We’re taking a survey …
June 4, 2015
“If I’d asked people what they wanted, they’d have said, ‘faster horses.’”
— Henry Ford
We’re taking a survey …
Surveys. They can be a great resource for gathering information and making informed marketing decisions. Or they can lay an egg. Like any marketing tool, a survey comes down to how well it’s written, getting it to the proper audience, getting people to respond and of course, what you do with the information gathered.
Need survey writing advice? Just Google or Bing “survey writing” to be overwhelmed. We Binged “survey writing” and this was interesting: Some offer “Five tips for survey writing,” while others stretch it out to “20 tips for survey writing.”
Surveys should be simple and straightforward. So, too, should tips for writing them, right? After all, your survey takers are interrupting their busy days to do your survey and they’ve got a lot on their minds.
Here’s a simple survey approach from Survey Monkey
Three tips for writing good survey questions
1. Speak their language
Talk to people on their level. Avoid grammatical messiness, off-putting vocabulary, industry jargon and overly-technical concepts.
BUT -- explain what you’re talking about, or you risk respondents getting frustrated and quitting your survey.
2. Keep it simple
Ask about one idea at a time. If you ask about multiple ideas in the same question it makes it hard for your respondents to answer and impossible for you to interpret their answers.
3. Aim for balance not bias:
Writing survey questions that bias respondents toward one answer violates a survey’s objectivity and biases the answers you get. Keep the tone of your survey even-handed to ensure you get people’s true attitudes instead of what they think you want to hear.
Here at AKC Marketing, we’ve put a few surveys into the field for clients recently. There are plenty of resources out there to assist in the process. Of course you could just contact us, we’re getting pretty good at it!
Maybe they meant a short, 14 QUESTION survey?
