Question:
“How do you gather a contact list for target market surveys/ research?”
Answer:
For surveys and research, I see three main options for you:
- Checkout this amazing tool by Google: https://surveys.google.com/create/
It just came out recently during their Google IO conference. I’m actually very excited to use it myself. - Integrate a plugin to ask questions directly on your website. Experts all agree that as long as you do it tastefully, people do not mind.
- Purchasing an email list. Email lists are very powerful, targeted, and speed up the process of building your email list. Note: The only time I use email lists myself is when building a look-a-like audience for advertising purposes.
Even more information on surveying
Survey prospective customers and get post-purchase surveys set up for your business. Why? Because any research-driven process should provide a mixture of quantitative (analytics, heat maps, A/B testing results, etc.) and qualitative (stories, interviews, etc.) information. Gathering qualitative insights can teach you about your client’s customers in ways you couldn’t even imagine.
You can use Typeform or Wufoo to configure the survey and collect the responses. Include a survey callout at the top of your home page, and put respondents in a contest to win a free product or month of services.
Some interesting questions include:
Why did you choose us?
What do you use us for?
What value have you gotten out of our product lately?
Did you take a look at any of our competitors?
Are there any aspects to our service that you find frustrating, or which you’d be likely to change?
How easy was it to check out? (This is a great one to put on the “thank you” page!)
What new things would you like to see from us?
How were you recommended to use the service?
On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?
All of these should give you ample information for crafting the right pitch, addressing the right concerns in a marketing page, and shepherding people through the checkout process.
With my client, we ran post-purchase surveys for each customer and found a consistent issue: once they took them apart and added their keys, people didn’t know how to reassemble their new KeySmart. After adding an assembly guide to the site, linking it prominently from the product page, and emailing it to customers shortly after purchase, we dramatically reduced the number of issues that people felt, which increased customer satisfaction and catalyzed further sales.
This resulted in a one-off change, but there are tons of other examples where qualitative surveys influence A/B tests. One common result: using surveys to audit objections. First, ask someone what the last thing was that held them back from purchasing, or whether they felt any hesitations before they bought the product. Then, take the most common three to four responses and address them head-on with your marketing page.
Why is this valuable? Because stores are always engaging in a passive relationship with their customers, and you have to ensure the marketing copy addresses what users are thinking. As a result, good marketing pages audit and dismantle all of the most common objections that a customer has.
For example, let’s imagine that a store’s customers said the high price of a premium product held them back a bit from purchasing. In that case, test some copy on the product page that speaks to the product as a lifelong investment piece, anchoring the high price against cheaper-priced alternatives.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/research-that-drives-a-b-testing