A well-crafted market research survey is capable of many things. Market research surveys can help you achieve a better understanding of your target audience, refine business strategies, plan a product launch, assess customer satisfaction, and more!
This blog post will provide you with a clear roadmap for creating an effective market research survey that delivers actionable information. Let’s get started!
What is a market research survey?
A market research survey is a systematic method to gather information and insights from a target audience or sample population. This kind of survey consists of a series of questions designed to obtain specific data, usually related to consumer preferences, behavior, opinions, or demographics.
How to create a survey for market research
Step 1: Figure out your survey goals
The questions on your survey should follow your survey goals, so the first step is to define your specific goals clearly. Ask yourself what you aim to achieve with the survey. Are you looking to understand customer satisfaction, gather insights on new product ideas, assess brand perception, or delve into market trends?
When you know your survey’s objectives, you can guide the choice of questions to align with the survey's focus. Moreover, well-defined goals can help guide the entire survey process, from selecting your target audience to analyzing results.
Step 2: Decide on your survey platform
The next thing to decide is the platform you’re going to use for your survey. There are many great free or paid platforms available. SurveyMonkey is a popular paid survey platform, while Google Forms is a highly effective and intuitive free platform for survey creation. If you’re interested in the comparison between them, read more about SurveyMonkey vs. Google Forms.
Paid platforms will often give you more features related to customization, advanced survey creation, and data analysis functions. However, they usually also involve a steep learning curve, as their interfaces can be too complicated for some users.
Google Forms is free and provides all the features and functionality required to make an effective survey. Further, pairing Google Forms with the right add-ons like Form Publisher or Advanced Summary can enhance the data collection capabilities of an already great platform.
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Step 3: Create market research survey questions
Next up, we need to come up with the questions. Market research surveys have many different goals, each with their own set of questions to ask. Because of this, we’re not going to cover individual questions you should ask. If you’re conducting a focus group for market research, you might check out our post on creating great focus group surveys.
Here are some tips for creating and phrasing your market research questions:
- Keep questions clear and concise: Simplicity is critical. Avoid jargon, complex language, or double-barreled questions that may confuse respondents. Clear, straightforward questions get better responses.
- Avoid bias: Phrase questions neutrally to prevent influencing responses. For example, instead of asking, "Don't you think our product is amazing?" ask, "How would you rate our product?"
- Diverse question formats: Utilize a mix of question formats. Multiple-choice questions offer structured data, while open-ended questions provide qualitative insights. Consider linear scale questions for measuring opinions or attitudes.
- Prioritize critical questions: Place the most crucial questions at the beginning to capture respondents' attention and prevent survey fatigue.
Step 4: Establish your timelines
It’s crucial to set clear and realistic timelines for a successful market research survey. Without a well-defined schedule, your survey can run into delays, or the data may become outdated by the time you’re done.
Here are some tips to avoid such scenarios:
- Start and end dates: Fix the exact dates when you plan to launch and conclude your survey.
- Data collection period: Decide how long you’ll collect responses from your target audience. Consider factors like your sample size and the complexity of your survey.
- Data analysis timeframe: Allocate dedicated time for data processing and analysis once the survey is complete.
- Contingency plans: Be prepared for unexpected delays and have contingency plans in place.
Step 5: Use the right tools to analyze responses
A successful survey combines accurate data collection, effective data management, and thorough data analysis. Although manually doing this is very much possible, using the right tool can help save time and resources.
A good survey combines qualitative and quantitative data. Further, both types of data call for different requirements for effective handling. Quantitative data requires clear visualization and data manipulation to draw valuable interpretations. A tool like Advanced Summary can really help with this if you’re using Google Forms.
On the other hand, to get the most out of qualitative data, you need a tool that allows you to organize and store responses safely. It helps if the tool also allows you to send response summaries so that respondents can view their responses. This is where Form Publisher excels.
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Add to your market research survey tools with Form Publisher
Follow these five steps to create a market research survey that’s going to give you valuable and insightful results. To enhance your market research capabilities, use Form Publisher.
Streamline your survey creation and data analysis processes and unlock actionable insights. Take your market research to the next level and start making data-driven decisions. Try Form Publisher now!