30-SECOND SURVEY WAS A MARKETING TEST

Imagine asking me that?

The survey is over and here are the results. In a group of 48 members, at the time, 20%, responded to the 30-second survey. That 20% spoke for everyone because they represented a significant enough sample size to draw some conclusions. If you are here to learn, this was a marketing lesson.

Think about it, the first thing you should try to do is understand your market. Find out what they want and what they are doing. In fact, find out as much about them as possible. So, was the survey a success? Here is what I found out from the short 30-second survey.

I was impressed with the results and the yield. But, what must be going through your mind right now is well if only 20% of the population responded, that could not have been very successful.

Well there is a proposition advanced by neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) that questions cannot be “not answered” . Sometime we may not want to face it but the answer is always there. Think on it for a moment. When a question is not answered, is that not an answer in itself? That’s the reason why the subject of the email announcing the survey was very specific on the time it would take. This was a marketing test. I learned…

That 80% of the group members, at that point in time, thought that 30 seconds would slow them down. Too busy, don’t think it mattered or had too many emails on FB that they are all deleted. Point is that the reason does not matter; it’s the results that counts. I don’t think that there was a possibility that the 80% of the members did not get that email or did not check their FB account for 5 days.

Remember that these members voluntarily opted in to receive tips and marketing strategies delivered into their in box at free. And that it right there,” free”. The internet is about free and joining many programs are free so we stack them up and forget about them. If you don’t like the free stuff you can freely leave. Apparently, our instinctive, almost insatiable desire to learn more exceeds our available time.

I happen to think it’s perfect, because one thing we do know in marketing is that free works. But it must be understood.

Free gets you a crowd of hand raisers and in that population you will find your conversions. Let me share another interesting thought; the member who don’t read these emails are not reading this either. Takes too long and must be digested with the speed of broadband. I think now you can see why a 20% response is considered successful. But that was not the only surprise.

On the first question about the single most important thing you wanted to learn from this group> Most respondents picked strategic planning (54%), how to advertise (45%), writing marketing plans (27%) and selling your own product or service (27%) direct response advertising (2%) and copy writing(2%). Those were very interesting revelations on that question.

On the question of how much you read the majority ended up in the 60-80 percent. So, does that mean I cut down what I write about 20%? There were a few on the lower range in term of how much was read but that only represent 3% of the respondents.

Here is another interesting fact, 90% of the respondents are engaged in some type of marketing. Maybe they look at reading about marketing as work?

I hope that your questions about why we went international was answered in the results of this survey. The lesson to be learned here is that you must know your market, audience, customers or clients. The only way to know is to ask. Ask in a way that it’s easy for them to respond. Don't expect a response from everyone and make decisions based on what they tell you.

As always be well.