Paid Surveys: Take Free Paid Online Surveys, Paid Focus Groups

By Dave Weeks

To Survey Or Not To Survey
By Dave Weeks


I have learned over the years that when it comes to online
marketing as I know it, it’s not about what I want in my
business.It’s really about what people who visit my website
want. For awhile I didn’t understand that philosophy. How do
I find out what people want? Finding out what people want
is not something you, I or anyone else for that matter can
pull out of thin air. If we are going to be successful
online, even offline in the brick and mortar world, we have
to take our eyes off of ourselves and put them onto our
potential customers.So how do we do this?

The answer is quite simple yet complex.That is to conduct a
survey or surveys.Conducting surveys is simple.On your
website you can create forms for people to fill out. If you
are going to put a form on your website, I would limit only
one form. You do not want to bombard people with forms.Keep
it simple as the saying goes.

Do not get too personal in your form.In other words only
ask for first name and email. That is it when it comes to
their personal information.

Now, from their you can use your own imagination on the
rest of the form makeup. Whatever it is you want to sell,
make your survey easily accessible on your website. The
number of visitors visiting your site will determine the
number of surveys filled out and sent to your emails inbox.
Its all numbers anyway….whether its marketing a product or
service and conducting surveys. This is an excellent way of
building lists specific to what people want to buy.

Notice how I said whatever it is you want to sell. What
that means is, you don’t know yet if you have what people
really want. That is the purpose of the survey. To find out
if they want what you have. Once you collect the data and
you are ready to sell, you have in your hand a ready made
list of names specific for that product or service you are
offering.

Not too !
long ago
, this year as a matter of fact (2004
currently), I learned what not to do in a survey. I will
give you my experience of what not to do and how to remedy
this situation.

I recently got married and five of my family and friends
took me to dinner two days prior to the wedding. As we were
finishing our meal, the manager came to our table and told
us that we have been selected to participate in a survey.
She told us that if we participated, we would receive $3 off
of our next meal. Come to find out, our bill which totaled
over $120 collectively, the $3 off was for the entire group
at the table. Ok, I think its nice that they offered this,
but lets look at the reality of this situation. First of
all, $3 off of over $120 does not get anyone too excited nor
does it want to make anyone go through the hassle, yes
hassle of filling out a survey when they are enjoying a
night out with family and friends. Secondly, the odds of us

getting together again and eating at this particular
restaraunt are slim to none. So what does that tell me? That
tells me one of two things. Either someone did not take
their eyes off of themselves and put them onto their
customers or, they knew the odds of us coming back as a
group were slim and it works completely in their favor.That
is disturbing to me. Now for my input on a remedy.

What would I do in this situation? Well first of all,
everything I stated in the above paragraph, all of my family
and friends after we were “selected” kind of looked at each
other in amazement and disbelief. We all knew that it was a
silly thing to do to come up to us and play us like we were
born a few days ago. First, If I am going to get a group to
fill out a survey, especially if I have been “selected”, and
I am going to give them something in return to do so, I
would offer the table, say, free desert now. Why do I say
this? remember, you are marketing your business….make it
work.Make people w!
ho just
enjoyed the meal and the service
go out and tell someone else.Stand up and believe that the
way you are conducting your survey is for your customers,
not just you alone. Don’t try and fool people, were not
fooled.If you are going to have a couple fill out a survey,
how about buy one meal get the second meal half off. After
all, it appears this is a random selection. Not everyone is
doing this. Now, I am not looking for free handouts. As a
matter of fact, I would have rather given the manager (and
no disrespect to her) $5 to leave. It’s obvious to me in
this circumstance that this particular establishment does
not want to give away anything. They want it to only benefit
themselves.But if you are a business and you want true
success in surveys, do it right.

The final approach? Instead of offering anything, put
surveys out on the table and let people make up their own
minds. People like to be left alone and not annoyed. Its ok
to ask for the sale, but no means no. If you continue to
push someone, they won’t come back. After all, would you?

About the author:
Dave Weeks writes articles on marketing
visit http://www.etypewriter.com
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For additional Paid Surveys information
and resources visit Paid Surveys.
(http://www.paid-surveys-free.com)
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This entry was posted on Monday, April 10th, 2006 at 10:43 am and is filed under Paid Surveys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.