrong in what you are offering to the masses.
Who can buy from us in the future?
It is a known fact that is about 10x more expensive to create a new customer rather than to maintain the one you currently have. That however is no reason to not aim for new business. It is therefore important to have a clear picture of your potential future business. Targeting potential customers, is a mix of customer demographics that have purchased from you in the past and a mix of demographics you advertise and market to. It is therefore important to have a well-rounded product or solution. For example, since your barbecue sauces and rubs are famous and widely used in the midwest does not mean they cannot be bought in Southern States.
Why do people buy from you? What value or need does it fulfill?
Customers only buy from you because of a perceived value. This value is either what you depict to potential customers or repeat customers have been privy to the value of your product or service. Customers also make a purchase because of the trust they have either in the product or service or the brand or sometimes even certain individuals. It is therefore important that you understand the value of your brand and stick to the morals and ethics of delivering high quality to ensure that the perceived and actual brand quotient is very high. The other reason why customers purchase from you is if their need is fulfilled by what you have on offer. This could either be a direct or an indirect need.
What would make you a perfect brand?
No brand can be perfect! But you can surely be close to perfect. What this means is everything about your product or service is easy to use, intuitive, is value for money, scalable and ancillary support is impeccable. All of this is obviously immaterial if the product does not solve a real problem or make life easier for the customer. Having a very high customer oriented focus gives your brand a positive ring and becomes increasingly the go-to brand. You can use a simple Net Promoter Score question to understand how referrable is your brand and who are the promoters and detractors of your brand.
What single aspect about your brand makes it stand out and makes clients trust you?
People buy from you or transact with you mostly when there is a high trust factor. Very rarely is the purchasing decision purely based on need or ease of access. To identify and build on that one factor that makes you a preferred buying choice over your competitors is very important. You can map preferred aspects of your brand to age, sex, geographical location, financial limitations etc. because each of those factors can appeal to your brand differently. It is important that you identify and fortify those aspects of your business. Your brand can also be preferred because of other factors like personnel, customer service, ethos and perception amongst peers, consumers and the society alike. Abercrombie & Fitch was a respected brand but lost a lot of market share and goodwill due to CEO’s words in one isolated incident. It takes lots of work and time to build trust but takes none to lose all of it!
Conclusion
There are many ways of gaining insights about your business. One of the most productive ways is through b2b market research survey questions. By getting customer feedback, you can gain valuable information on what your customers want and how they view the market. Market research questionnaire examples are available in books or online.