Introduction to Conducting a Market Survey

Not sure how you should conduct a market survey? Here is an introduction outlined with the main objectives, popular methods, best practices, and how you can get started quickly.  

Market surveys act as catalysts when you conduct marketing research. They help understand your target audience’s needs, wants, and demands. But that’s not all. 

You can conduct market surveys for a variety of purposes. Whether it is a marketing campaign, improving the key performance indicators (KPIs), or using the marketing mix, surveys bring you closer to your audience’s actual preferences. 

And there are various ways to conduct them – from telephonic interviews and direct mail, to emails. 

What is a Market Survey?

A market survey is a questionnaire you prepare for your target audience or customers so that they give you honest feedback on your products or services. Based on this first-hand feedback, you can immediately take the right decisions. 

Maybe it is improving or launching your product, or you do not know yet who is your ideal customer. Use a market survey that helps you take decisions faster. 

Related: Marketing research courses

What are the Objectives of Market Survey?

Market surveys are important for various purposes for a brand. 

1. Know what customers want in your product update
2. Find out what existing customers think about your product
3. Learn about the marketable demographics for customer segmentation
4. Launch a new product or service that satisfies the demands of the customer
5. Creating an effective marketing strategy that appeals to your audience from your industry

Popular Market Survey Methods and Their Benefits

• Online Market Survey – Best for asking for feedback from customers across the globe
• Face-to-Face Market Survey – Best for understanding pain points of individual customers, the most honest way
• Telephonic Market Survey – Best when you do not have much capital or bandwidth to conduct interviews face-to-face

Things to Consider Before Conducting a Market Survey

The survey should first align with your marketing objectives. Knowing your end goals and objectives helps you frame the right questions. 

Secondly, the survey should not be too long nor elicit responses that are too ambiguous that you are not able to take any direction in your decisions. Consider knowing what your audience prefers first. 

Questions such as whether they are comfortable speaking on the phone for the survey or prefer other non-verbal means of communication. 

An average survey usually has 15 to 20 questions. But you also have to consider reducing the number of questions when you are taking a survey on the phone. The questions must be highly concise and must not take more than two to three minutes of the surveyee’s time. 

If your market survey’s purpose is to know more about your target audience, it is ideal to send surveys through mail and to those who already know your brand. 

Another point to note is that you should focus on the negative feedback more than the positive ones. Maybe not all negative reviews are meaningful, but some will definitely help you know the drawbacks. 

And, whenever you are going to conduct a market survey, you must have all the means to analyse the feedback. You must either have software to analyse such data or have the right personnel who can do it, provided you do not know how to analyse. 

How to Conduct Any Market Survey

1. Determine your marketing objectives and goals to know if the market survey is for acquiring new customers, finding out the right target audience, etc.
2. Establish the market size of your business 
3. Choose the ideal market survey method so that you can obtain the best feedback
4. Ensure the feedback is relevant to your goals
5. Assess both qualitative and quantitative data 

Parting Thoughts

There you go! This is about market survey in a nutshell. Take up some marketing courses to learn more.