5 Reasons to Run a Consumer Survey for Your Startup
As the Founder and Research Director at PeopleFish, I’ve worked on survey projects for hundreds of companies over the past few years.
Each startup and survey is different, but most of our clients have had similar reasons for wanting to conduct a market research survey.
Here are the five most-common uses for market research survey data, based on our experience working with companies all around the world.
1. To Validate an Idea
This is the single most common use for consumer survey data. About half of our clients are startups — or new ventures in larger companies — trying to validate consumers’ demand for some new idea.
The fact is, there’s no better way to gauge demand for a new product or service idea than by going straight to the source — asking consumers in the relevant markets what they think of the idea and whether they’d buy it.
Even further, surveys can be used to determine how much consumers are likely to pay for a product, where they typically go to shop for these kinds of products, and whether they already use similar products (and how much they pay for those).
The uses of consumer surveys to validate a product or service idea are almost endless.
2. To Win/Wow Investors
It’s not easy convincing investors to invest in your idea. It’s almost impossible without hard, real-world data about your target market consumers (the kind of survey data PeopleFish delivers to clients).
The fact is, investors want to see numbers. It doesn’t matter how great your idea sounds or how enthusiastic you are about it — if they can’t prove consumers will buy it, they won’t invest.
Survey data is a powerful way to prove this kid of demand. In fact, if you haven’t already launched your product, it may be the only way to gather this kind of data.
Surveys like this have the added benefit of showing investors that you’re serious — that you’ve already invested in your idea and have the hard facts and figures to prove it. That you’ve moved beyond the everyone-will-buy-this! phase to the more professional (and defensible) research-says-__%-of-these-consumers-will-buy-this phase.
3. To Hone Branding & Messaging
Oftentimes, our clients have already decided to bring a product to market. Either they’ve done their own market research, or they have enough firsthand experience in the industry to know their target market will be interested in their product.
I’m a huge fan of that kind of intuition. Surveys aren’t necessarily needed in order to design a product consumers will love.
That said, just because you have a great — or even the perfect — product (or service) idea doesn’t mean you know the best way to sell it. Here’s where branding & messaging surveys come in. Rather than presenting a product and asking about respondents’ interest, these kinds of surveys help marketers learn the kinds of ideas consumers associate with the product you’re trying to sell.
These kind of insights can help marketers learn exactly what to name a product to maximize it’s exposure. Or which slogan to use to make products sound more appealing. Or what colors and fonts to use to convey the right kinds of ideas-ideas that boost the product’s reputation among its target market consumers.
Branding and messaging is as much a data game as a creative game.
4. To Create Relevant & Original Content
We have a good number of clients that run surveys for the sole purpose of gathering data to publish in press releases, blog posts, and other forms of communication.
For example, a dating app might survey singles to learn about their difficulties finding the right partners, and then use those findings in a series of videos or blog posts about why using a dating app can help. Or a new coffeemaker might survey 2,000 coffee drinkers about their coffee drinking habits in order to pad their marketing materials with hard data about how much money their product saves, or why it’s important to buy the right coffeemaker (given how much most people drink).
Hard data from real-world consumers will ramp up the quality, believability, and shareability of almost any piece of marketing content.
5. To Learn More About Your Market
Sometimes companies just want to learn more about their market. Especially companies branching into new industries and spaces.
These kinds of surveys will often be long and contain dozens of different kinds of questions covering all aspects of the topic at hand. Ultimately, these kinds of surveys can help product teams and marketers build a strong understanding of what their target market consumer looks like, enhancing the quality of future ventures in these markets.
We sometimes call these “intuition-builders.” They don’t necessarily have a singular goal, but they pad companies’ intuitions about their target market with powerful, real-world data on the very people buying what they’re selling.
Do you have an idea for how a consumer survey might boost your business goals? We’re happy to turn that idea into reality. PeopleFish works with companies of all sizes, from startups to global corporations. There’s no survey project too big or too small, so don’t hesitate to reach out.
A version of this article was originally published at people.fish/blog on August 12, 2019.
