Few Reasons Why Many Consider Publishing Marketing Surveys Online

Online surveys nowadays sprang like mushrooms on rainy days and thrive like they've owned their rightful spot on the web. These surveys have been regarded as major contributors for the great improvements in data collection and research of prime companies. They have become one of the key factors in strategic decision making and contingency planning.

There are a bunch of reasons behind the success of publishing marketing surveys online which is considered as a big trend and a huge leap for online marketing. Some of those reasons are as follows:

Practicability. Publishing marketing surveys online costs less but reciprocate larger and better results. It has been an advantage of online surveys to be developed and distributed in a quick, cost-effective manner and answers come in as fast as surveys are being distributed worldwide. This gives the company the opportunity to redirect their resources to other necessary components.

Easy distribution. Another reason is that it's easy to promote marketing surveys online once published. This is where Internet tools and resources come in handy such as e-mail, chat rooms, forum boards, blogs and advertising sites.

Improved responses and cooperation. Publishing marketing surveys online enables one to reach everyone around the globe, creating a ripple effect of ideas, opinions and even relationships. The readers may regard the survey as a way for their voice to be heard and their opinion to matter. They believe their answers to these various marketing surveys online are the bases to improve a particular product, service or site, hence, making them feel they are part of the decision making. This is important because it only means they are interested in answering the said surveys.

Publishing marketing surveys online proved to be a sure hit in the online marketing industry. Several marketing experts and professionals believe that these surveys will continue to become an important asset and strategy in the years to come as online marketing grows more and more complex.

Some Online Marketing Surveys

Online marketing surveys are perceived by some, if not most, marketing experts to be very useful in data collection since relevant information is needed in formulating marketing strategies and making certain marketing decisions. Some of those online marketing surveys include the following:

Customer loyalty survey. A section from infosurv.com defined this online marketing survey as a tool that can help organizations measure their customer satisfaction levels, improve customer retention, gauge customer interest in new products and service offerings and pinpoint areas for improvement. It focuses more on the customers, their feedback, comments, feelings, treatment and perspective about the product, service or site. The common questions found in a customer loyalty survey are mostly about customer's overall satisfaction, the chances wherein the customer would recommend the product or service to other people, the possibilities of a customer to continue choosing those products or services, and their probable interest in other products and services. Sample questions include “How would you rate your level of overall satisfaction with Business A in a scale of 1 to 10 of which 10 is the highest?, “How likely are you to recommend Service XYZ to a friend or relative?”, “What would be the chances of you purchasing the same product or service?”, and “How long have you been a customer of this product or service?”

Needs and wants survey. This online marketing survey determines the needs and wants of the customer pertaining to the products, services and sites involved. The survey circles on what most customers need or want from a particular product, service or site. It can also be included in this online marketing survey what things are being considered by customers as a need or just a want. For example, one customer may need Product A badly and may just regard Product B as one of his wants. Some of the sample questions can be found in the web like the following yes-or-no questions: “Is the service we provide meeting your highest expectations? If not, what areas can we improve?”, “Do you consider ABC Products as necessities in your current lifestyle?”, and “Are we providing the brands and lines you want and expect? If not, please list what is needed.”

Quality control survey. An online marketing survey that seeks to find out whether a certain product, service or site possesses the high quality set by the company standards and expected by the customers. According to the glossary section of stats.oecd.org, this online marketing survey is defined as a replicated survey carried out on a small scale by very experienced staff in order to obtain some “zero-default” results with which the actual results of the survey can be compared. Criteria for quality may differ in products, services and sites. For products, some criteria may be cost-efficiency and effectiveness while professionalism, responsiveness and organization are for services. Sites can have content, ease of navigation and user-friendliness as some of the criteria in determining quality. Questions like “What are the best features of the product that you like?”, “In a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate the quality of Business Z's services?” and “Did this site provide you enough information on the subject at hand?” are most likely to appear on quality control surveys.

These three of the many online marketing surveys are available and are being offered by various people and groups and companies in the net. The online marketing survey might be used as a replacement for the traditional survey or both can be devised and later be compared depending on business needs.

Pros and Cons of Online Marketing Surveys

Surveys have already come out of their shells and started flooding the world of the web. Online surveys evolved from its ancestors which were in the forms of paper and pens back then. Now, they pride themselves through the use of computer peripherals and, of course, Internet connection. Surveys found online thrived in diversity. One of which is the online marketing survey. The online marketing surveys are very handy in helping companies make marketing decisions and strategies. But just like any other online survey, it also have some benefits and disadvantages over the traditional one.

The benefits of online marketing surveys can be summed up as being less expensive to put up, able to reach more respondents in less time, having faster and higher response rates, greater chances of responses on rare and private cases and can be completed anytime, anywhere provided an internet connection is available.

Technical problems unfortunately are the most frequent enemy that surround the world of online marketing surveys. These things can hardly be avoided but there have been measures drawn to deal with it. Factors such as sudden power outage, computer logs, system breakdowns, unstable connections, error messages or prompts that are confusing and repeated data entries cuts, freezes or delays the chance of a respondent to complete the survey.

Whatever the pros and cons of online marketing surveys, it is still widely used by businesses nowadays which proves that there may be disadvantages to any system or process but what's important is preventing the cons from outweighing the pros. It can be done by maximizing and making most out of those benefits and performing actions to avoid problems.