If you have started on a ASK Method journey, you are bound to use a Deep Dive Survey, which was also designed by Ryan Levesque. The goal of the survey is to ask your audience a few questions that give you the most valuable information and that your audience will answer. From your audience’s answers, you will divide them into different buckets. From here you can formulate a strategy to create and market products and services based on real customer feedback. These 5 survey hacks will help you do just that.
Deep Dive Survey Tips:
- Have a ‘Single Most Important Question’ (SMIQ) that you ask your audience. This question should tell you how to best position your product or service to each potential customer. This will help immensely with separating your audience into buckets or target groups and therefore needs to be one of the first questions in the survey. An example: What is the biggest challenge you have with [insert issue related to your market]?
- Not everyone will complete your whole survey, but you should try and encourage them to finish the survey with ‘softball questions’. These questions are usually in the beginning of the survey and provide a multiple choice or ‘match the columns’ option. This starts the user off with something simple and helps generate momentum for them to finish the survey. The question should still provide useful information to you, but make it simple to complete. If they can move through these softball questions quickly and see the survey completion meter start to fill up, they are more likely to complete the whole thing and not quit halfway through because it is taking too long. Softball questions are great to set the user up for your SMIQ.
- Most surveys are given out through emailing the company’s subscriber list. The only problem with this is that you need to get your subscribers to open the email and see the survey before they even begin to answer your questions. To make sure they open your emails, you need to have something that will grab your subscribers attention and make them want to read more. Two good subject lines for a survey email are: “Can you help me with this?” or “Can I get your advice on this?” Both subject lines appeal to them personally and their desire to help. It shows the subscriber you aren’t selling anything but need their input, which might pique their interest and get them to open your email.
- Although it is a survey, do not call it a survey, because most people perceive surveys as work. Rather refer to the survey in your email as a short, fun quiz or a ‘quick couple of questions’. If you need inspiration for this, look at what Buzzfeed does to get people to take their quizzes.
- You should wait until you have received around 100 responses before you start analyzing the data and coming to any conclusions. Look for patterns that will segment your audience into buckets and come up with ways on how to target each specific bucket in the future. Ideas for targeted content will come from what they have told you about their problems, goals, wants, likes, dislikes, etc, and how you can make a connection between that and your product. The more in tune you are with this data, the more your content will resonate with your market. But do not only focus on what makes your buckets different. Also look for key traits that affect all your buckets and figure out how to help each one.