Online Surveys and B2B Marketing

A good online survey is a very useful tool in online B2B marketing. It can help a business determine customer needs, identify trends or provide data points to guide marketing strategies.

Take a recent case-in-point from TriComB2B, a B2B marketing agency. An industrial products manufacturer approached TriComB2B for help with a critical initiative: Web design. The client needed to revamp its existing website—a tall task for a company with thousands of global customers, a complex sales channel and thousands of products. To start defining the necessary Web design strategy, TriComB2B helped this client reach out to more than 7,000 stakeholders for some crucial B2B marketing information.

In only a few days, TriComB2B delivered concrete results on how to improve Web design for the client’s site from nearly 500 respondents, including:

    * Usability likes and dislikes
    * Most desired Website content
    * Must-have functionality
    * Best and worst Websites within peer group

When drafting questions for a business to business marketing survey, the most important fact to remember is that clarity is king. Be sure to define any terms that may not be understood, including acronyms. Keep wording concise to limit the length of the survey, but again not at the expense of clarity. If your respondents do not understand what you are asking, you will get both inaccurate data and a poor response rate.

Try to personalize the survey by incorporating the word “you” into questions where appropriate. This draws respondents in and keeps them motivated to complete the survey. In addition, utilizing an “easy” question as the opener helps compel the respondent to continue, since they now feel involved.

Answers for each question should be both mutually exclusive (only one answer for each question) and exhaustive (the list of answers provided is complete).

To improve response rate, follow these easy steps when developing the structure of your online survey:

Step 1: Construct a single objective and make sure the content of your questions aims for that goal. Testing too many variables in a B2B marketing survey leads to inconclusive data.

Step 2: Create an introduction. Provide a short explanation of the purpose of the survey and include a time approximation for completion.

Step 3: Limit the number of questions. Ideally, a survey should contain no more than 10 questions and take less than five minutes. Recipients do not have the time or patience to respond to a lengthy questionnaire.

Step 4: Sequence questions appropriately. Try alternating “easy” questions with those that may be more difficult for the respondent to answer. This helps keeps them motivated.

Step 5: Obey the 80:20 Rule. Eighty percent of questions should be quantitative in nature and the other 20 percent open-ended. Placing open-ended questions at the end of the survey results in a higher response rate.

Here are a few things to avoid when preparing a B2B marketing survey:

A poor first impression. You must grab attention immediately with a concise—not more than 60 characters long—subject line. Appealing text and graphics should follow to help compel recipients to respond.

Also, avoid allowing each department of your organization to contribute questions. This will result in longer surveys, which are also burdened with multiple objectives, leading to lower response rates.

Steer clear of complicated formatting. For example, using drop-down boxes containing multiple answers can become confusing and/or tedious for users. Keep it simple.

Don’t spam! Online surveys should be sent from a credible source that utilizes personalization, such as custom salutation. Remember most recipients are looking for a reason to delete your e-mail.

Beware of poor timing. Sending surveys at the start or end of the week results in lower response rates. Before and after holidays is another poor time to survey.

Finally, make sure you pretest. Use a small test sample to ensure any technical glitches have been resolved. This also reveals whether or not respondents understand the wording of the questions.

Used properly in online B2B marketing, surveys can provide an economic means to gather information to guide business decisions.

About the Author:
Chris Eifert is a Principal at TriComB2BTriComB2B, a Dayton B2B marketing agency that focuses on technical B2B marketing campaigns.